![\"800px-Citrus_paradisi_(Grapefruit,_pink)_white_bg\"](\"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/800px-Citrus_paradisi_Grapefruit_pink_white_bg-300x199.jpg\" "\\"800px-Citrus_paradisi_(Grapefruit,_pink)_white_bg\\"")
The post is brought to you by my wife, Heather.\u00a0 Please be nice to her :)<\/p>\nThe post is brought to you by my wife, Heather.\u00a0 Please be nice to her :)<\/p>\n
******<\/p>\n
It was time for Dane and I to have a discussion — the, \u201cour baby is approaching 15 months old, do we want to have another one?\u201d discussion.\u00a0 We currently have three wonderful, healthy children.\u00a0 At one point in this discussion I told my husband that I would probably feel guilty for not having more.\u00a0 He was surprised and asked why I should feel guilty.\u00a0 So I told him and the answer surprised him even more.\u00a0 Actually, this is why I am writing this.\u00a0 He wanted me to share this experience.<\/p>\n
As a disclaimer, I was not raised to believe that women are baby machines.\u00a0 In fact, I was taught that having a family and kids was a good thing, but the number of children was up to us.\u00a0 My siblings and I all decided that if\/when we had kids we would try for at least two.\u00a0 I learned all about the quotes that say, basically, \u201cHow many kids you have is between you, your spouse and the Lord.\u201d\u00a0 So in no way can I ever remember being told that I should have a certain number of kids.<\/p>\n
But, if I don\u2019t have more, unless I am really, really sure about it, I will probably feel guilty for not having more.\u00a0 I feel that there is this expectation among the sisters, despite what has been said, to have at least 4 children unless there is some reason to stop before that number is reached.\u00a0 Socially acceptable reasons to stop include:<\/p>\n
There are probably a few I have left out but you get the idea<\/p>\n
So where does it leave those of us who are a few years shy of 30, who just feel like we\u2019re done having kids? We have none of the above \u201cexcuses\u201d.\u00a0 Now, probably no one is going to comment on it, no one is going to tell me I should have more kids, but the feeling that I\u2019m coming up short is still there.\u00a0 I realize we don\u2019t need \u201cexcuses\u201d, that if someone were to ask me why I didn\u2019t have a plethora the best answer is that it is none of their business, but I still feel like I need an excuse so when I am talking with the other ladies and pregnancies stories come up (you know they do ladies) I can say something and everyone says, \u201cOh, that\u2019s why\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
We have our reasons, and they are perfectly good, but they can sound so worldly, or like I am a wimp, and those things I am not enjoying about motherhood, well guess what; I don\u2019t know anyone who does.<\/p>\n
My husband asked me to write about this to find out if anyone else feels this same way.\u00a0 Do\/Did you and\/or your spouse feel this same pressure?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The post is brought to you by my wife, Heather.\u00a0 Please be nice to her :) ****** It was time for Dane and I to have a discussion — the, \u201cour baby is approaching 15 months old, do we want to have another one?\u201d discussion.\u00a0 We currently have three wonderful, healthy children.\u00a0 At one point in this discussion I told my husband that I would probably feel guilty for not having more.\u00a0 He was surprised and asked why I should feel guilty.\u00a0 So I told him and the answer surprised him even more.\u00a0 Actually, this is why I am writing this.\u00a0 He wanted me to share this experience. As a disclaimer, I was not raised to believe that women are baby machines.\u00a0 In fact, I was taught that having a family and kids was a good thing, but the number of children was up to us.\u00a0 My siblings and I all decided that if\/when we had kids we would try for at least two.\u00a0 I learned all about the quotes that say, basically, \u201cHow many kids you have is between you, your spouse and the Lord.\u201d\u00a0 So in no way can I ever remember being told that I should have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":131,"featured_media":12917,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/800px-Citrus_paradisi_Grapefruit_pink_white_bg.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12909"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26264,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12909\/revisions\/26264"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}