On Whether to Have a 3rd Child

Deciding how many kids to have is a very hard decision.....

I have had incredible pelvic and leg pain in this pregnancy.  I didn't have any pain like this last pregnancy, but my dr. said it's something that gets worse and worse with each pregnancy.  So that makes me wonder how much I would really want to do this again.

The decision on how many kids to have is a huge one.  I heard a pastor talking about this in an interview, how Paul's advice was that Christians remain single.  He then said that could apply to how many kids we have too, because the less earthly responsibilities we have, the more free we are to serve Christ. 

But on the other hand I greatly admire moms who have had 5 or 6 kids.  Especially if they all turn out great, then what a wonderful contribution to society! 

But pregnancy is very, very hard.  I can't imagine having two kids to watch and feeling this much pain and not being able to do much. 

Another issue is that I think one of my biggest fears has always been having a son.  (We currently have a girl and I'm about to have another girl.)  But this fear is primarily because of how my dad and brother turned out.  Granted not all men turn out like my dad, I know.  But most teenage boys do turn out like my brother did, getting into drugs and sleeping around, at least in the U.S.  I just would hate to produce a guy who would hurt dozens of women in his lifetime, even if it was just in something as harmless as dating and rejecting them. 

My brother put my mom through SO much.  He kept stealing her car in high school.  He even hinted that he might hurt her at some point.  I just think that would be more than I could handle. 

In addition, almost every boy I worked with in my 10 jobs or so of working with kids was very difficult. 

Bottom line, boys need their fathers.  Boys don't do very well with just their mom or other women.  They need a strong man to guide them and turn them into upstanding citizens.  But the way the world works now, boys hardly get to see their dads. :(  Which I think is why generally boys get into more trouble than girls.  It used to be that boys went out to work in the field along side their dad, while little girls stayed with their mom and baked or sewed etc.  Now we have little boys staying with their mom too, which just doesn't seem to work very well.  Little boys don't listen to women very well, in general.

So those are all things to consider.  Of course our next kid could just be another girl, which would be easy, but you never know.

May God guide me and my husband in this decision and give us wisdom.  Amen. :)