Did you feel like you 'rushed' in to having any of your kids?

[ourbabygirl]

If so, was it a bad decision, or did it turn out all right?

I've posted before about being on the fence about having another (a third) child. With our first, we TTC for almost a year, so we were very ready to have her once I got pregnant. With our second, he was a little surprise (we weren't trying but weren't careful enough, either), and if I had it to do over, I would've waited another 6 months to a year to TTC (the kids are exactly 2 years apart). After DS, I thought for sure that we were done, but the last few months I've been thinking that maybe we're not, and it would be nice to have a bigger family. The kids are getting older, though, and DH and I would rather have the kids be closer together, so the youngest one doesn't feel as much like an only child. DS would still be 3.5, at the youngest, before a baby would be born, or, if we wait another year, he would be 4.5 or so (I'd rather try for a spring or summer baby).

[abh5e8]

well, we were a bit suprised by ds1 (he cam 21 months after dd), but it turned out great. i think 3.5 or 4.5 years is a nice spacing. especially for the middle child. dc#4 is coming may/june, and ds2 will be 2.75 yrs, which is older then any of my others were. at first i was a bit bummed, but its been SOOO nice to have some extra time with him as the baby and for him to be older. my sisters' first 2 girls are 4 yrs apart and my best friends are 6 yrs apart...and they have the sweetest relationships - although they are different from what I see in dd1/ds1. i don't think you can go wrong :)

[buddyleebaby]

DD1 and DD2 are 15 months apart and I thought "This is great! They're best friends! They'll never remember life without each other!"

DD2 and DS are just shy of two years apart and I thought "This is great! They're far enough apart that it's not like having two babies at once, but close enough that they can still relate to each other. What a happy little group they'll be!"

DD3 is 4.5 years younger than DS and 7.5 years younger than DD1 and... I think it's great. They all love her, she's totally enamored with them, and it's soooo much easier to care for a baby when the other kids are a little older.

:ROTFLMAO:

Long story short, I have decided that what ever child spacing you end up with becomes the perfect child spacing for you.

[scrooks]

I don't think you can go wrong. I think a family will adjust to however the spacing ends up. I am looking forward to seeing how different things will be with the wider spacing for our soon to be ds2. Dd and ds1 are 26 months apart. Ds1 and ds2 will be just shy of 4 years apart. I am hoping it will be good spacing for our family. That being said... I don't believe spacing is 100% in your control. I miscarried twice between ds1 and this pregnancy. The first time the spacing would have been 2 years exactly and the second time the spacing would have been just shy of 3 years. Part of me believes our family was meant to have this 4 year spacing.

[SnuggleBuggles]

No, we did it when we were finally ready. People were pretty surprised that we had another; they'd long given up on us. :) eta- I am the 3rd after a large gap (my brother and sister are 2.5 years apart). I absolutely adored it! Best of both worlds, imo. I had siblings when I was young then I had 0 competition for the car when I was a teen. Plus, my parents were more secure financially when I was growing up so I benefited there. They were also more mellow.

And, I love right now that I had the big gap b/c I have had ds2 all to myself while ds1 is in school. It's nice to not be feeling like I'm going in a million directions and not really meeting everyone's needs and wants.

It will all work out. Don't let some preconceived idea of how it should be make you rush.

[queenmama]

You're asking the wrong person since we ended up with two "only children." ;)

We did have DS pretty quick. We got pregnant a month before our first anniversary. There's a long story there, but I'll just say I wanted very much to have a baby at that time, so I charted temps and CM, etc., and we got pregnant the first month we tried.

We had a miscarriage when Henry was almost 3 and couldn't get pregnant again after that. So we were pretty shocked when we got a BFP with DD... at that point, Henry was 10 years, 2 months.

So yeah... Probably not ideal as far as having kids be playmates, and it has been a huge adjustment starting over after all these years. I certainly wouldn't have chosen a 12-year gap! But as it turns out, I love it. Henry is almost a teen so he's self-sufficient as well as hugely helpful. It's nice that we had so many years with him on his own, and we kind of get to have Agnes on her own while Henry is at school and other activities.
ETA: and she's still young enough that we get to chill with him when she's napping/sleeping, even if it is just playing a board game or watching Netflix.

Like someone said, it'll work out and it'll be just right for your family. You'll be amazed at how quickly you'll adapt, however you space them!

Lara

[AustenFan]

Well, we knew that we wanted a bigger family and wanted them closer together, so we went for the about-two-years-apart spacing. I guess my philosophy was if we were going to be in sleep deprived and diapers stage, we might as well get it all done with at once. We miscarried between DS and DD1, so obviously our ideal timing between DS and DD1 wasn't what we'd planned. Our girls are 23 months apart, and I've loved it--they play so well together. We were planning on waiting a few months longer for #4, but BIL's wedding this spring rushed our plans a bit. I was bummed not to have had a bit longer for my body to recover, but I'm very glad that by the end of this week, I will be done being pregnant forever!:yay: In terms of spacing, I think DD2 is ready to be a big sister, and 23 months apart again should be nice. Having a 6 and almost-4 year old is really nice, too--they totally understand what is going to happen, they're super helpful, and it's fun to have them so involved in planning for the baby/discussing names/etc.

With all that said, I am a firm believer that it totally depends on YOUR family! I would feel terrible if any of our friends or family members felt pressure to do things our way. There are so many factors, especially personality of the kids you have, that make it hard to compare. My only piece of advice (from our decision to TTC #4 earlier than planned) is that you and DH are totally on the same page--that helped assure me that we were making the right call.

[maestramommy]

No, we didn't rush, even at our advanced age, lol. TTC for DD1 was very deliberate. DD2 was a surprise, she was a condom baby. DD3 was a "let's not try either way and see what happens," but got preggo after one month of that baby:ROTFLMAO:.

It's been pretty much in the trenches the last few years, esp. since DD3 was born. But everything happens for a reason, even the things we THINK we plan. I think this birth order will have worked out for the best.

[AnnieW625]

Sometimes I think maybe we rushed DD1 a bit, but I am happy we had when we did. Had DH not been unemployed (in an engineering related job) for all of 2003 and part of 2004 I think we would have had a child right away. DH had been gainfully employed in good paying engineering work for 18 months when DD1 was born so we had no real time to save up a lot of income, or travel much. We had been married for just 3 yrs. when I had DD1.

I think I felt like I was rushed a bit when I got pregnant with baby #2 in late 2008. I had been soo happy with DD1 and for the longest time was okay with her being an only that I even though we started to really TTC a few months after DD1 turned 2 (it took 5 mos. of TTC) I still didn't feel ready. Baby 2 didn't make it so maybe it was a sign.

DD2 is an oopsie. We weren't planning on having her so soon after losing baby 2 (I got pregnant just shy of 4 mos. post loss, and I literally had 2 half menstrual cycles). We had thought we'd wait until early 2010 to start TTC and we said we'd try for a year and if it happened, but if it didn't then we were find with DD1 being an only.

DDs are 4 yrs. and 25 days apart. DD1 was 2 weeks early, and DD2 was 8 days early. I live in the land of "perfectly" spaced kids all between 18 mos., and 2 yrs. 9 mos. apart so I really think that DH thought since I wasn't pregnant by DD1's first birthday, and then by her 18 mos., and then finally 2 yr. birthday that something was wrong with us. I told him though each time he talked about it that I wasn't ready. Then right after DD1 turned 2 I gave in and while I didn't really have my hopes ups I think us taking 5 mos. to finally conceive was really impacted by me not really knowing if I was ready or not.

When DH and I were in our early 20s and dating and knew it was serious I had kind of set a goal for myself that I wanted to have my last kid before I turned 33 so I would be 50 when the youngest graduated from high school. I will turn 50 a week or two after DD2 graduates from high school.

I agree what works for one family may not work for the other family and I don't think there is anything good that comes from judging when or when will families have more children, if a second child at all.

[Octobermommy]

I'm going to agree with most pp that I think it ends up working for you. My "perfect" spacing was between dd & ds1 , which is just over 3 years but that was after 3 m/c & a picture perfect adoption of ds. My baby was a big surprise so they are less than 2 years apart. I would have never planned it like that but I consider myself immensely blessed.

[gatorsmom]

I felt rushed into the first one by DH. He really wanted to have kids and I really did not. But I'm glad he rushed me now. It was my decision after that to have my kids all 2yrs apart. And while it's true that they all play nicely together, I think it would have been nice to have some more years between them to really enjoy each of them more before the next one (or two) came along. Although, I might be influenced in that decision by the surprise twins. :D. It's been very hard to enjoy each of them individually. I have to admit though too, while it would have been nice to have more years between them, I would not have wanted to be much older while having my kids. I cant imagine having a baby or toddler to chase at this age.

[Tondi G]

my boys are 2 months shy of 4 years apart. We had 2 MC's between them... I believe the spacing is the way it was meant to be for our family. I actually love having had almost 4 years between my kiddos. I feel like each kiddo had the opportunity to have a lot of time with me, one on one. We have gone around and around with the idea of having a 3rd. I feel like time is really ticking away. I'm 36 (we always said we would love to be done having babies by the time we were in our early 30's). My youngest is almost 8 yrs old. It almost feels like we have waited too long. My DH often says that ... our boys are so grown up ... it'll be like starting all over ... maybe we should count our blessings ... they are healthy and bright kids. It's tough. I know that if we did decide to have a 3rd it would end up being right for our family. I know that at least DS2 would LOVE having a little brother or sister.... DS1 is less enchanted with the idea! LOL

[brittone2]

We had our first early in our marriage and early in my career. But, I went through IF and a PCOS diagnosis, so in some ways that was a good thing. My 2nd two were conceived without fertility meds (low carbing plus metformin did the trick), so I probably could have conceived if we started later since I cycle pretty normally now. However, I'm also glad that I had them a little earlier because who knows in terms of fertility.

Ours ended up right around 3 years apart. Baby #2 and #3 were surprises overall, although we were trying. We just didn't need to resort to fertility meds to have #2 and #3, which was a nice surprise.

[candybomiller]

We were definitely NOT rushed. There is 5 years between DS1 and DS2. And when #3 comes along, DS1 will be 11 and DS2 will be 6.

I agree that whatever spacing you end up with will be perfect for your family. Somehow it all works out.

[lmwbasye]

Not at all. I always knew I wanted to have children young. I did want to have two more by now originally but after three miscarriages and four deployments, that has changed. I'm 95% sure we're done and I love it that way. I honestly don't know that I would want another now that I'm 35. I knew we wanted to have them out of the house while DH and I were fairly young since we knew that those first 20+ years are so were going to be sacrificed to the Army and we'd want to be able to enjoy that time to ourselves afterwards while we're still relatively young.

[hillview]

a little. We got married when I was 33 and DH was 44 so time seemed important. No regrets.

[mom3boys]

I feel like I rushed into having DS2. We originally decided we were going to have 2 kids and have them pretty close together, to get the pregnancies "done" with. Also, DH and I both come from families with the kids spaced close together so this seemed normal to us. Finally, because of my graduate school schedule having a baby in the summer of '08 (less than 2 years after DS1) seemed to work the best--I had class in the fall, winter and spring, and the following summer, I would be studying for comprehensive exams. So it was either summer '08 or late '09 at the earliest (after exams), and more than 3 years apart just seemed like a long time.

So, we tried for DS2 right after DS1 turned one, since that's what we had planned. It took 1 try, DS2 was born just under 21 months after I had DS1. I really did not feel ready to be pregnant again so soon though or have another newborn, and having 2 under 2 was very difficult. I do like now that they are close in age, they have the same interests and can participate in the same activities. I never really felt like I had quality time with DS2 as a baby, or DS1 as a 2-3 year old, though. If we had waited until late '09 or '10 to have a 2nd DC, I am certain we would not have had a 3rd. DS3 was a surprise but we weren't being very careful, I think given our ages we would have been more careful to avoid a DC3 if I hadn't had a DC2 until I was nearly 35 (and DS in his 40's).

[sste]

OP, I know you are struggling with this decision! I have noticed that you have posted I believe a dozen threads or more in the past six months relating to a third child, either your own plans or general questions. I wonder if at this point you might benefit from conversation with a professional, including therapist, a trusted ob/gyn, or clergy. Although I understand the urge, there is no "right" answer to glean from the internet because it is the quintessentially individual question. And it is not static. Your life with two versus three children is going to be what you make of your life with two versus three children, kwim . . .

And there is a real concern that you may be missing some of the present enjoying your family right now while you worry about the future. I have big tendencies in this regard and it is something to think about.