After I had T1 and T2, both Rob and I FELT that there was another baby WAITING to come to our family. We knew it even when T2 was very small. There was never a doubt we would have another one.
T3 waited pretty patiently.
I felt him hovering about and knew he was there, but I felt no urgency. It wasn’t until Jan of 2005 in Relief Society watching the pregnant chorister when I felt like “NOW, I am ready NOW!” (I don’t know if that feeling was from him or me!)
We had been casual with birth control for a few months, but I was now ready to TRY. I may have actually been pregnant when I got that feeling as he was born in October and I can’t remember what week of January that happened.
I haven’t had that feeling since T3 was born
I don’t feel a baby waiting and neither does Rob. We never have. Once T3 was born there was no more baby hovering around. I keep thinking maybe we will feel that. But with prayer and fasting and wanting, that feeling still isn’t there.
I guess that means we are done.
- Is it really that simple???
- What if that makes me feel sad?
I am still pretty open to whatever happens, but since coming to this simple “answer”, I have let go of the drama surrounding the question of “Are we done?”
If we are meant to have another baby, T4 will appear. If he doesn’t then I guess we are not meant to have 4 things.
I am at peace either way. (Well, honestly if I got pregnant it would probably freak me out to some extent, but I think I would quickly come to peace with it and be very excited.)
Do you feel like you are “Done” having babies? Do you feel like there is a baby “waiting” to come to your family? Do you think because I don’t feel one waiting, that I am done?
This site has so many wonderful stories about great, wonderful women having visions, dreams, feelings of the spirits who are waiting to come to you. May I confess that with each story a little tiny bit of me thinks there must be something wrong with me? (Even though I know there isn’t.) I have two daughters and probably someday more children on the way. But I have never felt them or dreamed of them or known their gender ahead of time. We just decided to invite them to our family when my husband and I had prayed and thought and talked and decided that now was the time.
I think plenty of parents don’t feel their children waiting for them. I think it is far more common to simply decide with faith what your family needs and try to provide it–whether that is having another child or waiting for a while and considering the question again later. It’s wonderful that you have felt them, but just as they had that choice to help you along, you have the choice of when/if you are going to invite more children who aren’t actively nudging you.
I love these stories, but I hope that moms like me realize that there’s nothing wrong with just making the decision yourself (with spouse and God, of course) about what is best for your family.
Thanks for your comment, I am actually going to do a follow up post on Tuesday about this very thing. 🙂
I agree many moms don’t feel anything, they just decide with God and Spouse when to have children. Or some just put it in the hands of God and let Him decide.
Just as there are many spiritual gifts and we don’t need or have all of them, not all of us will have that experience with “knowing” to have another baby.
I have four children and am certain that another one is waiting to join us. When? Who knows! I seem to be going through an extended period of infertility due to breastfeeding (my toddler is nearly 2 years old) and it clearly isn’t time for us to have another child yet.
I have had several experiences that prepared me in advance for a new pregnancy. I am very grateful for these moments, but I see them as a special blessing from God. I am a person that needs a bit of advanced warnings with certain things in life, and I realise now that the only times I’ve had spiritual preparation have been my so-called surprise pregnancies. 🙂 The two babies we actually “tried” for didn’t need to send me a calling card.
But will I ever feel done? I don’t know. I am still in the midst of my baby days. I hope I will reach that feeling of completion, but it’s all a bit up in the air for me at this point. My friend, who has 7 children, has that feeling. I am happy for her.
I love this way of thinking. Maybe when we are dragging our feet buy our babies are anxious to come they need to alert us!
I am currently pregnant with #4 – and while pregnant with #3 I KNEW that this baby was waiting and not patiently to also join our family. I felt very strongly that I was not to prevent the next pregnancy in anyway after #3 was born (they will be 15 months apart). As for #5 – I know there will be at least one more but I don’t feel any urgency to bring that spirit to our family yet…I will wait and see and pray.
I wrote a guest post about my experiences and perspective on this subject (https://thegiftofgivinglife.com/guest-post-hands-full-by-cherylyn/) and I’m glad that you’re opening up more dialogue about it.
I know there’s at least one more, and I’ve known that since we had 4. We currently have 6 children. I just don’t know how many more we’ll have before that specific spirit joins our family. We have to keep open minds and hearts because the Lord only shows us what we need to see and know in order to keep moving forward. We can’t see the whole picture, but that’s probably a good thing. If someone had told me a few years ago that I’d have at least 7 kids I would have been pretty upset about it. Now, I have peace with it.
Heavenly Father knows us and what we need to guide us and help us move forward. I think it’s different for everyone, and the important thing is to be prayerful and open to the promptings of the Spirit.
I feel like I have worked so hard to be open to the Spirit, but haven’t felt any clear direction of Have Another Baby. But I have felt that I need to put more trust in Him to decide.
I have 4 things all of the same gender. In addition I have had 3 miscarriages over the years. There have been lots of times where there was an intense longing for more children. My youngest is a few months old. I am feeling content and happy with where I am at in life. I don’t know that I am finished but if I am that would be okay. On the other hand I would love a couple more (or 5), just not right now. I truly hope and pray I am not done, but at the same time I am enjoying the feeling of contentment and happiness that at times has eluded me.
That is a great place to be. Content with your family size. I am right there with you. 🙂 But OK if we grow too.
I “feel” that I’ve had my children and when given the opportunity to take on more willingly took it. As long as my health and fertility last I will continue welcoming the blessings the Lord offers to send me. 🙂
I have had experiences with knowing and experiences with just deciding that it was the right time. We struggle with infertility for years before we had our first child. We decided as soon as we got married to start trying and it didn’t happen for 4.5 years. With our second we decided to leave it in God’s hands and whatever happened happened. With our third, we decided to try and it happened pretty quickly. We thought we might be done after our third (#2 and #3 were premature and very difficult pregnancies). One day I just knew there was one baby that needed to come and he needed to come then. It’s the only time we tried and I was pregnant, and carried the pregnancy long enough (another preemie but he was ok) to have a baby. After him and a third NICU stay and many emotional reproductive years, multiple miscarriages, and difficult pregnancies, my husband and I KNEW, we just did, that it was time to be done. The doctor’s recommended some sort of permanent birth control if we indeed knew because a pregnancy would be very taxing on me and we could lose a baby with our history. We prayed and again, without a doubt, knew we were done and it was ok to be done.
I have seven children. In 1985,When my 3rd child was born with special needs, I wondered if he would be the last one. I turned to my patriarchal blessing for answers and in 1987, I took my prayers to the temple and rec’d an answer that there were yet more spirits waiting. The last child was born in 2001. So it took some time, but I KNEW when I was pg #7 that I was finished. I felt complete. Satisfied. And took steps to make birth control permanent. It was right for me.
I have had a lot of friends that “know they are finished” They have a confirmation of that. I have never felt that, which leads me to think there may be another baby though I don’t feel him/her “waiting”.
Because it took us so long to get our amazing first one, I have a hard time even pondering this question. I almost don’t even dare to hope, let alone ask because we’ve been blessed so much with this one. Seems like lack of faith that God doesn’t have more in store for us. I’m also so involved and focused on my 1 year old I can’t imagine a baby other than him, let alone have 2! But, the spirit does let me know in small ways when something is coming, even if I don’t know when or what.
Thanks for this wonderful blog. Your posts always make me think.
It occurred to me when I read this that the love and affection that we had for each other in the pre-existence must have been just as complex and interesting as it is here. There must have been some fellow spirits that we really connected with, and that connection is probably a factor in which parents bring specific spirits into mortality.
There are also plenty of parents and children that hardly connect at all. But even in this there is an opportunity for people to adapt and learn to love each other in ways that aren’t always available to people who connect right away.
Either way, the fact that some moms do, in fact, feel their children waiting is more evidence that motherhood can be a process that is understood as revelation and holy veil work.
With our first two (boys), we tried for them and got pregnant right away. After that I *knew* we had a girl coming. It took us a relatively long time to start trying to get pregnant again, as our oldest had special needs and we were busy helping him. Finally, 4 years after our second we were having another baby…and it was indeed a girl. For sure, we thought we were done…or we wanted to be done. Our two older boys were quite a handful. During my pregnancy with #3, as I was getting everything ready for our baby girl, I started giving away all of my baby boy clothes to friends and family. I had this nagging feeling that we were going to have another boy and I shouldn’t get rid of everything. Haha. I got rid of almost everything anyway, thinking that *if* we did have another boy, it would be years down the road and we could buy new stuff. Well, as it turned out, our baby girl was stillborn at 38.5 weeks, due to a cord accident. I wanted to get pregnant right away so my arms would not ache with emptiness. One of the things the Lord gave me right after we lost our daughter was a vision of my next baby’s birth. It was almost exactly a year to the day of our daughter’s birth and it was lovely and beautiful…and at the time I thought it was another girl (I even had a name come to me). That beautiful vision got me through those early months of mourning the loss of my baby. I got pregnant 3 months after she died. I thought *for sure* it was another girl because of that vision. But come ultrasound time, it was a boy. Hmm…ok. It was the boy that I felt we were having when I was getting rid of boy clothes (we had a bunch of girl clothes and indeed had to buy a new set of boy clothes). Ok. The birth of this baby was exactly the same as my vision, except not the girl I was thinking. Though I later realized that in the vision I did not see or know what the gender was. I think I just wanted another girl so badly.
After we had that boy and he helped everyone in our family to heal a whole lot from the loss of our daughter, we strongly felt another girl may be waiting to come to our family. My husband and I had already decided to have one more. So when our boy was 14 months old I started having strong spiritual dreams that I was giving birth to a living girl. After a total of three dreams, I started to talk to my husband about it. Then during General Conference, he felt the spirit say to him that he needed to prepare to raise a daughter. We both felt for certain that it was time to try for our 5th (!) baby, and got pregnant right away again. I am 31 weeks pregnant right now, and don’t know for sure the gender of this baby…but we’re 90% certain it’s another boy. I still feel like God has a girl waiting for us, but maybe He knew we wouldn’t have had all these babies if we hadn’t had the prompting that a girl was coming after loosing our daughter. I’m trying to figure out what this all means now. Are we going to have another girl eventually? Or does God give the impressions that He knows will motivate us to do the things He needs us to do? Or were our impressions about having a girl related to our daughter who is waiting to be reunited with us? I’m trying not to care so much about the gender and about having another daughter…but I am also starting to wonder if this whole situation was meant to nudge us into giving up our control over our childbearing and trust in the Lord completely. I wonder how many children he would send to us if we did that. Would we be able to handle them all? I am very healthy and have great pregnancies, but do I want to be pregnant again and again? But…are we going to find the most peace and joy in our existence by giving up this control?
Sorry this ended up being so long…a blog post in its own right…but I do thank you for allowing me to get this off my chest as I haven’t felt comfortable sharing it with very many people…and when I do, people downplay my dreams and make me feel like I just made them up.
“Or does God give the impressions that He knows will motivate us to do the things He needs us to do?”
Interesting question and I think the answer is probably yes.
“but I am also starting to wonder if this whole situation was meant to nudge us into giving up our control over our childbearing and trust in the Lord completely. I wonder how many children he would send to us if we did that. Would we be able to handle them all? I am very healthy and have great pregnancies, but do I want to be pregnant again and again? But…are we going to find the most peace and joy in our existence by giving up this control?”
For me I see it as an issue of giving up control as well. It is such a challenge to do so, but I think there can be amazing blessings from it.
“when I do, people downplay my dreams and make me feel like I just made them up.”
Some people just don’t understand and I think it is because they receive revelation in other ways and can’t comprehend dreams being a revelation. But you know what is real and what God wants you to do, trust in that. I have had plenty of friends who have had similar dreams and trusted in them.
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