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We have the same dilemma so I'm interested in responses. I'm only on my second pregnancy but it's something I think about often. Paying for childcare for three and juggling different schools and activities seems a little overwhelming to me.

We are expecting #3 and both WOH, though I am only part time. We have a nanny and that;'s the only way it would really work for us, given the hours I work and the fact that my older two are in preschool part time. No family nearby us to help out so we really rely on our nanny to help with some of the household stuff (kid meals, laundry, tidying up).

Oh man, this is going to be a brain dump because this is literally me and DH's life right now and its all I think about. We have been like planning and budgeting like crazy this year because of it!

We are in a similar situation in that we do not feel complete with 2. My children are currently 3 and 16 months old. We weren't sure if we were done when I was pregnant with DS2, but we wanted to leave the option open, so some of the choices we made with the first 2 left the option of a third on the table. Then decided when DS2 turned 1 that we were for sure not done yet.

We're slowly making plans and adjustments to make this work in the future, as well as spreading out long term costs, as the cost to add another kid will be astronomical (there's literally no childcare center in our town that does infant care outside of an in-home care situation). We have zero family in the area, and after a few bad experiences, we do not have a regular babysitter that we use. Its just us and some close friends who come over and babysit the kids every few months after they are asleep for the night so DH and I can have an anniversary dinner or something.

Currently, I work part-time as an attorney, my husband runs a private law practice from his home office, and he's also a full-time professor. One big change we are making is that he will be leaving his teaching position at the end of this year to focus on his private practice, which has grown to the point where the teaching position is starting to hinder the practice. This is risky from a financial standpoint in that we're losing a steady paycheck, but it will free him from a 150-mile roundtrip commute, which makes him completely inaccessible on days he teaches and is a huge time suck. Having him at home every day will give us some back-up with regards to sick days with the kids. And it will likely be a more lucrative move for our family in the long run.

We also sucked it up and bought our forever house this summer quite unexpectedly while he had the steady paycheck for mortgage underwriting reasons (it would be harder to get the loan we wanted at the rates we wanted with him being solely business income). And we would need an extra bedroom with a 3rd child anyway. We bought our minivan back when I was pregnant with DS2 in case we did want a 3rd child, so we are squared away on that. Our second car is a commuter hybrid vehicle. Both cars are very low maintenance and should last us 10 more years easily.

I will probably need to move to full time or 3/4 time at my job, which I am grateful to have the option for. I work for the government, so I would say 75% of the year, I have very regular hours. But the 25% of the time where its crazy, its crazy. Nights, weekends, the works. This is why having DH at home will be important. Even if we kept me at 50% time, I would not be able to go lower than that in order to keep our health insurance.

Timing-wise, the earliest we would likely have a 3rd child is when DS1 is 5 and DS2 is 3 (just under 2 years from now). At that point, DS1 will move to private school down the street from our house for kindergarten. Not free, but less than daycare, walkably close, and we love the school (hence we bought our house here). DS2 will be in preschool either at his current daycare, which we love, or we will move him to the preschool affiliated with DS1's private school (which unfortunately is not at the same campus, boo). While I love our current school, I would consider moving DS2 to the new preschool because it is closer to our house, its cheaper, with longer hours, AND it includes lunch and snacks, whereas at our current daycare, we have to pack lunches. And he would be prescreened for kinder there and we could avoid all the evaluation and application process for the private school.

As I said before, our town literally has no legit childcare center that has infant daycare. So we have 2 options. One, the 3rd child will either require a nanny, in which case we will have her care for the older two after school and do some meal prep and clean up kids toys and do kids laundry. This would be super expensive, but we would have coverage for pick up and drop offs, dinner would be started, and we would have coverage on sick days. The second option would be to find a different daycare center near my work 20 miles away from home just for the baby while putting DS1 in aftercare at school and keeping DS2 in full-time care. The latter would be a cheaper solution month over month, BUT it would also be very costly in terms of sick time, since DH would have to stop billing hours to care for the kids on those days. We will have to decide on the care situation as we get closer to having an actual baby.

I took very long leaves with my boys but I will not be able to do that with the third child because we will need my health coverage (we used DH's work health coverage while I was on leave the previous times, which we wont have the option of anymore). So I have basically taken little if any time off aside from sick days with kids since I returned from maternity leave with DS2. And even then I try to make up the time by going in on my off-days.

My job will provide 8 weeks of disability at 50% salary, and then I can break my accrued leave up however I want (i.e. I can take it at 100% or I can take a leave that is twice as long at 50%, etc). In order to maximize that, I will probably ramp up to 75% or full-time this next calendar year so that by the time I have baby 3, that disability/leave check will be as large as possible and I will accrue more leave. My goal right now is to accrue enough leave credits between now and then to be able to take 6 months leave (in concert with my disability) at 50% salary, but at the very least 4 months off. Basically, I don't want to return to work until my baby is sleeping through the night.

Anyways, sorry for the novel, but that is what we're dealing with right now. My goal between now and having baby 3 is finding a legit babysitter I trust so that I can have some help on the weekends or on nights I have to work late so that we can have some extra hands, regardless if we go the nanny route or not. My biggest hope is just that DS1 will be far more independent at that age. He is so capable already at 3 years old and I feel more confident about adding a 3rd imagining DS2 being that capable and verbal before we add another screaming human to the mix.

TRAVELING with 3 is another story....:) I'm excited to hear what other people are doing!

We hope to have 3 but the only main way is having family childcare to an extent since LO1 and waiting for LO3 until LO1 is in full time kinder.

DH and I both WOH, we have a 14 yr old (my step daughter) and 2 LO's, 3 and 8 months. If we have another we have to wait until DS is almost 5 so that he will be in full-time kindergarten. We can't afford 3 in daycare. (we do use an in-home, near home, I typically do drop off and pick up but DH can pick up if needed).

DH gets home earlier, so he can be home when the bus comes. We also have MIL who lives next door, although she doesn't help out often, we could use her in a pinch. Between DH and I we should have enough PTO to cover sick kids and dr. visits. DSD helps a ton with house cleaning (dishes/sweeps) so the house doesn't get too crazy, and she can babysit on occasion. The hardest is actually all her sports/activities and taking 2 LO's with to watch.

We already have an SUV with 3rd row. We have to finish the basement so DSD can move to a downstairs bedroom, and 2 of the 3 LO's would have to share a room upstairs. Since we have 1 boy and 1 girl we wouldn't need to buy much stuff/clothes.

Not making any final decisions on the 3rd LO till next year, I need to decide if I can handle 3 since a lot of the care does fall on me (food, bathtime, clothes shopping), but I don't feel done!

We are expecting #3 and I am PT for now. I think to make both ft WOH you either have to be able to afford ft daycare or have help or both. We have a few days of help per month but otherwise are on our own. We have to have it to the point where if MIL decides she's not doing it anymore we will just sub a babysitter, or don't rely on my income. Dh works a schedule that changes all the time and can be a lot of hours. I miss ft work but no matter what you decide this time is temporary.

I think the biggest thing for us was to remember that with bay #3 (and true for most babies) the first year is kinda just crazy chaotic. You just figure out how to get by. We didn't do any big hobbies that commit time except for selling our house and moving. We were both home on weekends to do chores and prep for the week. Weeknights from getting off at 5 until bedtime is done at 8:30 takes both of us 100% devoted to the kids. Dinners were quick and simple. We pretty much HAD to tag team. So one of us had two kids and the other had one. Just now that the baby is a year old car she really reliably play with the big kids and make it easier for one of us to watch all 3.

DH works full time, I work 2.75 days / twenty hours per week (plus one hour of commuting each day) and we're expecting our third babe in April (kids are 5 and 2.5).

We're fortunate that I'm entitled to twelve months of parental leave (18 weeks paid) but at this point in time I'm not planning on returning to work. The reality is that we have no family support where we live and the financial benefits just aren't great enough to make up for the extra stress that come from me working outside the home. Our school also has twelve weeks of holidays per year that we would need to arrange care for (on top of the after school care).

I would consider working closer to town to eliminate the commute and I would possibly look at registering for short term agency work but at this stage I'm ok with not working.

@Becky: The extracurriculars are TOUGH. Our situation is a bit different since we have a teenager and 2 under 3 which makes it even harder, but there is so much running (we are 20 min. from school), all-day weekend tournaments, summer practices during the work day (I feel like they don't cater to working parents AT ALL), games 3 nights a week...

We have had to rely on other parent's to help out at times, give our daughter rides to/from games and practices. I guess w/o family help you really need to 'build a village' with your LO's classsmates/parents.

@Becky: What did you have in mind for extra curricular activities?

Take a look at what's currently offered at the elementary school where your child would attend. At my son's school, they offer them right after dismissal so the kids don't need to be transported anywhere, they can do the activity right after school. So, we do one of those, as opposed to going to, say, an offsite dance studio.

@looch: that's a good point--I don't think there's really much offered right after school. I usually see the kids playing soccer on the rare occasion I'm driving by around 5pm. When they get to HS our district also doesn't have a late bus, and it's not in walking distance. I have no idea what we would do then if I'm working full time because I'm assuming they'll want to do sports, yearbook, student council, or whatever.

Right now we only do gymnastics which is offered at daycare. Dreading the driving around days ahead!