Talk to me about having 3 children..?

[heartbroken22]

Currently pregnant with 3rd and I'm thinking how will I share the love. I'm terrified. Dd1 will be 6 and dd2 will be 2 and a half when baby arrives. I hope they all get along. First 2 kids are fine with each other.

My MIL always says that babies bring their own love :)
i have three. I found I generally had a good idea what two of them were up to and then there was always a wild card (which was usually my middle one!). I love it though - chaos and fun. And now they are teens it is just delightful. Only real issue has been finding a car that can comfortably accommodate three nearly adult-sized bottoms in the back.

Ignoring the borderline mad and very ignorant posts...

I've found 3 to be wonderful and not actually that hard. I was very, very worried and anxious when I was pregnant with my surprise 3rd and tbh MN fuelled my anxiety with the '2 is best' narrative. Turns out 3 was ok after all!

Mine are 6, 4 and 1. It's quite full on, can be noisy and busy, but to be honest nobody is left out, nobody is ignored, and we get on extremely well as a family unit. The children adore one another and look after and entertain each other. It's expensive and various things are not set up for a family of 5 but honestly, if you're prepared for that, it's fine.

DH was the middle of 3, I am the middle of 5, and neither of us have grown up to be total psychopaths...

Love it!!! Mine are 20, 12, and 8.
We’ve been through a lot as a family and these 3 troopers are so protective of each other. My eldest is so close with his younger siblings. Scrap the worries about age gaps. It’s personality that predicts how siblings get along. My eldest comes home from uni to game and build Lego with both siblings and talk music (with my super cool, trendy tween 😁). They’re my life buoy!
Congratulations, OP! 3’s the magic number.

Wtf 😂

Oh and I don’t drive. We cycle everywhere. If I can raise 3 kids without a car, you can do anything! 👏👏👏
My ex drove a 7 seater Qashqai which the kids (and dog) sat in about 4 times a year (birthday parties and our annual road trip to France). We bought this car for a family that hardly ever used it. HE DID (the bastard- working from home-wouldn’t even give us a lift in a storm! We cycled!). Err… I digress. 😆
But yes, you’ll need a bigger car if you don’t already have one.
Or… cycle. Box bike it!

One thing my dear friend said to me the other day was that her youngest (12 and best friend of my own 12 year old) tagged along for many years as ‘the baby’ while importance was sometimes placed on his older siblings’ needs. It happened a bit too often, unintentionally. This caused friction.
Equal time with children is essential but sometimes one child will truly need more than others (my 12 year old, for example, was a victim of a crime and has needed more from me this past year… still, I make sure to give time to my other two). Just remember to give them each individual attention and try not to let one sibling become a Mum bandit, excluding other siblings. The baby of the family can end up being the one that’s left tagging along. Just make sure they’re in the mix. I’m guilty of this!

Love love love having three. We have 14, 4, 1. It feels like the perfect family for us. Enough for some variety/liveliness but not so many it's overwhelming.

Luckily, everyone is not the same. It's perfectly fine if some families have three (or more) since other families will have 1 child, or no children.

Individual family size means nothing. Makes no difference, you have to look at the larger scale, the overall picture, which is that the birth rate has already stabilised and the population will only grow to a certain number, then start to decline.

"If everyone had three" is meaningless because the majority of people don't.

😂😂just got off the floor after laughing

While I now have more than 3, I honestly think 3 is the 'perfect' number in many ways. I think there's not so much intensity in the sibling relationship b/c there's more than one sibling to spend time with so they get more natural breaks from one another which helps the dynamic. There's also often a bigger gap between 1 & 3 which I've found creates a special bond.

I also feel it's still possible (mostly) to get hotel rooms, have a car vs a people carrier and just generally be the family that has an extra kid (tho you'll likely have some friends/relatives with three too!) but can do all the same things in similar ways. I also think kids 2/3 gets enormous benefit from having a parent who has been there done that and learned all kids are different and the 2nd and 3rd won't be like the first.

I liked everything about having three and highly recommend it! And while I love love love my larger family size, I still miss having three in some ways!