3 is the Magic Number

If you ever ask a parent of 3 children what it’s like there’s always a pause. It might be a second, it might be 4 (I know because I’ve counted). The answer is then invariably some euphemistic spiel about the challenges heavily caveated with an insistence about how they wouldn’t have it any other way. 

 You often hear about ‘one and done’ or ‘two and out’, this blog is about ‘three fall’. My interest in the concept of 3 child families has grown significantly since my wife announced that we are to become one. That particular pregnancy announcement hit very differently to the first. Less bouncing off the walls jubilation and more staring at the crayon streaks on the walls apprehension. 

 I’ve heard it all. No more man marking: it’s zonal defence with 3. Stupid big car. Impossibly expensive holidays, impossibly expensive outings, impossibly expensive meals. Impossible. Expensive. It’s getting your draft papers when you haven’t even finished your Hail Marys for making it through the first two tours. 

 Obviously, there are also the ecocidal reservations but learning that the childbirth rate has fallen off a cliff means that perhaps signing up for a 3rd rodeo is actually a form of public service. Whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing it’s definitely a thing. When my wife prevailed upon me to take the leap I said I would do so whole heartedly but warned her that there would obviously only be one outcome to her rolling the daughter dice for a final time. 

 Quietly, I too was looking forward to a girl, variety is the spice and all that and different flavour parenting certainly holds an appeal. As fate would have it, however, Nancy Drew will not be joining the Hardy Boys, at least not this time around. Still, it’s going to save a fortune on the hand me downs; although we might want to put the redecorating on hold for another decade. 

 Any lingering doubts I had about the endeavour were dispelled by a friend who has just welcomed his 3rd. Once you’ve had 2 kids you are, unequivocally, a parent, he said. So why stop at the GCSEs when you can get the A Level as well. The other thing you realise is those bloody hard days, weeks and months at the beginning really don’t last and not because everyone tells you this too shall pass but because you know it does. And isn’t there something enticing about rearing a baby without the fumbling terror of the ingenue? I joked to my wife that perhaps we should go back to NCT classes, this time as grizzled veterans rather than anxious neophytes. 

 I will not pretend that I took to parenting at the first like a duck to water, more like a duck in a Chinatown window. But 7 ½ years down the track this is definitely who I am now and I’m looking forward to giving it a go having got the angst and petulant dismay at the loss of my unencumbered life out of the system. 

 On that note I’m off to explain Middle Child Syndrome to the 4 year old.