Are We Crazy? Top Five Reasons to Have Children Close Together
We are choosing to have our children 17 months apart. Some people might think we are crazy. Some days (particularly when my back hurts from being pregnant and lugging a 28-pound toddler up and down the stairs many times a day), I think we might be crazy. But, I am eight months pregnant with our second girl, and I still stand by our reasons for choosing to have our children close together. (And I do realize how blessed we are to have the privilege to make this choice, when many others do not.)
Top Five Reasons We are Having Our Children Close Together:
- I am already ready to be out of the baby phase. I want to put the bottles, the crib, the swing, the [insert your favorite space-hogging baby things here] away and not get them back out in two, three, four years. I want to do this baby thing for several years straight and then move on.
- I am ready to be able to focus on myself again. You might read that and think, “My goodness, isn’t she self-centered?” Well, maybe I am, but I am a Millennial, and we were raised to think that we are all special, shiny unicorns who deserve participation trophies. So, I am used to spending time pursuing my own career path, my own health aspirations, my visions and dreams. I know I will never go back to where I was before children, but I am ready to have my body and some time to myself again.
- I don’t want to waste time. The longer we stretch out the space between our children, the older we will be as parents (we started on the later side), and the more of their lives we chance missing out on as we all age. I want us all to have as much time as we possibly can to live and love together.
- I want them to be close friends. So many people have told us that their teenage or adult children are close in age and close friends. Only once in tens of conversations have I had someone tell me that their close-in-age kids are not emotionally close. The thought of the two of them being good, if not best friends – bonding, sharing, and having each other’s backs – is so appealing to me.
- I want to get back to a place where I can enjoy my husband again. I know, I know… You’re thinking “How naïve she is! Those kids will never let you enjoy yourselves again!” But, I do believe that because we truly had great fun together before kids, we will get to a place again where we can go out and do things we like – with or without kids in tow – and find the fun in life again. We love trying out new restaurants, catching a concert or show, checking out local festivals, and the like, and once we no longer have infants, I know we will be able to enjoy getting out and about again.
