Four!

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average American couple has 1.9 children. Whenever a first-time mom announces the news of her pending arrival to her family and friends, she gets overwhelmed with words of encouragement and advice. Once the baby is born, she and dad are again overwhelmed, only this time it is not by words, but by work. The amount of work involved in caring for a new addition to the family is almost more than they can bear. After a year or two, the young couple starts to realize that they can indeed handle the job of parenthood, so they decide to move a tenth of a child past the national average. With baby number two tucked neatly in the back seat of the new mini van, the family is close enough to average to feel complete.

Some parents, such as my wife and me, are especially fortunate in the eyes of the average American because our firstborn is boy and our second is a girl. “Now you have a boy and a girl. What a perfect family!” I must have heard this a thousand times in the weeks following the birth of my daughter. When I wasn’t laughing at words like ‘miconium’ and ‘areola’ during childbirth class, I was paying attention to the rules of the game. Is there some unwritten rule that I missed? Are we in China? Who says we have to stop just because we have one of each? “We’ll show them,” I said to my wife.

A year and a half later we announced that number three was on its way. By now the advice and encouragement was gone. Instead we heard things like, “Now you’re outnumbered!” Thanks for the input. If only we had learned to count to three before we conceived, we might have thought twice (because, apparently, twice is as high as our friends thought we could count). Occasionally we would run across a family with more than three kids and hear words like, “Number three is always the hardest,” or “If you can handle three, you can handle ten!” No, you can handle ten.

Now here we are a year and a half later and baby number four is on its way. Most people we talk to now have no idea what to say because they are still trying to decide what to do with baby number 1.9. Since my wife is still early in the pregnancy, and is hardly showing, most people assume we are done. They may see us out in public and say something like, “Wow, you really have your hands full.” I love to add to their awe and amazement by saying, “Yeah, and number four is in there,” as I point to my wife’s belly. The inevitable response is never far behind the look of severe perplexity that crosses their faces, “On purpose?”

Sarcasm again bursts forth. “Nope, I accidentally…” then I catch myself and decide to keep the conversation appropriate. “What’s wrong with four kids?” I ask. The response varies at this point as most people try to recover from the sheer shock of someone conceiving a fourth child on purpose. Most commonly, though, someone eventually asks if we came from large families ourselves. In their minds,I suppose, large families are a genetic defect that is passed on from generation to generation. “Yes, it runs in my family on the X-chromosome,” I reply. “She’s just a carrier,” I add glancing at my wife.

The truth behind the sarcasm, however, is this: Each and every kid we have brings a new kind of joy into our lives. Why wouldn’t we want one more?