Today we discuss why each of us decided to have more than two children.

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of two and soon to be three and a practicing physician. We are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to episode one. Today we're going to be talking on how each of us decided to have more than two kids, with some musings on what that's like now from me Laura, and what the future holds from Sarah, because Sarah is expecting her third child in December, Right, Sarah, that's right. I'm currently in that sweet spot of the second trimester twenty three weeks awesome. But speaking of the future, both of us are kind of focused done the near future right now of school starting. When is that coming up for you? For us? We start in about a week and a half for my daughter who will be entering her first real year of school in kindergarten and my son starts a week after that with just another year of pre K. What about you, Yeah, we're starting after Labor Day. I think a lot of the schools in the North start after Labor Day, and more Southern schools start earlier than that. But I've actually been spending a bunch of time this week designing my activity spreadsheet for the coming year, which I know you also had to put together quite an activity schedule of like after school stuff, right, absolutely, Yeah, it's such a regional thing. I feel like all the southern schools are already ready to go, and up North, it's like, oh, that's forever from now. But it's true the activity stuff starts early because you got to get your sign up SIN while they're available. You got to get the sign up SIN. I know I had to put in a sign up for gymnastics before the first choice was sold out, and that's always a problem when I'm coordinating everyone's schedules when your your first choice isn't there. But you were introduced this year to the fun of the school supply shopping. Yeah, the school supply shopping was eye opening for me. I was used to the preschool thing where you just drop your kid off and kind of don't worry about much else. But we received an item list with more than twenty nine things, many of them in triplicate, and more with specific brand names. So that was rather intimidating. Why was it specific brand names? You know? I cut deal with Creola somewhere. Yeah, I'm not exactly sure. But then I actually found out that a lot of people ignore the brand name parts, so it became a lot easier after I figured that part out. Yeah, no, that's good. I guess the only reason I could see that is some my kindergarteners class actually pooled a lot of supplies, and so maybe if they just wanted everyone to have the same thing, and that's exactly it. And you know how when you're dolling out items to five year olds, if there are subtle differences that could actually spark like World War or three, and it'd be riots in the kindergarten classroom. Yeah, so did you come up with the cool backpack though? Because that is the key, you know, I have. We still have to go backpack shopping, and we might go today because I'm off today, so I'm thinking about taking my daughter. That's good, Yeah, that is I gotta say, that's the thing. The kid has got to pick out themselves. And every year, my seven year old wants to choose a cartoon backpack of some variety, and of course those are the cheapy ones. Like finally, my ten year old has acquiesced to getting like a real backpack that will stay together for the whole year. I guess at seven, you still got to get your Pokemon or teenage sent to Turtles or whatever it is. Yeah, I can sense some trolls or descendants action in my immediate future. What are you guys actually doing for activities this year? We're doing a lot. I didn't quite make it spreadsheet because my style is more analog than you, Laura, so I wrote it all down on paper. But we have a lot of stuff going on. I've got both kids doing jims, they're both doing swimming. There's some after school activities. There are really just an hour after school, so they sort of don't even count in my opinion, because they just make the day end at three. And Annabelle's doing drama and also clay modeling, and then she also has ballet on Saturdays, and then Cameron has basketball and soccer, so it's a lot. I feel like they each have one or two things every single day, so I probably overdid it, but I also figured I better let them do what they want now because I felt like in the spring, once we have the new baby, things might have to be dialed down a bit. What about you guys, Well, we're doing oh my goodness, swim, karate, gymnastics. But all those things sort of take a lot of time in the sense that they're multiple times per week. As the kids get into more like competitive swim and stuff like that, then you have multiple practice. That's a big kid thing. I feel like, ah, the little kid things are just once a week. Yeah, but it it'll be fine. I mean, the spreadsheet. You can laugh about it if you want, but it's it makes sense, like you because I can see then where people need to be at certain times, and you know, it's this whole intricate puzzle of making sure I'm protecting my work time, and so I'm trying to make sure there's not too many times where we need more than one driver. So you know, our nanny can do most of it. But yeah, it's good times, which which brings us to our main segment today, which the thing with larger families is it does become this intricate puzzle of who needs to be where when, and there's a lot more logistics involved. And yet both of us did decide to go for the bigger family. I guess we both decided it was going to be doable. So since you're more recently into this decision, what was your thought process us with that? Well, deciding to have my second child was a no brainer. And I think we've talked about this before. You know, society kind of isn't that surprised when people go from one to two children, but the two to three is a much bigger jump. I didn't initially think we were going to go for it. I was pretty happy we had our girl and our boy, but somehow, just about a you know, when he turned close to three, I could not let go of the idea of a third kid. And it wasn't necessarily like, oh, this is a great idea, my life will be fantastic with three kids. It was more the idea that if I didn't do it then I felt like I'd have a lot of regret and I just emotionally couldn't let go of the idea. I guess to make a long story short, we went for it. It didn't take terribly long, which I'm really grateful for. My first took a really long time. And we're doing December, so I'm actually really excited to have a few more years of buffer between my second and my third compared to when I was dealing with my first two together and they were Actually I had the fun two under two for a little while, which is really really hard. Yeah, so now everyone's out of diapers and into school and you've got that, and I guess that's a plus minus exactly, Like, I don't really remember what that's like, and I'm gonna have to dive back in. But I mean, we've talked about this too. It's you have this perspective now of how transient it is, whereas when you have that first kid, you feel like this is the new normal forever, and it's very hard to wrap your head around the fact that, well, this is the new normal for a year and then the next year is something different, and then it's a continuing evolution after that. And to me, I've really enjoyed it more the older my kids have gotten. And that's why I don't think when I had two under two, I had any thoughts of having more, And yet now when I'm picturing like three school age kids, I'm just really really excited about the future. Yeah, I mean that's the thing I've found. Big kids are so much fun and they have their issue is obviously. I mean there's a lot of drama involved in homework battles and such, but they're kind of fun to hang out with. And you know, I have this little guy who's too and he's different from that, and it's just a very different form of care and it's a hard age and those first few years are really really tough, and I think a lot of people decide not to go through it again because we do get so scarred by those early years. But maybe the more you have more children you have, the more you do see that it's just, yeah, the first two years are going to be hard. I mean, right, that's you're you're prepared for it this time around, you know, absolutely happen. I track my time and I've looked at those first two years with my fourth kid. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff you forget, like the six nursing sessions per day or seven, and being woken up in the middle of the night and it's not really fun. But then I kind of wish you tracked your time before, because I'd love to see a comparison of what it was like when they were all, say, over the age of three, versus having your little one. I think that would have been really interesting. Yeah, but there were only about six months in that beautiful window when everyone was over three and potty trained, and you know, I have memories of it in that I had more control over my mornings. I could get up and do stuff, I could go outside by myself and trust that everyone was going to keep the house from Yeah, there was not going to be death inside where I have no guarantee on that with my two year old. But some of that is just kid specific too, because I did track my time for a week when my daughter, who's my third kid, was about two and a half, which is right before I got pregnant with number four. You know, there there was obviously a lot of kids stuff going on, But I did have some control over the mornings then too, And I think it's she slept better than hated, and so that's just you never know what you're gonna get. It's kind of yes, that part is so true, and I love the perspective that you have that they're going to be different and it may not be about anything that you're doing because you got the same environment and the same parents and that yet sometimes wildly different outcomes wildly different. But you know, it's are you how many kids were in your family growing up? I mean, what did you sort of see as the I just have one younger sister, and to be honest, I would have loved to have at least one more. I think with the two of us we didn't really have that big group mentality, and I think we could have used some diffusion of some of the attention for my parents, so I actually would have enjoyed some extras in the mix. But yeah, I just had the experience of the one sister. My husband, however, is one of three, and they had a beautiful family experience growing up, so that might have shaped some of our decision making process. Yeah, I'm one of three, although my older brother and younger brother are both quite a bit far apart from me. But because I think I never saw two as the norm, I think I probably saw three more as the norm. And my husband is actually one of four, so he probably saw that more as the norm and his mom is one of five. My father is one of five, so we certainly have bigger families in our extended family experience, and I guess I sort of always liked the idea of having lots of us around the Thanksgiving table in the future, and so that's what I've kind of kept my eye on, especially as we've gone through some pretty rough times with the littlest kid being a bit of a terror and all. Always. But you know it's my Have you gotten like flack from people at all for going I haven't, I really haven't. I was just gonna add, because I thought about it when you said it, that my job has given me a unique perspective too, Like I get to see families of all shapes and sizes. I have a one family of patients where they have a twelve year old and a fourteen year old, and then they had a second marriage and they have a two year old and the mom just had another one, and so I really do get to see this unique spectrum of what it looks like with two and what it looks like when they're older, and what it looks like when they're babies. And I think because I didn't have that family experience, that dimension or that perspective has sort of allowed me to look past those first very difficult years and think farther ahead. So I think that really helped me too. Yeah. No, I mean I feel like we got some flack for a number three. Well, we were living in New York City when I got pregnant three, and it's very much like having that third is kind of a crazy thing when you're there, and we did wind up leaving the city, So maybe there's something to that. But you know, a lot of people would be like, well, you're contributing to overpopulation. I mean, sometimes saying it in a nicer way than that, but you know, well, then I've heard from other people it's like, well, we're not going to have children, so it'll be like a carbon trading scheme, right, like you can have ours. No, that's actually well, I was thinking about that. I did get one comment on my blog where someone did write something about how it was interesting that I had decided to choose to have a third when I was aware about you know, I was talking about how we recently had a flood and environmental concerns where we live, but then my mind went to the fact that of my very of my close college friends. Actually this is a little unusual, but I'm actually the only one of the six of us with any kids right now. I have another one that's pregnant with her first And if you actually look at population statistics, we're not in a baby boon right now. We're actually at one of the lower fertility rates we've seen in a long time in the United States. So that made me feel a lot better. Yeah. Also, I don't think your third kid is going to be responsible for the Miami flooding. I'm just going to throw that how they're probably not. I would be really happy if my third kid becomes an engineer that somehow, you know, stops exactly. That would be my greatest hope. But I really found that, like you know, people kind of the more kids you have, people like, oh, that's crazy, I don't know how you do it. I've really found that zero to one was the tough thing. That was the lifestyle change, that was the we're not going to brunch for a couple of years here a moment in your life. Whereas two to three is not that crazy, three to four is just like more juggling. I mean, is that what you found absolutely. I felt like one zero to one was really hard for me. And I do think there's this temptation when you have your first to think, oh, I can totally cram my old life in with the kid, and then there's this sort of slow realization over the first six months to a year that no, it's never going to be the same again. And then comes acceptance and once you've gotten to that place where you're a parent and your life is about your children and family. I didn't really find that adding more to the mix made things all that much difficult. Now, I'm not saying that like I'm loving pumping. You know. That's something we'll talk about, and the early years are really hard, but I felt like zero to one was harder than one to two. And maybe I'm overly optimistic, but I'm actually less nervous about adding this one to the mix because A I feel like I know what I'm doing. B I'm already in that parent place and see, I'm not gonna have a toddler that I'm dealing with while I'm dealing with an infant like I did the second time around. Yeah, you totally you already have the family car like you guys already have your childcare arrangement. I mean, you're not even really gonna have to change that. There are some economies of scale with that. We actually do need a car because my prius is not going to fit all through cars. But that's okay. We have plans global warming already, so exactly good. And I've earned my third a third kid by having the prius in it. I want to just go off on a tangent here because I'm sure you're gonna get people telling you this when you're going to three, people like, oh, you're switching from man on man to zone defense, right, I hate that. Oh my goodness, have you noticed it is only men who say that. It is totally men. It's because that's from their perspective. We're like, we're off in zone. We're good at zone already. I don't know what you're thinking about. Number two was born, okay, And you can tell a guy who's like, not had a whole lot of solo time with his two kids when they have a third, and that's when he's saying, like, we're going to zone defense from man on man's because yes, every time you've been home at nights and on weekends each of you has had a kid, but your wife had the kids more time than that, and so yeah, from her perspective, we've already figured out the zone thing. That's one of those little pet peeves of mine. Do you find that the more kids you have, the more there is is sort of responsibility taken equally from both parents just by necessity to a degree? I mean, certainly we, you know, need a lot of extra help to my My husband travels a lot for work, and I travel some too. I do a lot of speeches in various places. So for that we we need a really good childcare setup that can accommodate overnight trips and the fact that kids need to be lots of different places at different times. But yeah, I mean you can't on weekends. It does wind up being a lot of like He'll take two of them and I'll take two of them, or or often it may be that he takes the big three and I take the little guy. That tends to be a good split for doing things. But you know, neither parent exactly gets a whole lot of weekend downtime when there when there are four of them, all that we do try to use the littlest ones nap to tell the other kids go have some screen time or go read. Will you know, all reconvene when he's back up, and then well we'll deal with it then. So that's that's a good way to get a little bit of peace on weekends with that many. I'm not expecting that much peace for the first Yeah, no it's not. But that's you know. I'm curious that you think about your career though, because an another thing. I think a lot of professional women feel like each kid has the risk of being a hit to your career, and on some level, I again feel like, well, once you've done one, you've already taken if you're going to take a hit, which I don't think you have to take a hit, but if you are going to, you may have taken it after you've figured out how to build your career with one. Adding a second, adding a third is just more juggling. It's not that you haven't figured out how to do it. I agree. Plus, actually, more kids sometimes tends to force you to streamline things even more so that I have colleagues with one kid where they may actually bring their kids in. But since that's like not going to ever be a reality with the number of kids. In the ages of kids I have, I would not do that. So that's an instance in which I probably have well I do. I have processes in place and sort of safety nets I guess of childcare that might actually be advantageous compared to someone who really wouldn't need to throw that together with one kid. Yeah, and I know that my childcare arrangements have definitely gotten better over the years as we've had more kids, and it's partly that I feel probably better about having it, like it feels less like it's just you know, me not doing something. And now, at least probably a quarter of the time we have childcare hours i'm with a kid. It's just I'm with one of them while somebody else is with another kid, you know, the rather rest of the kids are something, so that makes it possible. And I wouldn't have done that with one kid, because it wouldn't have really made sense. But because of that, it's it's made life a lot more smooth with for And I can't speak to what the experience would be like with just one kid, but I do feel like having more than one. When I do have childcare to cover one, it really does feel like a treat and like this intimate experience with the one kid that I don't normally have, so I actually feel like I appreciate it more when those times do occur. Yeah, and that has been a big thing for me, having to build in one on one time with the older kids, especially when we have this younger kid who needs a lot of attention. And so we've done a couple of things. I mean, one is that I try to do these like mommy days every summer where I take one day and I don't work and I go do something special with each of the big kids. So that's three days in the course of the summer, and those have been really cool. We've gone to amusement parks for the most part, and you just get to hang out with the kid and chat with them, and whatever they want to do is cool. Like if one kid wants to do arcade games for two hours, it's fine. You're not dealing with everyone else saying come on, we gotta leave, we gotta go do something else. I totally love that idea and I'm definitely going to copy it. Yeah, I have a friend that does it on a smaller scale. She's a stay at home mom. With three boys, and she'll often take one of the older two out for dinner alone and the dad will, you know, put the other two to bed, and she has these lovely intimate conversations and it just sounds so nice. It does, and I think that but it has. It's good for us because we have multiple kids. I think if you were just a parent of one child, like you spend so much time with that kid anyway, that it doesn't have that sort of special flavor to it as much. And you know, I guess it needs to be at least somewhat rare to be cool. Yeah, the novelty fact, novelty factor is key, but I also try to get some of that with just I mean, one of the reasons I work the schedule I do. I can usually do some of the kids shuttling in the late afternoon with activities, and that has been good for getting one kid in the car and then you get to have those conversations with that one kid. And I usually if I'm hanging out at the activity, I'll answer emails or read so I'm not wasting that time. But then you get the time in the car and have good conversations with them. And also kind of trying to put the kids to bed semi individually, you wind up getting a few minutes of one on one time with them as well. Yes, although my two were going to be sharing a room once we have all three, so that won't be quite as individual. But I have to figure out how to make it work so they each get someone in one time at night, because right now we do it that way and it's really nice. Cameron gets his three year old level books and then Annabelle gets read to, you know, her chapter books that are probably he would be bored by. So we really like that. Yeah, so I think we've both found that it's it's fine to go for the bigger family. But we probably started off kind of feeling that way. But you know, I think if you want to do it, if you want to make it work, it can work. Yeah. I'm really excited to see how it unfolds for us, but I'm really optimistic looking forward to it. So now we're going to do a segment where we each talk about what we're loving. Now we're going to do some shout out to strategies or products or services that really work for us make life possible. Right now, Sarah, you go first, and we've decided that no love is too big or too small for this segment. So my personal love this week is long sleeve swim shirts. Very exciting, right, but seriously, we never use them before. We bought them this year and it has greatly reduced the amount of sunscreen I have to apply to each kid, which makes me way happier and I feel like they provide better protection. And since I am pregnant and don't necessarily need to be, you know, showing off my goods at the pool with all the kids. I love being able to put on a zip up shirt and not feel self conscious. So you could totally show off the goods. I could, but maybe I don't want to. We love those too, no, I mean they it saves so much time and you're not worried about the kid getting SUNBURNTO my love of the week, and this is combined with a public service announcement. Here tsa pre check. Oh my goodness. Last week I traveled to Nashville to give a speech. I show up at the airport about an hour before my flight, which is what I normally aim for. If I did not have pre check, I would have missed my flight. The lines were down the hall. It was amazing. I've never seen them all the way past. They were getting people off the people mover and then moving them all the way back to the beginning of the people mover. Basically, it was that bad. And here's the thing. If you don't have pre check, which the TSA go, you have an appointment. A lot of airports have a place where you can do this or otherwise you can go to. They have sometimes offices and like shopping centers and things like that to show that you are a trustworthy person and all that good stuff. But the thing is you probably are in an airport line thinking oh I should get this, and then you go on your trip and maybe the way back it's not as bad, and you say, oh, well it's you know, gonna take effort to go do it. Just go do it. You will thank yourself so much the next time when you can breathe through the security line. You can take young kids with you because obviously they don't even have a record for them to check on anything like that. But save so much time. So please go get your TSA pre check. If you're listening to this, and if you happen to be within like fifty miles of a toll road, go get your easy Pass. This is another thing we when we travel and there's a lot of toll roads in the Northeast, we are always amazed to see cars like stacked up in the cash lanes. Sometimes I mean there'll be ten to fifteen cars deep. That is fifteen minutes you could be waiting in that toll line that you are not getting to your destination or not getting home. So again, listening to this, get your pre check, get your easy pass, you will be so much happier. I agree. It's like a timesaver that pays off in dividends. Down here we have sun Pass and not easy Pass, but I'm sure it's the same. And I only got my pre check like several months ago, and I wish I had done it sooner because breezing through those lines is amazing. And by the way, we want to point out none of this content is sponsored. All of our loves of the Week and anything else we mentioned on the show is from our hearts only our heart's only. No money changing hands here. Well, one thing we do want to exchange is questions with listeners. So Sarah and I both run blogs. We're on social media as well, and we love questions, so at Sarah's blog, she asked for listener questions before we even had this podcast, and people were so generous with coming up with topics for us to talk about, which we were going to do in all these upcoming episodes. But the first one this week, why don't you read that one for us? Sure? This comes from reader Morgan, and she writes, I'd love to hear about pumping in a professional context, specifically while on work travel with people who aren't used to it, how to bring it up and how to stay casual about it so it's minimally awkward. I'm not sure there is a situation where it's minimally awkward. Although there's this big movement right now to normalize pumping. I believe there's like a hashtag called I pumped here, So maybe this is going to gradually get better as more working women are sort of normalizing the process. But I agree it is a really difficult one. Yeah, and you normally were able to just do it at your office, right, so you'd fit it in between patients and did you to me it was all about Yes, For me, it was about arranging my schedules, so I actually got rid of my one long lunch break. I mean, not that it's that long, but I'd cut it up into two pumping segments so that I could better get it done. But traveling is really hard, and to be honest, I don't have personal experience with that kind of business travel, do you. So yeah, the pump and I traveled many many places to gather it has its own fun in the TSA lines. I can't tell you how many times it has been poked at by agents started wondering what is this. I took it with me to India once and had to explain the whole concept to the security people in India who are like, what on earth is this? I'm like, well, I got a pump, you know, milk for my baby. There's like, well, where's the baby. I'm like, well, that's why I have the pump because the baby. Wow, it's like works somewhat like a cow. Like if we want to talk about this, you know, but it's it is a pain. It is a total pain. Couple things that I have found. I mean, you're just gonna have to embrace the bathroom you are if you're on a train. I did a lot of pumping and Amtrak train car bathrooms gross but necessary, so I would kind kind of, you know, wait till we're not right by a station so it's a little bit quieter. And usually you want to make sure you're in a car that has two bathrooms so that if you're in one for a while, it's okay. But you also got to be okay with the quickie pumping session, and so some of this business travel pumping is more about just relieving pressure as opposed to getting a full pumping session in. So if you view it that way, that you're not probably going to be able to be perfectly timed with what your baby's nursing sessions would be at home. That is really more about doing it with frequency and getting a few ounces out so that you're comfortable until the next session. You can always ramp up the intensity at night when you're in the hotel room. Not that that's super fun, but you know, the pump nap can work and make up for lost time. Yeah, exactly. And so when you're in a hotel room, I mean, if you are planning on bringing the mel home with you, obviously you know ask for a refrigerator in your room. A lot of hotels have some rooms with refrigerators and some not, so you got to make sure that you're doing that. Honestly. As for it being normalized, I think you just you don't have to be graphic about what's going on. But if you tell the people you're traveling with, like, listen, I need to pump every three to four hours, I will do my best to scout out locations, but I just, you know, if you could help me with that, I'd appreciate it. And most of the time, I think if it's not you know, like a seventy year old dude that you're traveling with, most people are pretty okay with it. Certainly if you male colleagues who have kids themselves, if their wives have breast fed, they are probably going to be supportive of it. If they're a little bit you know, squeamish, whatever, just be like, gotta go take my break now in the boat. Okay, all right, gotta go take your break now, and just not go into it too much. But if you're casual about it, most other people will be casual about it too. And you know, it's not forever, even if it feels like forever. Uh, it Eventually the pump tais are over and you can kind of laugh at the stories you've had during it, and maybe we'll even go delve into this further in a future episode. You know, about the pressure to continue breastfeeding for a very specific amount of time, I personally believe there really has to be some flexibility there as a pediatric professional. Yes, there are some minor medical benefits to breast milk, but nothing that makes it an all or nothing kind of a thing. So yeah, perhaps that deserves a longer discussion later, less or more of a woman no matter what you do, So if it works for you, great. I think it is quite possible to pump while traveling. It's just you got to have a sort of good sense of humor about it and always make sure you lock those bathroom doors. That's all I gotta say on that one. So we are are bringing this episode to a close. We're taping these first ones in a bat and releasing them, but we hope to have a weekly schedule after that. So please connect with us on our blogs or you can reach out to us via social media and we look forward to chatting next time. Yeah, and if you have topic ideas or questions you'd like us to address, we would love to hear them, so please don't be afraid let us know. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore shoe Box on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together. Four