This is Helen (mum of 5 apparently on the brink of mental breakdown and divorce 🙄🙄).
I'm going to make one (very long!) post and not keep chatting so I hope I address all the opinions that have been shared:
Money - we both (yes both) earn good money. Concrete surveying is a division of civil engineering and Nige has a very good job. We didn't inherit riches from anyone, we just both work and save for the future. Every child has their own little pool of money being stashed away from our incomes each month for a house deposit or uni or whatever sensible plan they have when they are older. We know life will always be expensive for us with so many children and are comfortable with our finances.
Age gaps - we started a little later in life and I always wanted lots, so yes, we've mutually agreed to small age gaps. The babies have always been healthy and any pregnancy complications have been few and not threatening to me or to the babies. I haven't weaned early from breastfeeding to fall pregnant, I just always manage to fall pregnant whilst still feeding.
BF - I use a cover when there are people around who I don't feel comfortable seeing my boobs. I actually spent most of the filming time with my boobs out for all to see but I knew my dad would watch the programme, and my in laws and co workers and a whole nation of people and so I chose to use a cover in front of certain people and when I knew it was a scene they definitely planned to use (Guides) and asked for them not to show my boobs the rest of the time. It limits what they could show from the fixed cameras which is why you don't see so much of me feeding and don't see me feeding around the children. Trust me I was feeding as often as any new mum and usually as openly as anyone would in their own home. In fact I am more than a year into my training to be a breastfeeding counsellor. I haven't always had an easy time with breastfeeding and have had 4 terrible experiences with tongue tie (including Abigail though that wasn't shown). I am a huge advocate for women who decide to breastfeed being supported to do so in whatever way feels right for them. For me that sometimes includes a feeding cover.
My marriage - Nige and I are very happy together. He hadn't especially wanted children when we first re-met and I always had. So I told him when we first discussed being more than friends that I wanted a large family and there was no point pursuing a relationship if that felt like a problem to him. He was on board but asked that we commit to a couple of kids at a time and build up if he was still happy to keep going. He is very much consulted - I'm not sure how else I would keep getting pregnant 🙄.
Nige has a very dry humour which doesn't come across so well until you know him. Everyone who does know us thought Nige was entirely himself and could hear his humour.
With regard to my comment about him saying no to me for a few more months if he doesn't want anymore, this isn't me struggling to overcome hormones. I have long said that 6 would be our absolute maximum because the children's bedrooms are hard to manage if we go beyond that number. (Even I accept logistics have to come into it at a point). Being a paramedic means I can't work in my usual job when I'm pregnant: I go on office duties each time. I have always returned pregnant from mat leave and so although I always do my refresher training I don't go back on an ambulance between babies. As and when I do go back in a full capacity (as in when I return to work and I'm not pregnant), that'll be the end of the baby years. I'm not returning to full practice on an ambulance with all the work that involves only to then be signed off to the office again a few months later. That's why I said Nige would just need to say no to me for long enough. Mat leave ends when it ends so he knows where that line is. If I'm not pregnant when i go back, well that's the end of that.
That bedtime story - Nige doesn't love bedtime stories. It's usually my domain. Yes it was rushed, yes there was a cameraman stood filming him which wouldn't have helped, and his attention was on one of the other kiddies who was running in and out of the room. No, that was not his finest bedtime story reading. No, it wasn't so unusual either. Yes, we have discussed it before. No, Rebecca does not appear scarred by it.
Going back to guides - it is interesting to me how many people felt we were abandoning our children by going back to Guides and scouts. I'm not sure how much you all know about guides and scouts but they are run by volunteers, usually parents, and there is never enough help. If I hadn't gone back to guides there would not have been anyone else to run it. You need at least 2 adults and we operate as a team of 2. The children are very used to us going out at bedtime on a Friday (we have both been doing it for many years, since before any of them were born). We settle the youngest before we leave and their nana and granddad come over, watch tv bedtime story with the older 3 and pop them to bed. They are all asleep within half an hr of us leaving the house. We aren't walking out on them during Saturday lunchtime. As for the safety concerns over the sheaved knives in a box next to the newborn in a carrycot, really...?!🙄🙄🙄 Abigail couldn't even hold her head up at that point. I was confident that she would not scale the carrycot side, open the box and take the sheaf off the knife. And then what? A murderous rampage? I made the comment tongue in cheek as i knew she was surrounded by knives. She simply wasn't at risk.
Making the grandparents run around after our children - we have an au pair for this very reason. Both our sets of parents live locally. Nige's parents do evening babysitting once a week (his mum was a Guide leader herself - they get it). My parents take Rebecca to a local playgroup once a week for a couple of hours. This is something they love and not anything we have ever asked them to do. We still live locally to our families and our children all have close relationships with their 4 grandparents, their aunts and uncles and their cousins. We see this as a huge positive for them. We certainly don't make anyone run around for us.
Am I filling a gap - not really. I do wonder if I'll ever feel done but there is no real gap per se. I just love having a big family and each new addition has been so incredible that the attraction remains for me. It always feels like one more person to love would only be a positive. I have one brother myself, two happily married parents and a close enough relationship with them all. There really isn't some underlying emotional trauma. I did promise Nige I would fill my time with other things to see if that made me feel 'done' but I think I'm just one of those people with a very strong maternal instinct and so I have continued to feel that another baby would be lovely.
Not enough love or time for my children - on the love front, I'm not even going to waste my time. How ridiculous. Timewise, I am currently on mat leave and am at home with my children most of the time. Three of them are at school/nursery from 8.30 till 3.30 and I do almost every school run. We have a live in au pair, who the children adore, who works 20hrs per week. That 20hrs is with Rebecca mostly and allows me to attend uni twice a week (Abigail comes with me) and to teach a few children's Spanish classes (Abigail stays with Rebecca and the au pair). The Spanish classes will pay for my uni fees and the uni degree will allow me to cut back my paramedic hours and make up the pay difference with better paid shorter hours providing antenatal classes with the NCT. This will ultimately give me more time with the children but is an investment of time and money at the moment.
It is a fine balancing act and I fit in all my uni work when the children are in bed so that I can enjoy my time with the children. I never miss a nativity, a parents evening, a bumped head email...I know which of my children is sad or happy at any time and why. Nige is similarly dedicated to our family and without his support I quite simply wouldn't be able to enjoy life as I do. The children adore their daddy, as do I, and they understand his humour better than people on here seem to. The children know daddy never used to want children. It won't be some terrible shock to them when they grow up and watch the programme. They have already watched the programme (our bits, fast forwarding the rest to avoid the swearing). They know how much their daddy loves them, and me. We actually only applied to be on the programme because at the time it looked likely Abigail would be our last (a pregnancy related reason which subsequently resolved). I wanted there to be a record of our life at this time, and as is shown on tv, that is hard to capture on a camera sometimes!
On that point, you need to watch closely to spot it, but that first family photo is an edited version of something that took 20 minutes in the real world. We didn't walk in and force a photo. We had had cuddles and made introductions and actually Rebecca was screaming to be allowed to play the piano...not to cuddle me. She was reaching to me because she wanted me to make daddy let go of her but it was the piano she was really trying to get to and yes, I wanted a family photo on that first day home.
Addicted to the attention - errr no. Anyone who has been pregnant with their 5th child, especially in close succession, will know that no one gives you much attention. Life just goes on and after 9 months of getting bigger and more tired, you have a baby and then life goes on some more. I don't love pregnancy. Bits of it are cool but lots of it is just uncomfy and restricting. I don't love labour. That final push is pretty special but the lead up isn't much fun. One person on here said I was addicted to the pregnancy and didn't want the babies, another said I see pregnancy and birth as something to get out of the way so I can have another baby. It's more the latter I suppose. I do have very special memories of every baby I've carried. Every time one of the children has a birthday I tell them the story of their birth as a bedtime story. How I was feeling by the time they arrived, how i felt knowing it was 'the day'. How it felt to have that first cuddle. I'm like most mums, I would think. Pregnancy, birth and parenthood have their highs and lows. I'm not expecting or even trying to persuade everyone that life with us is rosy. It really is but I don't need to convince anyone, it is enough that I know.
I don't have time to enjoy my babies - I'm not sure i understand this. What age gap is appropriate to consider that you have enjoyed your baby and can now have another? There is no right age gap. My children are very close to each other at the moment. Each new baby is welcomed with great excitement. We have never seen any sibling rivalry and I have never felt that I am forced to ignore my older children ro welcome a new one. I parent around my children, in the same rooms that they are in, we all get to know our new addition whilst also enjoying the continued growth of the older ones. Nige and I won't be around forever and it matters to us that our children have each other and are given every opportunity to be closely bonded with each other.
Camera awareness - yes, we probably do seem more aware of the cameras than some of the families. We had people in the house filming us. Many families had lots of fixed cameras set up and were probably able to forget about them. We had a bit of that but mostly we were filmed by a man with a huge videocamera and a lady holding a giant boom. They were stood in hallways, doorways, on our landing. They left gates open that we would have kept shut. In fact the scene where someone said Rebecca was swinging on an open stairgate, she is actually slamming it shut (which took her two attempts) because she knows we keep that gate shut once we're all upstairs. We had to move around the film crew and were usually filmed being interviewed rather than just getting on with our day. That's why the children don't feature so much. If we adults seemed aware of the cameras the children definitely were. It's hard to catch the candid moments of children being children when the camera is a foot away from their face and they can't just ignore it.
We shared a very special part of our lives with the nation and I have no regrets. People will have their opinions, as we always knew they would, and people will think they know us from half an hr of camera footage taken over an 8wk period. We know our truth and selfishly we took part for ourselves. If someone could have filmed us for 8wks professionally and then just slipped us a disc without it ever being on national tv, that would have been lovely.
I have resisted commenting until now and I know Nige will tell me i shouldn't have commented even now. He's probably right. We aren't anyone else's family so comparing us to someone else's sad story of marriage breakdown and mental health troubles is irrelevant to us. We have our own story.
I've really enjoyed our adventure with the tv programme and most people have been very kind. I have also had real insight into the uglier side of social media. We are doing our best as parents, just as I'm sure you all are. The programme was pitched as a snapshot of family life in 2019. Of course people will feel more aligned with the families that most resemble their own and we have rather more children than the average, but we are all our own families and no one else's. We all made decisions and comments that others might relate to or disagree with. I expected opinions, but I was naively surprised by the level of authority that some people place on their own opinion.
I'm no writing any of this to start further debate, I won't be replying again and you can obviously all continue to discuss your fears for my mental health and my marriage. I just felt there was so much negativity around us based on a tiny snapshot that I needed to tell our story a little more.