Hello beautiful moms and today we are going to discuss a very important matter – increasing your family size,. So it started with you and your sweetheart, you and your sweetheart got married, started living the life, made the big announcement that you were having a baby after surviving the 1st trimester, had the baby, got all the oohs and aahs over your first born, but now there is a ripple in your perfect world. Humans cannot be satisfied! LOL! Every time you say you are sick or under the weather, people look at your waistline to see if any changes. Some are blunt enough to say with a smirk when you feel unwell, “ah, don’t worry it is Baby No 2 on the way”. Sometimes your parents or in-laws call you for a visit, and in that visit, chip it in during prayers that another grandchild is expected sooner rather than later.
So despite how annoyed you may be with their comments, let us really examine this matter. So let me start with the couple that just got married. Some couples have seen the pleasant “havoc” a baby can cause in a couple’s life when born, and so they want to take their time before they start having kids. They want to explore and get to know each other better, to be able to focus on themselves first before having any additions to the family. This is not wrong at all, and it is even encouraged, if you both agree. You can take a year just to love up on each other, and then you can takeoff on having babies. The one caution I may want to chip in with all humility is this – for the female, do remember that people’s biological clocks differ as well as experiences. Anything more than a year may be tricky especially as some women hit menopause earlier than some, and also depending on what time you got married. Different strokes for different folks, even though I do not rule out the play of the divine or medical intervention.
As for those who have had a baby already and people are asking you what is the delay for the 2nd, or examining your eating pattern for increased appetite or other signs as the self-appointed “Pregnancy James Bond” they are, this is my suggestion: do not fall for it. Do it for you and your spouse and not for anyone else. Pace yourselves. You will both know when you are ready to take the second plunge or the third plunge and then please go right ahead. Do not do it for your family or friends because raising that child falls within your jurisdiction.
I know after I had my first born that I was shaken a bit by the birth experience, but I knew I wanted more kids. So I continued. Some women may want more kids but perhaps they have a challenge they are dealing with in either conceiving, or a personal health challenge, or a family issue. So my general advice from experience with regards to increasing family size is this: everybody face your lane. If the person opens up to you and lets you know what their issue may be, consider it a privilege, keep their confidence and support them whatever way you can. Otherwise zip it. Furthermore, be careful what comments you pass to someone because they do not have kids yet – you will never know until you know, and by then you will be feeling so inconsiderate.
This last bit of advice I will chip in for free as it happened to me and my sister in law also. I was somewhere and a lady who I had not seen in a year walked up to me and was like your stomach is big, you have to watch it, you cannot let yourself go that easily and become fat bla bla bla. Dear reader, I was pregnant at the time for my 2nd child. I told myself I was not going to bother explaining or defending myself. All she would get would be a text saying I had delivered. Be careful how you comment on people’s waist line, it may just be someone having the blessing of a pregnancy, who does not need your permission to do so or any judgmental comments.
The last category are people who think they have finished having kids, they are on a family planning arrangement and voila, they become ill, think it is stress only to find out that they are 3 months pregnant. They are confused as to how they can be pregnant with an IUD still in operation. My sister, for this category, all I can say is, we must submit to God’s will. Children still remain a gift from God. It may be a shock as your older kids are all grown up and you cannot imagine yourself handling diapers and late nights and all that stuff again. Worry not, for as we say in Nigeria, las las everything go dey alright. All will be well. That child will grow up with a large amount of support and love from siblings and they mature faster because they are surrounded by older folks (this has a flip side you need to watch out for though).
Increase your family at your own pace. You do not owe the world anything. If you want to have your kids back to back so you rest once and for all, good for you. If you want to space your kids well to give you time to cope and deal, good for you too. Just make sure that you enjoy your journey.
picture credits: the internet
