Yes, I’m 40 and I Still Want More Kids – What’s Weird Is That Others Don’t

While catching up on all the healthcare appointments I missed because of the pandemic, I find myself having to inform my providers before every test and procedure that there’s a chance I may be pregnant.

I may be old, fat, and already have two girls and a boy (that means I’m supposed to be “done”), but I still long for more children and welcome the possibility – and that makes people wonder why.

Though I’m mostly met with genuine curiosity, I can see the wheels turning in some heads as they consider what kind of backwards and oppressed “Handmaid’s Tale” life I must lead to want another child at my age.

But the truth is, their ambivalence or even hostility to the idea of more children makes me marvel at how our generation has gotten things so horribly, tragically backwards.

Raising children is difficult, but it’s also the best thing that has ever happened to my husband and me, and I can’t imagine how people who are already parents don’t feel the same.

Yes, it’s stressful having a new baby and getting no sleep. I’m painfully aware of how much it costs to feed and clothe and educate children. I also know the anguish of having a medically fragile child and the repeated heartbreak of losing babies to miscarriage.

But I also realize that life is hard no matter what we choose, and avoiding another baby is no guarantee there isn’t discomfort, illness, and tragedy waiting for me just around the corner anyway.

Saying no to another baby in an attempt to hide from all of that is a futile effort at best, and at worst it means turning down the chance to love and care for another person conceived in the “warm rumpled sheets of the marital bed” (thanks, Patrick Coffin).

It turns out that being in a marriage always open to children has been the greatest adventure in my life, and the difficult, heartrending, beautiful journey has made me feel more alive and more fully human than anything else I’ve ever experienced.

But our society has lied to parents, telling them to limit family size because more stuff, more vacations, hefty college funds, and material success are more valuable to them than another baby and more important to their children another sibling.

It’s not their fault, really. People have been so poisoned by the matter-of-fact embrace of contraception for nearly a century that has turned having children into a disease that requires devices, medications, and even bodily mutilation to avoid.

I understand that this isn’t how most people see it – I know this because I was one of them before I was married and had my reversion to the Catholic faith – but that’s what their actions convey even as they judge me for simply wanting more children.

St. Teresa of Calcutta once said, “How can there be too many children? That is like saying there are too many flowers.”

I couldn’t agree more when I see the way each of my own children has left an indelible mark on our family and on the world already.

Every person is born with a mission and purpose that no other human can duplicate, and as a Catholic, I know that each child conceived is another immortal soul that has become part of our family for eternity, even if he or she only survives a few weeks in utero.

And God willing, my living children may someday have kids of their own. For better or worse, our parental influence and genetic lineage will stretch for generations long after we’re dead, gone, and forgotten.

When I think of all the ways that having another child transforms existence — from our little family, into the community and out into the whole human race — I am struck with a sense of humbled awe that we get to participate in all of this.

I may be getting old and gray, but it means I’ve lived enough to see past the serious hardships and grasp the immense joy that another child would surely add to my family.

Add to it that the prospect of an empty nest already looming large in our future, and I can’t help but long for just one more baby to fill it again.

I get that most people have been convinced by the loud and persistent messages from the world to limit their family size and to judge anyone who goes beyond the default 2.2 children.

From that perspective, I get why it’s odd for them to see someone like me who wants more kids when they’ve been told that leisure time, career, money, and stuff bring happiness.

But from where I sit, I think it’s weird that they wouldn’t trade all that for the unbelievable blessing of just one more baby.