Three's a Crowd
By Stacy Bronec
@stacybronec
“I don’t have anyone to push me!” Nora called from the old, wobbly swing set.
I nudged my hair from my damp forehead with the back of my arm and paused to look at her, trying not to breathe too deeply. I stood inside my chicken coop, the smell of ammonia filling the crisp air. The bitter cold temperatures had kept me from cleaning the coop for weeks, but on that day, the sun was shining, and it was above zero, so I spent the afternoon scooping out the dirty straw.
Leaning out the coop door, I shouted back, “You have to pump your legs! You can do it!”
My two older kids, ages ten and eight, wouldn’t be home from school for a few more hours. Until then, it was just my four year old and me, as usual. As I tossed the dirty straw from the coop into the wheelbarrow, I felt the familiar tug of guilt that I wasn’t playing with her.
“I’ll come push you when I’m done, okay?” I called to her across the yard, then stepped back inside the coop. I heard her chattering to herself, and I smiled because she never stops talking. She has the most animated facial expressions—her lifted eyebrows and scrunched-up nose perfectly punctuate her words. Nora bounces into a room with her light brown hair and hazel eyes, and astounds everyone with her expansive vocabulary. Despite speaking in complete sentences, she still mispronounces some words. I discourage my older kids from correcting her, because I don’t want her to stop saying, “I have to tell you something! It’s importmant!” or “fermember” instead of remember. And I love how her apologies come out, “Shorry!”
Our farm yard was quiet, except for the scraping of my shovel on the rough wooden floor, and the occasional chirp of a bird, testing its voice. But then, I heard the rattling of the swing’s chains, and Nora saying, “pump your legs.”
I couldn’t help but wonder, if my big kids were home, would they even play with her?
***
“You can’t have three kids. You need an even number—two or four. Someone will always be left out if you have three.”
I’m one of two kids. My younger sister has two kids. My mom is one of two girls, and my dad is one of two boys.
But my mom’s mom, my grandma, who passed away when I was young, was the middle child of three girls. As family legend has it, she sometimes struggled being in the middle of two sisters with strong personalities, feeling like the mediator—a role she sometimes resented. She went on to have two kids and told my mom how hard it was to be one of three. My mom took this advice to heart, eventually passing it to my sister and me.
I was never one of those women who knew they wanted a certain number of kids or dreamed of having boys or girls. But deep down, I couldn’t unhear that advice.
“You can’t have three kids. You need an even number—two or four. Someone will always be left out if you have three.”
***
Not long after I announced my first pregnancy, I started receiving advice—some I asked for, and some I did not. In the early days of motherhood, there were so many decisions to make, big and small. And with this tiny new person entrusted to me, all the decisions felt big. It was hard to know which advice to keep and which to toss. As a new mom, I stretched muscles I didn’t know I had, including learning to trust my gut.
Don’t hold him all the time—you’ll spoil him!
You can’t spoil a baby!
Don’t give him a pacifier; he’ll be confused about breastfeeding!
Give her a pacifier; it will help her sleep.
Sleep train!
Babies don’t need training!
You can’t send them to daycare; don’t you want to raise them yourself?
They need socialization; they can’t stay home with you all the time!
You plan to homeschool, right? Public school is awful!
You can’t homeschool; they won’t have any friends!
Sleep when the baby sleeps!
Don’t forget about self-care! (Taking a shower doesn’t count as self-care.)
Enjoy every moment! It goes so fast!
Ask for help when you need it.
***
Two days after giving birth to my second baby, Allie, my midwife had come to our house for a home visit. She was there to check on the baby and me—a perk of delivering at the birth center, rather than the hospital. She’d taken Allie to my bedroom so I wouldn’t have to watch when she pricked her soft, wrinkly heel for the routine newborn blood test. I sat at the kitchen table, tears streaming down my face, hearing my baby wailing. Afterward, Allie snuggled into my swollen chest; my milk had just come in. I breathed in the top of her head, her dark, wispy hair tickled my nose. My mom sat in a chair next to me, talking with the midwife.
Once the midwife waved goodbye, I’d looked at my mom and whispered, “I could have another baby.”
My mom nodded at Allie, asleep on my chest. “You just had a baby.”
This was the first time this thought had crossed my mind—the idea of having more than two kids. Even though I had just given birth and was still wearing a diaper myself, I already knew I wanted another baby. At that moment, I didn’t weigh the pros and cons or consider anyone else’s advice. Although hormones surging through my body were likely the root cause of this initial feeling, a seed was planted—stronger than the advice I had heard over the years.
I’d smiled and shrugged, gazing down at my newborn. “I know.”
***
As I buckled myself into the car, tears pricked the corners of my eyes as I looked at Nora in the rearview mirror. “How was your last day of school?” I asked. It felt like just yesterday I dropped her off on her first day of Pre-K.
“It was good. Can I have little blankie?” she asked, buckling herself into the carseat. I handed her a hot pink Bento box, then passed back her pink unicorn lovey and another blanket to cover her up. This had been our routine for the last nine months of her half-days of school. Some days she fell asleep, her head bobbing on the gravel roads; other days, she talked non-stop about school and her classmates on the 45-minute drive home to the farm.
This fall, she’ll go to school full days, riding the bus to and from school—we won’t have as much time just the two of us. I thought back to the countless hours we’ve spent together over the years—from the hours in the car to the hours at home. It’s bittersweet picking her up on this last day of school. But I’m holding onto the memories of these days together, and the times she told me, “I love spending time with just you and me, Mommy.”
***
“When are you due?”
On a trip to pick up fertilizer from another farmer, I’d stood with his wife while her husband and mine loaded the back of our pickup with boxes of fertilizer. My two kids, Rhett and Allie, had run around the yard with her two kids. Farm kids always make fast friends, excited for a playmate other than a sibling when they leave the farm.
“At the end of May,” I’d smiled, touching my belly. “It’s gone so fast.”
She’d nodded, “I think we’re done.” She smiled toward her kids. “I was the youngest of three. My older siblings were really close,” she hesitated, looking down at the brown grass beneath her feet. “But my mom was my best friend.”
Knots formed in my stomach as I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I’ve heard that having three kids is hard.” I’d rested my hand on my swollen belly and watched my kids, aged three and five, running happily together. They had been best friends for over three and a half years. Allie played tractors with Rhett and was never interested in my old Barbie dolls. She constantly chased after him, always wanting to be at his side.
Even though I was still weeks away from meeting the baby in my belly, I already had visions of having a fourth and making another pair. I wanted to keep the number even—that old advice still echoing in my mind.
***
“No one will play with me!” Nora sobbed from the kitchen table. Tears streamed down her round cheeks, her bottom lip sticking out. Down the hall, Rhett and Allie pulled on their snow pants, getting ready to play outside. “I want to play Monopoly!” Nora cried, setting up the board game on the scratched and worn table.
“Please stay and play one game with your sister, Allie!” I called down the hall. “Then you can go outside!”
For a minute, I wondered if I should force her to stay or bribe her somehow. But my pleas to my middle child, usually the peacemaker, were ignored. My husband, Rich, walked down the hall, trying to convince Allie to stay, too. But with the slam of the door, she’s gone, trailing behind her big brother.
Rich came to the table and rested his hand on Nora’s back, “I’m sorry, sweetie. Do you want to go out and play with them? I’ll help you get dressed.”
“No!” she sniffled, “I wanted someone to play a game with me!”
Rich’s eyes met mine, and we gave each other a knowing look. “She needed a friend,” I said, playfully pursing my lips.
“I know,” he sighed. “We should’ve had four.” This wasn’t the first time we had said these words to each other.
For several years, this was the elephant in the room. I wanted another baby. He didn’t.
He had plenty of good reasons not to. He couldn’t stop himself from doing the math on how old he would be when our youngest graduated from high school. He was already past 40. More kids cost more money. He worried about me taking care of four kids during the busy farming seasons when I’m left to solo-parent for weeks at a time. And his accounting brain practically exploded thinking about paying for four kids’ college degrees. (I argued we weren’t required to pay for anyone to go to college.)
He felt just as convinced that our family was complete as I felt convinced it was not.
Rational thoughts aside, I couldn’t stop wanting another baby. I waited for that magical moment of feeling “done” to wash over me for months, but it never came.
Even though the decision to have a third baby felt right, those warnings I had heard about three kids were never far from my mind. Baby fever aside, I worried our youngest would always be left out.
After I finished washing the breakfast dishes, I sat at the table and played Monopoly with Nora.
***
“Dad, you have to put Ken’s shorts on!” Nora ran down the hall, her bare feet padding down the wooden floors, her Ken doll gripped in hand.
“Aren’t you supposed to be sleeping?” Rich asked, sitting up in bed. We just finished tucking all three kids in after reading stories and giving hugs and kisses.
She shoved Ken into her dad’s hands, “Weeellll, I can’t sleep if Ken doesn’t have pants on!” she exclaimed, eyebrows wagging.
Rich laughed, tugging the black shorts over Ken’s plastic legs. “Okay, now off to bed,” he said, handing the doll back to her and kissing her on the cheek.
I watched them together and tried not to dwell on our regrets or the decisions we’ve made. I could play the “what if” game forever, but it wouldn’t change anything. There is some truth to the advice of not having three kids—I’ve seen it play out before me. Some of the things I worried about have come true.
But it’s not all bad.
That afternoon, I watched Rhett give Nora a piggyback ride across the yard because her boots were too muddy to walk in. Just a few days earlier, Allie attempted to braid Nora’s hair while Nora sat patiently, letting her big sister tug and pull, teaching herself to braid. Last week, on the way home from the bus stop, without prompting, Allie said, “I like being in the middle.”
I think of all the advice I’ll continue to receive as a mom—some I’ll take, and some I’ll toss. In my nearly eleven years as a mother, many of my decisions have been rooted in rational thoughts, weighing the pros and cons, doing the research—I’m a firstborn rule follower—but most often, my gut nudges me in the end.
And advice is just that—advice.
There will always be decisions we make as parents that we might regret later, and some we’ll have to find a compromise for. I can’t help but wonder about the decisions we’re actively making now—choices we might not feel the full extent of for years.
Should we send Nora to kindergarten this fall or wait a year? What sports can we let the kids commit to? Will we let them have sleepovers? What age will we give our oldest his first phone?
But I’ve learned there usually isn’t one right answer.
Nora ran down the hall toward her room, fully dressed Ken gripped in her hand. I smiled at the sound of her feet pounding the wooden floors. Our beautiful, vivacious third child—a piece of advice I’m so glad we didn’t take.
Guest essay written by Stacy Bronec. Stacy is an accidental farm girl, wife, mom, and writer whose work explores the seasons of motherhood, marriage, and farm life. Stacy lives with her husband and three kids on their family farm & ranch in rural Montana. Her essays have been featured on Coffee + Crumbs, Motherly, Trailblazher magazine, and she’s a contributing author to So God Made a Grandma. When not writing, she enjoys reading, barre workouts, and eating cake (but usually not at the same time). You can keep up with Stacy’s writing on her Substack, Planting Season.
Photo by Jennifer Floyd.