We’d had a chatty conversation, and then it happened. Her words dripped into the comfortable silence, as we both fingered our coffee mugs.
“So….after this kid, are you guys going to be done?”
I pondered her question, stared pretty intently at my biscotti, and took a sip of my coffee. Am I done yet? I could play it like I don’t know what she’s talking about….but I do. C’mon, we’re women. It’s our own version of shop talk. I stammer out a reply about how we’re not sure and that because my kids are so close to each other (we’ll have four kids under 6 in our home), we are going to take a break for a bit.
My husband raised his eyebrows when he heard the topic for this post. “People actually ask you that?” he asked with an incredulous expression. Not a frequent topic of conversation among his friends, I guess. But me? I’ve answered this question from upwards of 15 women since we announced we were adding another child to our family via adoption. And I’ve never managed to come up with a concise response.
People never asked us those questions when we announced our third child (that ended up in a miscarriage) or the following child who is sucking her thumb peacefully downstairs right now. But now that we’re adding a fourth living and breathing child, it’s open range. Both my husband and I grew up in families with four kids and grew up thinking four was normal. But I’m starting to think differently, based on my friends’ responses. Is four now the new number that defines the cliffs of insanity?
Four is a little higher than the 1.87 children born per woman average currently here in the States, true. But I know many families with 5+ children, even some completely normal, highly functioning families with 13 kids.
I’ve always been a fairly open book about our family’s unique infrastructure. We chose to adopt first and then to have a few birth kids, and now we’re adopting again. I get it. That’s not the way the story usually goes, and we get a lot of attention as a family from curious onlookers. The one great thing about the unique way that we formed our family is that we don’t get asked the “You do know how that happens, don’t you?” question. Because we would have to answer “Yes. Sex and a lot of paperwork.”
For now, let it be known. We’re open to more, but we want to see how four works for us. Will I climb those cliffs of insanity with the ease of a limber and lithe strength trainer? And then be able to best a swordsman, defeat a giant, and go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line? That remains to be seen.
What about you? Are you done yet? How many is too many, and how many is just right?
