Eight years and three kids into our marriage, we’re pretty good at this natural family planning thing. We’re practically the poster children for NFP success. For we’ve gotten exactly what we planned for so far, our kids spaced "about three years apart:" Oscar, who arrived just after I finished my graduate school coursework, twenty months after our wedding; Milo, who arrived when Oscar was three months past his third birthday; Mary Jane, who arrived when Milo was three months shy of his third birthday. (In fact, she arrived the day before Oscar turned six, so we’ve only had a cumulative spacing error of about twelve hours.)
And we’re comfortable with it too. Without going into any intimate details, let me just say that we’re also apparently (so far) the poster children for not having much disagreement or trouble with it at all, not with the calculation and figuring out how the timing should go, not with the sacrifices and cooperation that go along with the constraints we accept. It’s … easy for us. I know it’s not easy for everyone, so I try hard to be appropriately grateful, but really, for us it’s been easy.
Too easy?
Mary Jane is only five months old, and I’m strongly committed to totally breastfeeding her for a while, so I’m positive that avoiding another conception now is right and reasonable. That has apparently given me the safe place from which to start wondering about, and challenging, one of the assumptions I brought into my marriage: the sacred Three Year Spacing.
Already before we started having kids, I had (and still have) a certain belief-set. I would carry my baby constantly in-arms or in a sling, not stick him in a seat or playpen. I would carry and hold my young walkers, too, except when they chose to stand. We would all sleep better and more safely with our little children snuggled into the family bed. We would care for our children ourselves and not entrust them to paid providers. I would nurse each one until a natural, mutual end of weaning at age three or four or five, however long it might take, even if that meant I had two nurslings at once. We would try to incorporate our children into our lives and teach them to use our tools and share our work. Later we added homeschooling to the list, too.
And some more beliefs: Hunter-gatherer families, what with extended breastfeeding and lactational amenorrhea, naturally have a spacing of eighteen months to four years between children, so children naturally "expect" to have siblings no sooner than that. The ideal spacing in terms of maternal and child health is about two and a half years on average. And (most importantly) I can handle the intense form of parenting I have chosen as long as the kids are about three years apart.
I’ve been pretty comfortable with this. And though I always say that I never look more than one baby ahead, I’ve been content in the knowledge that, at this rate, we might have four or five or at most six children in all (I’m thirty-two years old), and I rather like not knowing right now what the final number will be. I certainly know other couples (I kind of think of this as the "NFP instructor" pattern) with five kids spaced like fenceposts.
In the past year, though, we’ve had the great blessing of getting to know (in real life and on line) a number of families with an abundance of children fairly close together. Four children under the age of six. Five children under the age of eight. That sort of thing.
I see that often, not always, there are choices made that are not the ones I would make. The children are often weaned earlier, perhaps at twelve months. The babies spend less time in arms and more time in seats (heck, with my two boys around I’ve put MJ into her high chair as much as she will let me, myself; I know I’d only be doing it sooner and more if I had a young toddler as well as my small boy and larger boy.) I don’t know what these families do about discipline, but I imagine I’d be looking for even more shortcuts than I do now, and might be making choices I don’t feel comfortable with.
Still, it’s plain to me that there are beauties there that we miss with our perfect, perfectly wide spacings. Closer together, the children have more years to grow in each other’s company, and maybe cannot remember a time without their nearest siblings. Maybe when they are grown they will be closer too. The house will be busier, noisier, crazier for sure. Maybe those moms long for calm and quiet more often than I do — I manage to find enough of it for myself, every week. But I doubt they’d trade a child for it.
And then there’s those beliefs I mentioned. Would I feel pressured to force an early weaning, or would I overuse the stroller I’d have to buy? Would I yell more? Would I cut corners I shouldn’t? Would I become a mother I don’t admire? I might pray for the knowledge that I’d do just fine. Yet I know that we’re granted today’s bread, not tomorrow’s to set aside in safety.
Just something that’s been on my mind, right now when I’m safe with my new little baby in my arms, safe from the need to ask myself yet if it’s time to seek new life.
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