To Reproduce or Not to Reproduce...

Well, the news is out! Finally! We were so excited to announce to the world that we are expecting a little bundle in July!

 

 

I think I have three main reactions right now. Excitement. Nerves. and Relief.
Obviously the excitement and joy are overwhelming, Nerves are because I'm going to be having a 3rd child and Relief because Georgia keeps asking for a baby sister or brother.

 

 

I used to have these thoughts in my head of having 4 or 5 kids. But with having had 2 kids already that idea has changed. Ryan and I spent a little bit of time here and there chatting about the why’s and why not’s of us actually committing to having another baby.

Should we reproduce???

 

Why Reproduce???

The reasons to do it weren't as compelling as with my previous two kids. It's not like we needed to make another kid to keep the first one company - that box was checked. And we already had the two major genders covered. But aside from just generally wanting a bigger family, I had this nagging sense that someone was missing. I'd look at our dining table and think, if we don't have another kid, there's always going to be an empty place at our table that someone should be sitting in. (Some would say we should have just gotten a smaller table.) This was not a rational feeling, and I hate having irrational feelings. It seemed like a stupid thing to consider, anyway, what if we did have a third kid, and those feelings bubbled up again? It wasn't like I was prepared to keep scratching that itch indefinitely, so why not stop now?

 

Middle Child Syndrome

 

Then there was the issue of middle child syndrome. Initially, I didn't know what this term meant, but it didn't sound good. There's just something about the word "syndrome" that seems sinister; you can put it next to another word that's perfectly innocuous and it will instantly start sounding bad. Take "eyebrow," for example. Eyebrows are great, everyone has them, yet if you say "eyebrow syndrome " suddenly things look pretty grim.

 

Being me, I ended up Googling "middle child syndrome" and reading roughly 50 different definitions of it (some of which conflicted with others). Based on what I read I wasn't convinced that it was a real problem, it seemed to me that there were so many other ways in which we'd probably screw up the kids that a little thing like birth order would be hardly noticeable.

 

You'd think that a person who had already decided to have two kids (without angst, without doubts) would have no trouble deciding whether to have a third - but, um, no. For all the reasons I mentioned above, the decision was much harder the third time around, and Ryan and I continued to waffle. We'd decide that we definitely, absolutely wanted another child, and then we'd be up all night with two kids crying and being sick on us and think, there's no way we're signing up for this again. Only complete idiots would have three kids on purpose.

 

One reason for having three kids is so that you can stop talking about having three kids.

 

So with that we decided to have a 3rd child, We didn't want to spend our lives wondering....