Question 9 - Do you and your man want a similarly sized family?

Abby: Babies can be tough on marriages. Second, third, and further babies are even harder. The last thing you want is to get into a marriage where you and your man don’t have the same concept of what makes a family. If he wants a large family, but you think you can only handle one, you need to work through it before he starts putting pressure on you to take on more than you can handle. Or he might not want any and you're hearing tick, tick. Because when it comes to kids, once you have them, there’s no changing your mind!

Not only do you need to agree on how large of a family you want, you also need to agree on what you will do if you can’t get pregnant. Conversely, what will you do if you have an accident or two?

My man and I planned out when we thought we’d be ready to start a family. We were also in agreement that if we didn’t have kids, that would be ok. We had no plans to undergo IVF should that situation arise. We were surprised at how quickly we got pregnant and how much we enjoyed our son. We agreed that it would be fun to have another one. Even more importantly, we agree that if the number of kids becomes too cumbersome, we’ll stop. People tell us we’re crazy everyday for being so open about it. But being on the same page as a couple has eliminated the frustration when someone in the relationship is hearing the clock tick.

Francesca: I was never a person who gravitated toward babies or kids even when I was a kid. I never walked up to babies and thought or said, “oh how cute!” I actually never paid any mind to them at all. My vision of life was bartending in Manhattan and living a free single life and I’m sure we all have visions. Needless to say, you fall in love or lust or whatever you want to call it and things change your mind and take over.

My man accused me of not wanting kids before we had any because I was “afraid of the work.” When he said that to me, I was young and dumb and thought I would prove him wrong. But you know what, it IS a lot of work. There are good moments but there are also a lot of not so good moments and a lot of stress. And that’s not to say that I won’t be thankful I had all of my kids later on in life and there are so many facets to parenting you won’t even know if you did a good job until you are in your grave. HEED MY WORDS: THINK LONG AND HARD ABOUT THE SIZE OF THE FAMILY YOU WANT.

It was very important to my man to have a son “to carry on his name.” So what do you think happened? I had 2 girls before I had my son. In addition, one of the reasons I even had my first daughter was because I thought that would make my man want me more and stay with me. Don’t have kids because you want just a boy or just a girl because most likely you will get the opposite sex of what you wanted and you’ll keep trying until you get the sex of the child you want and is that really a reason to have children?

I am not maternal and I knew it, but I went against this because my husband wanted to “fill our house up with kids.” Sure, because I was going to be there to do most of the work in addition to working full time so we could live a certain lifestyle. Have kids not for the idea alone of having them but have them because you truly want to take care of another human being, teach them things, watch them grow and you have a tremendous amount of patience. Having kids is NO JOKE. It’s hard work and oftentimes goes unappreciated and unrecognized. There’s no paycheck either for it.

Before you start a family know who’s going to get up at night, who is going to drop off and pick up from childcare of who is going to watch the baby when you work, who is going to be the disciplinarian and what disciplinary techniques are you going to use. There are so many questions do your homework before you take the step of bringing in children to a world that is already challenged in so many ways.