How Our Large Family Came To Be

Why would any one in her right mind have more than two kids? This article gives some answers.

Let me introduce me to you. I am Karen, living in New Hampshire, and the mom of five wonderful kids. Yes, that is more than the U.S. average and yes, they were all planned! Not even that, be we plan on having even more! I want to tell you why we have so many kids and how we can enjoy them so much.

The first thing I want to tell is that I did not always want so many kids. Actually, when I was younger, I didn't want ANY kids at all. No, kids were fun, but not for me, I would leave having them to other people. Then I started my first job, had a coworker whose wife got pregnant and I lived vicariously through that pregnancy with them, finding out on the way that hey, maybe I did want kids after all! Not only that, but I wanted a lot of kids! Talk about changing my mind :-)

I talked to my fiance, who was happy to agree with anything at that point and we decided that we would go for a large family. But first, we both wanted to be out of college, since we thought it would be easier to support children when we were working. Luckily that didn't take too long, and we could start trying. Well, actually we were supposed to wait a little more to start trying, but one month, I forgot to start my pill strip when I needed, so we figured, hey, that's OK, we can just use Natural Family Planning for the next few months, since even if we are not perfect at that, we can handle a pregnancy if needed. Well, the idea of Natural Family Planning was nice, but we found that we wanted kids so much, that within a few days, I did not monitor my fertility signs to avoid pregnancy, but to achieve pregnancy instead! Still, it took us half a year to get pregnant, and while we were working on it, we decided maybe we should get married. We had been living together, with the idea of marrying all along, but a baby seemed the perfect reason to set a wedding date. So we went to our town hall, and selected a date about 6 weeks later. Those were some hectic 6 weeks!

It turned out to be perfect planning. The day before we got married, we did a pregnancy test. Or rather, I started it, but needed to go to the beauty parlor, and that was at the time those tests still took 30 minutes. So I left instructions with my almost-husband Sander to read the test when the timer went off. While I was having this mud mask thing in the beauty parlor, I kept thinking of it, and the first thing I wanted to know when I got home was what the results were. 'Well, you will have to drink something else than wine tomorrow!' Sander told me. We hugged and were happy! The knowledge of having a little person growing inside me, made our wedding day even more special to us, than it would have been otherwise.

This first kid was followed by four more and I have to say, I almost never regret our decision to have so many kids. The joys are unbelievable. It is wonderful to watch them all grow, develop and interact with each other. I never had realized the sibling bond between them would be so strong. The first time we were happy to have more than 1 kid was when we were moving internationally and lived for a while in a city without any people we knew, so the kids were home with us, not meeting anybody else. I think an only kid would have had a harder time with that, but having two kids made sure they both had a playmate with them in this unfamiliar territory. That was even more so when we did the moving internationally thing again when we had four kids. Always somebody to play with, even before they had new friends!

Now we homeschool and I don't have to worry about the socialization issue. They socialize from the time they get up, till the time they go to bed, playing games together, running around outside, biking, fighting, negotiating and plainly having fun together. People sometimes ask me how I can keep adding kids, since it seems impossible to attend to all of them in their vision. I explain to them that having more kids actually makes it easier. Where with one or two kids, the parents have to do almost everything, with more kids, there is always a comforting sibling around to help or to play with. When I had only one kid, I needed to entertain him when he was a baby, since he got bored very fast. It was a lot of work for me. Now when baby number five was small, I didn't have to do any entertaining. I would put her down on a blanket on the floor somewhere and she would have at least a few doting siblings around her, talking to her, and playing with her. And even if the siblings were not playing with her, she would be absorbed in watching them play, there was always so much going on around her! And instead of just the love of her parents, she also was showered with love and attention by four more people. I have heard the saying 'Love doesn't divide, it multiplies' and I totally agree with that! And one on one attention takes more planning, but is not hard to do either. A trip to the grocery store with just one kid is a fun outing for both of us!

Now that baby is older and walking around, she follows her siblings everywhere, trying to do the things they do. She is the only one who still naps and when we hear her wake up, I don't even have to go upstairs, because some of the other kids will exclaim 'The baby is awake!!!' and run upstairs. Then they will turn on the radio and all dance and jump on the bed together for a while before coming downstairs. It is fun to watch them. Of course, there are also the times that a toddler will run up to exclaim that the baby is awake when she isn't yet, waking her up that way, but hey, those things do happen.

I feel blessed by being able to have a large family. Of course, there are the times when the baby has dhiarrea, the toddlers keep grabbing toys from each other and screaming, the oldest is throwing up and the second is having a meltdown, and I have to take a few deep breaths before being able to cope. Especially if a telemarketer calls and tries me to switch long distance services! But generally, they are great kids, and I enjoy taking care of them and taking them places.

I know a large family is not for everybody, but for us it is the perfect choice and I love every single, chaotic moment of it!