I woke up the other morning, after I had had a full night’s sleep {read, the Z man slept through and didn’t require me to breast feed him during the night} and thought…hmmm, these be tricky times. When my eldest started sleeping through was when I fell pregnant with my second. My eldest and my second are 17 months apart. If I fell pregnant now, the Z man and my fourth would be 17 months apart. So it brings me to the question; how do you know that you’re done having children?

Now adding a fourth to the mix now just might send me to the looney bin. I mean, I have had three children in three and a half years and at present I am single parenting for the majority of the time whilst my husband has been working interstate. I actually just looked at the calendar and can’t believe that he has been working interstate for the past eight weeks.

In this set up, he works Tuesday-Saturday in our Canberra based business and upon returning to Sydney on Saturday night he works Sunday and Monday in our Sydney based business – with every second Sunday-Monday off. So we see Daddy at home 2 days out of every fortnight. It’s not ideal, but we make it work.

I was talking to another friend who has had three small children in a short amount of time and we were both commenting on the fact that we didn’t believe that our families were complete. And I raised the question with her ‘How do you know that you’re done having children?’ Some might think that it is crazy or maybe even greedy that we are contemplating a fourth baby. But it just feels like another person is meant for our family.

I love these little boys with all of my heart. And yet, I am amazed at the birth of another how much love my heart is capable of giving to them and how much I have felt like our family needed that member. I know that I would have enough LOVE for another little person to come into our lives, but I also am aware of the fact that it takes a lot of money to raise a child these days and I don’t want my babies to miss out on anything because of the size of our family.

It seems like it is a constant see-saw in my mind, as to whether or not a fourth would be a good idea. Can we afford a fourth? Would I be able to handle a fourth child? Do I think our tribe is complete? Would a fourth complete our tribe or would I always feel like I could have had one more baby? I read somewhere that we all have one less child then we would like to have had.

I have always liked the thought of having a big family. Both my parents are one of five children – although in today’s world, it seems like three is the new five.

Now discussing to have or not to have another baby with the internet is not a new concept. I mean, if you are also considering having another child, you might like to check out these bloggers:

• Claire from Life on Wallace, was a Mum of three little boys and then she fell pregnant with twins – two beautiful baby girls!
• Erin from The Mums Group is also a Mum of three little boys and then fell pregnant with baby Olivia and I love seeing her life with four kids on Instagram.
• Beth from BabyMac had two older girls and then gave herself the shortest window to fall pregnant with a third and precious Maggie was born.
• And Michaela over at Not Another Slippery Dip shares her experience of falling pregnant with her fourth after a miscarriage.

Actually, in putting that all down, it is interesting to see that they have all had girls. If I were to fall pregnant again, it would be to create another member for our tribe and not to just ‘try for a girl’. It’s interesting just how many people ask me if I am going to try for a girl.

So tell me; how do you know that you’re done having children? How many children have you had? What age gaps did you have between your children?