Are We Done Having Kids?

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“So are you going to have another one?”

I knew that question would come at some point, but I didn’t realize how many people would ask me if we were having more kids while I was still pregnant.

The question doesn’t bother me as it might some people. I feel like sharing our lives online like I do with this blog and on Instagram, I am more used to getting personal questions and feel comfortable answering them.

Which is one of the reasons I am writing this post.

I do feel like there are quite a few people who don’t know how to answer the “more kids” question when they get it. And that can be for quite a number of reasons.

Maybe you struggled with infertility and have no idea if you are going to even be able to have another child.

Maybe you don’t want any more kids but don’t know how other people will react to that sentiment.

For us – we just don’t know if we are going to have any more kids. And that is for a number of reasons.

We aren’t on the same page

One of the reasons we don’t have an answer to the “more kids” question is because my husband and I aren’t on the same page.

I grew up with 2 sisters and we adopted two brothers when I went to college. All of my siblings are close and they all live in town. We get together every couple of weeks for family dinners and we have so much fun together with all of our growing families. So I would love if my kids could have the same experience with a big family.

My husband just had one sibling, so to him, our family of 4 seems more complete. But he isn’t opposed to having more kids – he just is not ready to commit to that while we still have a baby in newborn diapers.

Can we have a healthy pregnancy?

Another reason why we aren’t sure if we will have another baby is due to our genetics.

Eric and I are both carriers for a rare type of genetic disorder that has only been observed in 15 cases around the world. So doctors don’t know much about what conditions the disorder causes, but they know that if both of us pass on that bad gene to a baby, it is fatal.

We learned this from our first pregnancy, our daughter Elizabeth, who we lost at 21 weeks. I shared Elizabeth’s entire story here.

We have a 1 in 4 chance in passing those awful genes down to our kids. Which is more than a little scary.

We had our other two kids with no genetic issues and that certainly took some big leaps of faith when we started trying to get pregnant with both of them.

So with the 1 out of 4 odds, it seems like we are playing Russsian Roulette at this point. We are so thankful that we have been able to have two healthy kids, and the thought of having to experience another loss is really hard to overcome.

Is Adoption in Our Future?

Even before we found out about the genetics issues we carry, I have felt pulled to the idea of adoption. My husband doesn’t feel that same pull at this time. He isn’t opposed, and doesn’t flat say no – but he is much more of a pragmatic thinker, so he can’t help but analyze all the good and bad possibilities.

My high school Young Life leaders adopted a son through the foster care system and it was a process that I watched play out mostly through social media. I saw pictures of them announcing that they were fostering a newborn boy, and more photos of their older daughters playing with this little baby. I saw posts that shared their intent to adopt this boy after several months of him living in their home. They shared updates of the difficult legal process that took 2 years of their time, never with a guarantee that they would get to keep the boy who had become their son.

And then I saw their joyous post on the day that their son was legally made a part of their family. It was such a picture of God’s love for us. That God brings us into his amazing family to love us as His own. Adoption is just so wonderful.

I told myself that of course, my old YoungLife leaders, who are incredible people would be able to step into adoption. They probably had no fears about it at all and just jumped in ready to love.

But I did get to have a conversation with those leaders about their decision to adopt and what made them feel ready to move forward with fostering.

And the wife said that she had originally brought up the idea of fostering and her husband had been a little apprehensive about it. So they decided that their prayer would be that God would put them on the same page, whichever way that would go.

That stuck with me and it has been the prayer I have been praying for our family. That Eric and I would be on the same page about having more kids and how – whichever way that goes.

So when people ask the big question “Are you going to have more kids?” – I usually respond by saying “We aren’t sure. We need to have a few more conversations with God before we know.”

What I do know is that the kids that we do have are each wonderful blessings who are teaching us more than we ever imagined. All three of them. And being a parent is better than I ever imagined it would be.