I'm curious, because my husband and I were talking about this the other day. We consider our first son high needs, and even as an almost 4 year old, he is still very demanding and wants constant interaction. My younger son is laid back and goes with the flow. When DH and I talk about having a third, we wonder had our first son had a different personality if that would have changed how many children we want. We love our son of course, but he can be a handful. I would like to hear from others who have a high needs child and how that impacted how many children you decided to have.
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Like you, our first DS is highe needs (energy, emotional, attention-needing). Our second DS is much more laid back and self-entertains, self-soothes, and is pretty independent. Before having kids, I thought I wanted 4! After our first, we scaled that back to 2, MAYBE 3. We're currently pregnant with our third and I'm hoping it won't be so bad since DS 1 will be older (and hopefully more mature).
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We have the exact same birth order and high needs vs laid back set up as you. We've had trouble getting our third take home baby, which helps take the fear of another high needs kid away (at least for now. We're currently working on a healthy baby that sticks and would worry about non life threatening and non quality of life issues after this first hurdle)
That being said, in moments of stress with my
4 year old I've had the dark thoughts about being able to really handle another high needs infant/toddler. Hasn't impacted our family plans though. -
Finances is our main reason for not wanting more than 2 children, but having an extremely strong-willed, high attention needs child first definitely influenced us to wait 3 years before TTC again. Even though LO1 is so crazy, she's an absolutely gem of a person, and I don't think she would influence my plans about the size of our family (that said, she was a REALLY easy newborn, and sometimes I think that time can be more traumatic than a difficult toddler).
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I think part of this is determined by birth order. Outside of actual physical or mental health issues, I think subsequent children are less likely to be "high needs" because their parents simply can't cater to them every minute when there is another child in the picture, so they learn to be more independent.
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Our situation is different, but I want to chime in and hear others' experiences. We have 1 LO who just turned 3. He had a really rough first year health wise (long NICU stay, 3 surgeries) and has needed lots of therapy and doctor's appointments. Personality wise he is laid back and easy, but he's had high needs due to his health. We had always planned on 2 children, and relatively close together. It took me until he was almost 2 to realize I really did want to try for another even though I was scared. It took another six months before I was ready to actually take out my IUD and start trying. I guess I had to get to the point where my desire for another LO outweighed my fear of all that could go wrong. We've been trying since August and no luck.
I guess my point is, if we do get to have another, all that will be affected is the spacing of our children, not the number of children.
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Our first has been a very challenging preschooler and it does impact me thinking about a third along with a lot of other factors. Our second seems to be more laid back (he's only 13 months now), but that could change and I know I can't go through the tough 3 and 4 year old years two more times while dealing with additional kids.
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@Truth Bombs: I wonder this all the time! My second is so much more mellow and I wonder how much is his personality and how much is me splitting my attention between him and his older sister.
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@Truth Bombs: I agree with this. My oldest has always craved our constant attention, but he got it exclusively until 21 months, so I think that definitely played a part! My youngest never had the constant undivided attention that my first-born had and he's very independent (although in my case, more of a handful because he's independent and strong-willed, whereas I can count on my oldest to listen to me and stay by my side when we're out somewhere).
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@Truth Bombs: I think there's definitely something to that. My first child is still more spirited but we all had to cope when our second came along, and we were surprised how well she did.
Our gap between #1 and #2 is about 9 months bigger than our gap between #2 and #3 if all goes well with this pregnancy.
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@Truth Bombs: I agree that some of the neediness especially for first burns is driven by the parents.
LO goes to daycare and shares his teacher's attention with at least 5 other babies every day. He just doesn't have to at home and knows it. If we have another LO's world would seriously be rocked. Even still I don't think he's high needs.
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I think my son's behavior the first two years absolutely impacted our decision to not have any more children. Everything with this kid is a process and I just don't have the ability to deal with more. I think a lot of it too is my age, as an older mom, I just don't have the energy that I did when I was say, 25. 10 years makes a difference, it really does.
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@looch: I feel similar! Our DD (almost 2) is rather spirited & I'm older (43) and doing a lot of the parenting solo due to DH's demanding schedule. I just don't have time to drag out the spacing between children given my age, so I'm leaning towards being done with one, though we'd hoped for 2 kids.
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DW and I had this discussion the other day because our son has a significant speech delay and between the SLP, now OT and PT apppintments, hearing tests, etc it makes me afraid of having a second with a delay or disability because it is totally exhausting...not being able to see if he will get better in time is so hard.
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Not quite the same, but we have a high medical needs second kid. We have said that if he had been first, we would probably wouldn't have had a second.
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I guess it depends what you consider high needs. Each of my kids has some area where they are high needs but I know it gets easier as they are older so it hasn't really changed much. We have 3 and our youngest is a terrible sleeper and a miserable baby when he doesn't sleep. I liked the idea of 4 but as my kids are progressively worse sleepers and all have mspi which affects my diet for at least a year, I might just say we are done. But I was done at this point with my second too, so who knows!
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@Truth Bombs: My second is the needy one! My first was a harder baby until she was 1 (it took us a very long time to discover she had MSPI, so there was a lot of screaming and no sleeping and then a feeding aversion and lots of tummy issues). But after we got her diet sorted finally she's always been a laid back, independent kiddo.
My second...not so much. She's wild! And attention seeking. And super energetic. And extremely tantrummy. I have a lot of friends who have the harder second child--my sister had a nightmare with her 2nd, to the point where her husband got a vasectomy when he was only 3 months old, haha. I guess one trade off is that LO2 was a better sleeper in her 1st year.
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@skipra: ugh. both of mine had MSPI too. It's the worst! Even after you figure it out, the deprivation and food planning if you are nursing. Good for you for doing it 3 times!
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My second is the needier one. Lord. She's such a sassy little thing. Ds was so chill. DD likes to scream the place down from time to time!
I think we will still go for 3 as planned though!
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Our first is definitely high needs. He has sensory issues and lots of tantrums because of it. I won't say it hasn't deterrred me from wanting more than the two we have, but we are currently TTC #3 so I guess it isn't too bad
DD was a terrible sleeper but it overall an easier child which also helps. The spacing between our first two is 26 mos and, if we end up pregnant with a third, they will be at least 3y4m apart. The larger spacing definitely has to do with my high needs first born.
DD was a terrible sleeper but it overall an easier child which also helps. The spacing between our first two is 26 mos and, if we end up pregnant with a third, they will be at least 3y4m apart. The larger spacing definitely has to do with my high needs first born.
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