The third child

Today, Aidan asks for input on a very personal question: whether or not to have a third child, and if so, when to have the third child. She enumerated some of the questions and doubts in her and her husband's head about adding a third. Those questions were all too familiar.

My first two children came quickly and not necessarily in the time frame I expected. Though we carefully, naively planned and plotted Firstborn's conception and birth (slotted conveniently after I was in one wedding but a little more than a month or so before I was in two more), C. was conceived just a year after Firstborn's birth. It had been a turbulent, crazy hard year for us as first-time parents of a colicky, headstrong child, and I was nowhere near ready to be pregnant again. In fact, I had not been certain I ever WANTED to be pregnant again. I was on the mini-pill, by the way, when we conceived C. And breastfeeding. A lot. And co-sleeping. So... yes, it can happen to you.

In any case, I never expected to have two children before I turned 30, and I found myself a befuddled mess right about the time I had a three-month-old and a just-turned two-year-old. What the hell just happened? I asked myself. I was torn between feeling like i had been rushed through all my pregnancy/childbirth experiences and feeling like NO WAY ARE YOU CRAZY could I handle another child.

So we debated. And waited. And muddled through a few tumultuous years. I lost all my baby weight; I raced in a triathlon. I bought new bras. I got C. into preschool and had two days a week, 9 AM to 1:30 PM, to my glorious self.

I still felt like we were missing a piece.

I wasn't at all sure, though. I worried. The world, in many ways, is made for a family of four, not five. One hotel room is really not enough; you need a suite or two adjoining rooms. Three carseats or booster configurations are difficult to fit in your average car. Five plane tickets are significantly more expensive than four. Three college tuitions are significantly more expensive than two. One taxi cab is perhaps not enough. Restaurant booths are often too small. When Kids Eat Free, it's usually one free kid meal to each paying adult. Four bedroom houses, though technically big enough for a family of five, can sometimes be a squeeze when it comes to providing study areas and enough room for a big enough dinner table or a guest bedroom.

I worried that we could provide just about anything for two children, but maybe not three children. I worried that a third child could have health issues, or that the pregnancy could create health issues for me -- a mother of two children already. I just worried.

Then, the summer before we conceived Baby B., I went to the wedding of two dear friends. He was the middle of two brothers, she the youngest of five children. At the wedding, I watched, tears springing like crazy, while the brothers toasted the groom. I felt the love, the camaraderie, of a gaggle of brothers now sending each other off into adulthood. I stared at my friend, the beautiful bride, and realized that had her parents not gone for crazy number five, she wouldn't be here, the star of a show full of love and happiness. I wanted that for my kids, if I could achieve it: I wanted my children flanked by siblings as they went off into the world.

In the end, we took a leap. As with so many things in parenthood and in life, this was a leap of faith. We had to believe it would work out. We didn't want any regrets.

The third child has been the best decision we ever made.

You can argue all sorts of things. Trust me, I have heard them. Odd numbers. "Trying for a girl?" Someone is always left out. The parents are outnumbered. That just isn't how it worked for us. In fact, the bottom line is that it worked for us.

The truth is, we had been outnumbered by Firstborn alone. We are no more outnumbered by three than we were by him alone. We were already working 100% on parenting him -- adding #2 and #3 added very little to that effort in the grand scheme.

The three-child dynamic has been better than the two-child dynamic. Whether because of personalities or spacing or gender or whatever, our first two fight a lot. Firstborn is, well, a firstborn -- strong-willed, a bit of an egomaniac, focused forward. C. is Firstborn's biggest fan, but Firstborn wants not much to do with C. unless C. is acting completely submissively and being a good little minion. Otherwise, all heck breaks loose. But adding in the baby has done wonders. Baby B., ever the good little Leo, worships no one. He seeks no one's approval. But he's a fun, willing, eager little brother, and he is the brother C. desperately yearns for and needs. So now, with three, sometimes it is the bigger boys doing things while the littlest is being a toddler. Sometimes it is the younger two teaming up while the oldest acts like an oldest. And often we shower a little extra attention on C. to make up for the Marcia, Marcia, Marcia middle-child syndrome. But all in all, it really has worked better than when the two oldest only had each other, one on one, all the time.

The baby calmed down our household a lot too. A baby softens you, and it also softens children. A baby who needs to nap necessitates staying home a bit more, turning down the non-essential activities that would otherwise keep you running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Your pace is less frantic, more on baby time.

Baby B. has, in many ways, been a baby of indulgence for me. It felt indulgent to have a third in a world when many of my friends struggle to have a first. It felt extravagant to plan and thoughtfully add a third child in a time of economic down-turn and uncertainty. It feels luxurious to crawl into bed some night and have three long-limbed, gangly, loud boys to cuddle. But it is so right.

Some nights, I actually get teary wondering how I could have ever lived without this third child in my life. What if I had never known? What if my boys didn't have their caboose? When he runs through the house, yelling, "BROTHERS!" it just seems as if we dodged a bullet when we took that leap. Makes you want to take a leap more often.

I loved hearing your feedback on the Life After Yes post and what you are saying yes to more often in your life. If you commented on that post and you don't have a copy of the book yet, leave me a comment with your email address ( I won't publish it!) and I'll send you a copy. I can't choose!