How Many Years Should You Wait to Have Another Baby? And Then Maybe Another?

Right now I’m not married and with no children.

Maybe one day that will change, but here is something I’ve always pondered: Should you have your children close together or spread them out over the course of several years?

 I’ve asked several people this and some say close together because once you’re done raising them—you’re done and all of them are out the house at once.

 Others say far apart, that way each child can get enough attention from its parents.

  Several years ago when I was walking through a department store, I saw a woman with a pregnant belly that looked like it was about to pop any minute; teetering alongside her was her little girl who could barely walk, much less talk.

 I thought to myself, “This woman is probably going crazy; she’s having to run after a toddler, all while going through the trials and triumphs of being pregnant—again. And once the new baby comes she’s going to have to tend to its needs while trying to potty train somebody else.  I sure hope she is a stay-at-home-mom with a host of family around to help her.”

 But would it have been any better if  this woman would have been pregnant but had a 5-year-old?  This makes me think about one of my best friends Gricel. When she was pregnant with her son Evan, I remember her 5-year-old Eden, always trying to wiggle her way into her mom’s lap—even in the final months of her pregnancy when there was no more lap left.

 When Evan was an infant, I remember Eden always asking her mother, “Put him down! I want you to hold me.”  Gricel who is maybe 5 feet tall and 115 pounds after a huge meal, couldn’t very well hold both of her children.

 Evan, now a handsome 18-month-old who was trying to crawl into the dishwasher while I was on the phone with his mother recently,  is actually the perfect number of years removed from his older sister.

 Eden started school this year and Evan now has his mother all to himself during the day.  Eden is old enough to take her of herself and help her mom with the baby.

 But what happens when they get older? Will Evan be lonely by not having someone his age in the house to play with?

 I was.  As the youngest of four girls (yes FOUR) I was lonely at times.

I didn’t have anybody to play with my Barbies with me, as my sisters are five, seven and 10 years older than me and were long past that stage.  A huge age gap between them and me.  I’m pretty sure I was a surprise pregnancy for my parents.

 Another disadvantage is that I will ALWAYS be the baby.  When your siblings are that much older than you, you will never be their peer.  I spent a big chunk of my life trying to be friends with my older sisters. They were friends with each other, but not me. Why? Because I was a “baby” to them even at 19 years old .   Just recently, and I mean recently, have they started to look at me as an adult.  I think a pivotal moment came in 2008, just before my 24 birthday when I was riding my sister, Kelli who was then 31 around in the new car I’d bought myself,  without our daddy co-signing the loan for me—which he’d had to do for all his girls.

 “Kelli, I feel like you, Jennifer and Nealia just don’t respect me. I want to be respected,” I said.  Finally, the light bulb went on in her head.  “Jamie isn’t a baby!” I surmised she thought.  From that moment on, things changed.

 I think the lack of respect was coupled with a little bit of resentment for the much younger sister.

 How many times have they called me spoiled and selfish? Even now, with my 27^th birthday right around the corner, that’s the first thing they shout  when they are angry with me.

 I guess they have good reason.  I did get more from my parents than my sisters. Not because they love me more, but because my parents were at a different place in their lives when I was growing up.

 I got more money for school clothes, a bigger allowance, my parents bought me a car and a cell phone for graduation and paid for a good bit of my college.

 My sisters never got any of this and that wasn’t the expectation.  When they were teens,  nobody was getting a big allowance or a car, simply because there were three of them, all around the same age.

 When I was 16 and in the mall with mom shopping for school she said, “Jamie, I was given $100 to do back-to-school shopping for your sisters.  Look at what you get now.”

 By the time I reached my teens my mom had gone back to work (she’d been a stay at home mom), my father was nearing retirement and they only had me to take care of.

 Besides, I think they were just too tired to fight with a teenager and ended up giving me what I asked for.

 While having children close together, may mean there’s less to go around, I think the children get something far more greater than material things—mutual rapport, friendship and appreciation.

 Everybody that I know with siblings who are close in age are pretty good friends with one another.  Although me and my sisters travel together, talk and share things now, I can’t get back the time I spent having them at my throat and me at theirs.

 There was a sadness in my heart when I was growing up and I think it most certainly can be blamed on the age gap.

 What do you think? How did you decide to space your children?