two, three or more?

I have been thinking : How many children should we have?

In this day and age, most people would agree that it is appropriate to 'close shop' since we already have a boy and a girl.

I now have, in many people's opinion, a perfect family. And I'm absolutely thankful for that!

Edwin has been checking out MPVs. He wants at least one more child. Me? I'm not sure.

Looking at my 2 delightful kids, more children = more fun!

I don't mind pregnancy and childbirth. But it's the first 6 months that terrifies me. I get so stressed out with night feeds, low milk supply and endless bouts of crying.

Babies = breastfeeding. But I have a love-hate relatonship with breastfeeding. From experience with Joseph and Joy-Anne, my babies take forever to feed. I would start feeding at 8am and finish at 9am. Then the next feed starts at 10am and finishes at 11am. This goes on all day! I felt like a full-time cow! If not for my mother's help, nothing else in the house would get done. In spite of how troublesome and inconvenient it seems, I cannot bring myself to not breastfeed simply because it's the right thing to do.

So we've been talking to friends who have more children.

The Godly words of wisdom they impart is to have more children. God's first command (even before the 10Commandments and way before the Great Commission) is to "be fruitful and multiply".

I googled "How many children should I have?" and got some interesting results...

Sarah-Kate Templeton, Health Editor for TimesOnline says, "COUPLES who have more than two children are being “irresponsible” by creating an unbearable burden on the environment".

In his research, sociology professor Hans-Peter Kohler of the University of Pennsylvania, found that people with children are, in fact, happier than those without children.

In comparing identical twins, Kohler found that mothers with one child are about 20 percent happier than their childless counterparts; Interestingly, second and third children don't add to parents' happiness at all. In fact, these additional children seem to make mothers less happy than mothers with only one child—though still happier than women with no children.

With more children, there is the worry of how we would raise them, educate them and care for them? I've only got a pair of hands (and so does every other mother). But as Foong Lin, Lily and Jean puts it.... it's a journey of faith.

Now that I'm a parent, I look at my parents and my in-laws and I wonder how they raised their children. My family of 3 siblings survived on my father's lone pastor's salary. Surely all the holidays, piano lessons, violin lessons and everything else are by God's providence. My in-laws gave all 3 of their children each an overseas university education on teacher's salaries. And we all turned out just fine.

Of course, I have no intention of emulating Nadya Suleman - the single mother of 14 children (with no stable income). Neither will I emulate my maternal grandmother who had 10 children.

I don't want to be irresponsible. But maybe, just maybe....in God's perfect timing.... we will have more.