Did a 3rd child impact your relationship? Did you get the same support?

[williteverstopraining2024]

Expecting 3rd child have a 5 and 7 year old, do you feel like a 3rd child impacted your relationship in a negative way?

also if you did get support as in the odd night of childcare every few months or so did you still get the same level of support? Appreciate there are people with little support

thanks in advance

DH didn’t want a third child, so was distant throughout the pregnancy, but that changed as soon as baby arrived.
I got less babysitting, in fact I don’t think I got any, as GP’s didn’t want to deal with 3 kids alone. I think that possibly I just didn’t ask.

I’m commenting because I also have a 7 & 5 year old and 27 weeks pregnant ☺️

So far, it’s not negatively impacted DH and I, but DC1&2 aren’t his biologically. I anticipate no support as we don’t have it anyway right now.

Support from whom?

Didn't impact relationship other than having even more to do. Very little support from GP who said they'd struggle with 3 (understandable) plus they were getting older. PIL never supported anyway so no change. Did change a few things like what car we needed, holidays etc.

We have 3 , I really like having 3 as there’s always someone to play with and now they are older they have plenty of options of company ! Also it isn’t too many either.
We’ve never had any support whatsoever regardless of how many kids we have , not even a second of it . That has been hard tbh as we are surrounded by people with help . Nothing we can do 🤷‍♀️but I will say it gets more busy and way more expensive once they are older, everyone always harps away when they are younger with “ it gets so much easier “, it does and it doesn’t.

We had same age gap. It was me that wanted 3rd so I said I’d do majority of work with baby and he could take on other things. When baby was around 5 months old, DH realised he didn’t have the same close relationship as with the other two and went into overdrive (very successfully) to build up a similar relationship. It was amazing when the kids were all young. It is not as easy now we have one 10/11year old and two older teens. The youngest feels lonely sometimes and the oldest, in particular, has gone from adoring the youngest to finding them very irritating. Our elder two do feel their childhood was impacted by us having to indulge and care for younger one. Doesn’t help that my DH is oncall a lot at weekends so I needed to always bring youngest along. I would not change anything but I would be more mindful of recognising impact on the older two. We never had any family support so that didn’t change anything. Babysitters often charge a little more for 3 kids but we didn’t have any issue finding ones we trusted. Now our older two get extra pocket money for babysitting younger child. Although we often get other teens in to active babysit as they’ll play games etc.

Yeah I feel like I would be reluctant to ask, but we are lucky to get the odd night every few months or so which we do appreciate haven’t told family yet as don’t want children to know till we’ve had scan etc.

My younger two very much want a sibling however feel that this would change when they are older haha they will also have to room share for the time being which I loved as a child shared with my sister till I left home.

Congratulations I feel like my minds going overdrive at the moment maybe just my hormones! Very much gone back and forth with the decision for a 3rd for a while and now I’m thinking SHIT but also realising very lucky

Ours shared even though there was space to have a room each. The eldest two shared till the oldest wanted their own room, then the younger two shared but only for a couple of years as different sexes. When our middle child wanted their own room, we put them all in separate rooms. We have autism in the family so separate rooms for eldest two works best. Doesn’t work for our youngest though! We’ve put up a camp bed in our room so they can sleep in with us again whenever they want.

I wouldn’t change a thing. I’ve loved having 3 kids. If I had realised how much fun I would have found having kids (we met at teenagers but I didn’t want kids till I turned 30), I would have like to have had another one! The baby, toddler and pre school years when the older 2 were at primary school were fabulous. It got tougher when the older two went to secondary school although covid may have impacted that. Things are starting to get easier again as our youngest is heading to secondary school and our eldest is old enough to stay at home even if we go away overnight.

Enjoy! I miss those baby years. As they say, the days are long but the years fly.

Thank you for all your comments x x pregnancy ended last night 😭 gutted x never mind

Very sorry to this OP. Hope you're OK 💐💐xx