Young Wife's Guide - Two sets of twins under 4 and pregnant again!

[imokit]

2 hours ago, elliha said:

I think how easy it is depends on your personality. I am not that good with young babies and would have had big problems handling say a 1.5 year old and a newborn but it seems to be perfect for other people. I think that to do parenting well I need about 2.5 years between each child and ideally longer. I have loved having a whole year without diapers with my daughter before I do it again for example and I think there are plenty of people like me who rather has one kid at the time in a certain phase. There is some research about different intervals between siblings and while no space is a disaster there seems to be a suggestion that having 3,5 years between siblings is a bit of an ideal. Bigger gaps like 7-8 years also seem favorable. 

7-8 years is one of the worst gaps in my experience.  I have a friend who is one of the three, 3 years between the oldest two then 8 years between 2 & 3.  The middle one struggled a lot.

A small age gap means the older one is viewed as a child, lashing out a bit and jealousy are expected and can be managed.  A +10 age gap means the older one gets it, and can emotionally understand the baby needing more attention and get involved and do things if they want, plus they want different things from the parents.

6-9 year olds, are old enough to intellectually understand, but they've also got used to being the youngest and are in that awkward phase of fluctuating desires to cling/not cling etc.   They also can't do as much for the baby, depending on the family they may only be allowed supervised cuddles with the newborn, as opposed to the older ones who can do more.  Intellectually should understand and things can be talked through, but they're emotions don't always line up.  Meanwhile they're often considered too old to get away with the reactions a younger child goes through to a new sibling - they know better, and they technically do, but they still have those feelings and that makes things tricky.

 

Younger ones rightly get away with more and are allowed to react more.  Older ones are expected to be mature and reasonable, but there's a really awkward age in the middle where emotional maturity doesn't equal intellectual maturity when a new sibling is incredibly hard (as it was for my friend's sister, my friend on the other hand had no issues with the new baby).

[Jana814]

3 hours ago, elliha said:

I think how easy it is depends on your personality. I am not that good with young babies and would have had big problems handling say a 1.5 year old and a newborn but it seems to be perfect for other people. I think that to do parenting well I need about 2.5 years between each child and ideally longer. I have loved having a whole year without diapers with my daughter before I do it again for example and I think there are plenty of people like me who rather has one kid at the time in a certain phase. There is some research about different intervals between siblings and while no space is a disaster there seems to be a suggestion that having 3,5 years between siblings is a bit of an ideal. Bigger gaps like 7-8 years also seem favorable. 

I have a dog client who's kids are 8 years but 9 grades apart. The girl is older they are super close. She's going to college in September and I think the boy is going to be really sad.  

[teachergirl]

of course everyone is different but I think for most of us, if we decided to have that many that close, we have a stopping point.  I guess my point was that these women have no stopping point.  They are just expected to birth, raise and birth again AND homeschool, clean, cook, blog, sew, etc....There is no way that is healthy for mom or children.  She could end up witih 15/16 at this rate.

[elliha]

3 hours ago, imokit said:

7-8 years is one of the worst gaps in my experience.  I have a friend who is one of the three, 3 years between the oldest two then 8 years between 2 & 3.  The middle one struggled a lot.

A small age gap means the older one is viewed as a child, lashing out a bit and jealousy are expected and can be managed.  A +10 age gap means the older one gets it, and can emotionally understand the baby needing more attention and get involved and do things if they want, plus they want different things from the parents.

6-9 year olds, are old enough to intellectually understand, but they've also got used to being the youngest and are in that awkward phase of fluctuating desires to cling/not cling etc.   They also can't do as much for the baby, depending on the family they may only be allowed supervised cuddles with the newborn, as opposed to the older ones who can do more.  Intellectually should understand and things can be talked through, but they're emotions don't always line up.  Meanwhile they're often considered too old to get away with the reactions a younger child goes through to a new sibling - they know better, and they technically do, but they still have those feelings and that makes things tricky.

 

Younger ones rightly get away with more and are allowed to react more.  Older ones are expected to be mature and reasonable, but there's a really awkward age in the middle where emotional maturity doesn't equal intellectual maturity when a new sibling is incredibly hard (as it was for my friend's sister, my friend on the other hand had no issues with the new baby).

All gaps will have challenges but this is what one study said. In individual families there might also be certain gaps that work better than others. In my personal experience the 7-8 year gap works well for the families I know who has this gap. The older sibling has been very loving towards the little one protective and actually been a great help to the parents for example by assisting in different chores or playing/entertaining the baby. They can't babysit of course but they can for example keep the baby happy while one parent cooks dinner.

[FundieFarmer]

Mmmmmm I used to read this blog some when they'd just gotten married. Didn't know she was quite so Fundie. Time to go look that back over...

[BobTheWalrus]

On 26/06/2016 at 2:30 PM, teachergirl said:

of course everyone is different but I think for most of us, if we decided to have that many that close, we have a stopping point.  I guess my point was that these women have no stopping point.  They are just expected to birth, raise and birth again AND homeschool, clean, cook, blog, sew, etc....There is no way that is healthy for mom or children.  She could end up witih 15/16 at this rate.

That's a really good point.  If you're making choices about your fertility (and I know it's not always straightforward so I am generalising here), you can decide when to stop, or decide that due to health or financial or other concerns you need to space the kids out more, or stop before you planned.  I had gestational diabetes so both mine were up around 11lbs each, so I ended up having two c sections. It's scary to think of women in my situation possibly dying in childbirth because they've opted for a more "godly" all natural birth 2 hours away from the nearest hospital.

[countingblessings]

On 6/26/2016 at 3:03 AM, elliha said:

I think how easy it is depends on your personality. I am not that good with young babies and would have had big problems handling say a 1.5 year old and a newborn but it seems to be perfect for other people. I think that to do parenting well I need about 2.5 years between each child and ideally longer. I have loved having a whole year without diapers with my daughter before I do it again for example and I think there are plenty of people like me who rather has one kid at the time in a certain phase. There is some research about different intervals between siblings and while no space is a disaster there seems to be a suggestion that having 3,5 years between siblings is a bit of an ideal. Bigger gaps like 7-8 years also seem favorable. 

Agreed.I have mental illness so we knew from the get go we would wait before having another. I had to be on meds pregnant and after i was hospitalized 3 times. My dad was killed in a accident when my daughter was 5 months and i had just had surgery for a cancer scare the previous month. NICU,specialists for my daughter , 2 surgeries and my dads death in a 5month time frame caused me to break down. To be honest im probably done with kids. I love them. Im in school to be a teacher and i love my kid to the moon and back. Im doing great with her so i think honestly im done. Im planning on scheduling an appt with my dr to talk about having my tubes tied. Im young,in my 20s, but he knows how i feel and ive mentioned before so hopefully he wont have any objections. 

[frugaldreams]

I tried to check it out but she has way to many spammy ads. They were just to distracting.

[Scribber]

On 26/06/2016 at 4:46 PM, elliha said:

All gaps will have challenges but this is what one study said. In individual families there might also be certain gaps that work better than others. In my personal experience the 7-8 year gap works well for the families I know who has this gap. The older sibling has been very loving towards the little one protective and actually been a great help to the parents for example by assisting in different chores or playing/entertaining the baby. They can't babysit of course but they can for example keep the baby happy while one parent cooks dinner.

I am 8 years older than my sister - and honestly? It was perfect in our lives.

(I have one child - 8 - and we are just now debating a second.)

[Jana814]

15 minutes ago, Scribber said:

I am 8 years older than my sister - and honestly? It was perfect in our lives.

(I have one child - 8 - and we are just now debating a second.)

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

My dog client who's kids are 8 years apart are super close. I recently saw pictures of them when he was first born they are so cute. 

[Chevreuil]

15 hours ago, Scribber said:

I am 8 years older than my sister - and honestly? It was perfect in our lives.

(I have one child - 8 - and we are just now debating a second.)

I find of all the age gaps, far apart seems to be the most frowned upon. I know people love to say "don't you want them to have a buddy!" But there is no guarantee in any age gap that they will get along (for example: my husband and his brother are 11 months apart and they hate eachother). My stepson is 8 years older than his sister (my daughter) and they do not get along. As soon as he enters our house they are at each other's throats. This is more due to personality clashes than age gap, SS gets along great with my oldest son and they are 9 years apart.

[nelliebelle1197]

The twins don't seem to be identical in either case. Were these fertility twins???

[SpeakNow]

I find of all the age gaps, far apart seems to be the most frowned upon. I know people love to say "don't you want them to have a buddy!" But there is no guarantee in any age gap that they will get along (for example: my husband and his brother are 11 months apart and they hate eachother). My stepson is 8 years older than his sister (my daughter) and they do not get along. As soon as he enters our house they are at each other's throats. This is more due to personality clashes than age gap, SS gets along great with my oldest son and they are 9 years apart.

My sister and I are 7.5 years apart and incredibly close. That age gap worked really well for my family.

[JMO]

I used to work with a woman with 6 kids, 3 sets of twins.  She was much older so no drugs were even available at that time. Twins ran in her family. 

[Casserole]

I have an acquaintance that had boy twins, got pregnant when they were 18 months old with another set of boy twins. She now has 4 boys ages 2 and under and says she's still trying for her girl 

[Jana814]

I once saw an episode of A Baby Story on TLC. The family had 5 boys including a set a twins. She was expecting a second set of twins that time girls. 

[Johanna25]

On 6/21/2016 at 7:53 PM, bertnee said:

Maybe the other twin is named after the Red Rider BB Gun from A Christmas Story.

You can still buy Red Ryder BB guns. They were named for a wild west themed comic strip.

[Jana814]

12 hours ago, JMO said:

I used to work with a woman with 6 kids, 3 sets of twins.  She was much older so no drugs were even available at that time. Twins ran in her family. 

How interesting. I once saw a special about a family with 3 sets of twins. No drugs either. 

Their was a story on the Today Show facebook page about a woman who had 4 sets of twins plus an older son. They are all now in their 40's and 50's. the next generation in that family only had 14. 

[justwatching]

On ‎7‎/‎3‎/‎2016 at 10:20 AM, Scribber said:

I am 8 years older than my sister - and honestly? It was perfect in our lives.

(I have one child - 8 - and we are just now debating a second.)

My sister is just under 10 years younger than me.  It was awesome!

[Jana814]

22 minutes ago, justwatching said:

My sister is just under 10 years younger than me.  It was awesome!

I have an old classmate who is 10 years younger then her sister. They are super close.  Her sister however, had 2 boys who are 2 years apart.  My old classmate has 2 girls 4 years apart. 

[klynn]

When our new little guy arrives in December, it'll be a 4.5 year gap between him and big sis. I would have preferred a smaller gap, but this is the way it happened, so I'm fine with it, and think it'll work perfectly for our family.

[fiery redhead]

On ‎6‎/‎21‎/‎2016 at 9:37 AM, teachergirl said:

good lord, that is nuts and this is how blanket training, sleep training, and hitting your kids starts.....there is no way that one person can handle all those children in such a short amount of time and probably be pregnant again within a another year after the next one is born. This makes me sad for her.

I never understand how fundies defend there uber-fertility with "the past", saying that before contraception people's families were always like this - how untrue....

The average number of children in the US in 1800 was between 7 and 8, not 14 like it is in Fundieland. People tried to limit family size in the ways they could. Do I believe that the general attitude towards childbearing has changed due to modern birth control? Absolutely. It is okay for families to want more than children than the rest of the country, but what I don't get is this sick rat race that these fundie families have. Women in the "good ol' days" would NEVER have tried to allow themselves to have 5 babies under 4. Sure, it could have happened, but not on purpose like this chick.

[Rowan]

On 7/4/2016 at 6:19 PM, nelliebelle1197 said:

The twins don't seem to be identical in either case. Were these fertility twins???

I did a paper in college about history of human twinning - from an evolutionary standpoint, it doesn't make sense, because there is higher risk to babies and mother both. Except it does because (historically, before modern birth control and modern fertility treatments) mothers who had fraternal twins also tended to have more children in general. We can see that with J'chelle - she is/was just hyper fertile. It was believed that the women they were studying (from historical documents well after the fact) just consistently released eggs, and frequently released more than one in a cycle. Seems that this mother is along those same lines.

[nelliebelle1197]

On 7/4/2016 at 10:05 PM, JMO said:

I used to work with a woman with 6 kids, 3 sets of twins.  She was much older so no drugs were even available at that time. Twins ran in her family. 

There are a lot of twins in my family- my mom is a twin and her twin has twins. My grandmother's sister had three sets. My grandfather father was a twin, etc, etc. But all these have been identical. I guess my  experience has been with identical  mulitples and I was not thinking outside the box.

Thanks, @Rowan !

[Anonymousguest]

On 7/6/2016 at 7:39 PM, nelliebelle1197 said:

There are a lot of twins in my family- my mom is a twin and her twin has twins. My grandmother's sister had three sets. My grandfather father was a twin, etc, etc. But all these have been identical. I guess my  experience has been with identical  mulitples and I was not thinking outside the box.

Thanks, @Rowan !

That is very unusual, to have multiple sets of identical twins. Fraternal twins are hereditary, the recent to release more than one egg at a time. Identical twins are the random splitting of an egg. A aunt of mine who had identical twins and is a nurse has done lots of research on the subject and there is a slightly greater chance of having a set of identical twins if you've already had a set, but they don't understand why or how that happens. One theory is that they aren't truly identical, which is what her own identical twins learned when they were in medical school. They had dna testing done and they aren't completely identical, though much more than just siblings.