Anonymous said... You have six kids, are you done or will you have more? March 10, 2011 2:36 PM
Oh, the infamous MORE KID question. I wish Anonymous would've revealed themselves. Sad.
This is a tough question for me and I've been doing a lot of soul searching about this one lately. I'm going try to be as open as I can and as honest as I can in answering. This may be a long one....
I was one of those girls that started making lists of names for my future children when I was about 10 years old. I always knew I wanted a lot of children. In my family there were 5 kids. The boys were all born fairly close together and then many years later (about 10 to be exact) there is me...the caboose...the last child...the only girl...the baby. By the time I reached 6th grade I was all alone, my siblings had all grown up and moved away and I spent the next years as an only child. I was really lonely. I didn't want that for my future family. I wanted a house full of children, all close together.
First, a little history.
When Jeremiah and I got married we discussed the subject of children and we both decided we wanted "as many as the Lord would give us and as many as we could afford to take care of." At some point we decided that the magic number for us would be 6 to 8 children. I'm not sure how we set that number but it seemed right at the time.
In November of 1999 we had our first child, a girl-Ashlynne, and then nearly 18 months later had our 2nd child, a boy-Brinton. Our son was born with a congenital birth defect which required him to be in and out of the hospital, with several surgeries. During the time I was pregnant with number 3 our son had a major surgery, and subsequent emergency surgery to clear blood clots which had formed and could've been fatal. He spent the next 2 weeks in the PICU. As you can imagine I was emotionally drained, exhausted from the pregnancy, and completely overwhelmed. I had our 3 child, a girl-Elise, when our son was 19 months old. By the time I was 21, I had 3 children! At this point, I had a feeling I was DONE with three, even though something inside said I really wasn't.
When Elise, was nearing 2 years old we felt super strongly that it was time again to have another child. We became pregnant immediately but after 12 weeks the pregnancy ended. Our hearts were broken and we wondered if maybe we weren't ready for another baby yet. Even though we had felt so strongly about it we began second guessing ourselves. We decided to let nature take its course and just let whatever was going to happen, happen. 3 months later we were pregnant again and 2 months before Elise's 3rd birthday we gave birth to our 4th child, a girl-Julianna, who was our first home birth. We were happy, our family was happy, we felt done in the sense that it couldn't get any better.
Then 2 and a half years after that we were completely surprised and blessed with our 5th child, Liam, who was also born at home.
2 and a half years after that we were blessed with our 6th child, Aidan-born at home, who is now 6 months old.
So that should bring you up to speed.....now back to the question, "You have six kids, are you done or will you have more?"
Before having Aidan the answer would've been, we'll probably have more. Immediately after having Aidan the answer was a definite we're done! (To which Jeremiah would say, "Stop saying we're done, I don't think we are)
When we had Aidan it was a highly stressful time. The day after he was born Jeremiah had to leave on a mandatory business trip, leaving me alone with a brand new baby and 5 older kids. It was unavoidable, it was horrible. To add to the stress we moved 2 hours away when Aidan was 6 days old. Due to the fact that Jeremiah was gone in Louisiana, when Aidan was only 3 days old I was driving back and forth between our old home and our new home making moving arrangements and delivering odds and ends. The next 3 months was pure hell. Jeremiah was gone more than half of the time on business, only returning on weekends. I was unpacking a new home, a new mom of 6, driving back and forth to Olathe once a week. Managing the kids schedules... From the second I had Aidan I never stopped! Add to that, Aidan was the fussiest baby I'd ever had, my milk was not coming in properly, I was going nuts....I was DONE having kids. Six had officially put me over my limit. I just didn't think I could ever handle one more child, I barely knew how I was handling the ones I already had.
So here we are now. 6 months later. Am I done?
For a season.
Jeremiah and I have been really talking about this lately, pondering what we should do. Are we done? Do we want to close that door and just raise the 6 beautiful children we've been blessed with? I think that for right now it's still to soon to tell. FOR. RIGHT. NOW. I feel done. However, I'm not opposed to having more. I think that there may be a couple more little ones for us, BUT now is not the time. Next year probably isn't right either. The year after that?! I don't know. But maybe we'll revisit the discussion when Aidan is 3, Liam is in Kindergarten and I'm ready to breathe again....or not....by then I'll have teenagers and maybe I won't want to do the newborn thing again. I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm going to leave this in the Lord's hands. When and if it's time again He'll let me know. Maybe that sounds like such an easy, simple, even naive answer BUT I fully believe in personal revelation and I know that if it's time to have another baby I will know....or he'll surprise us.
