The Early Conversations
Prior to getting married, my wife and I had multiple discussions about our mutual desire to have kids. We both enjoy kids and have always been clear that we wanted a family that included kids, but during those early conversations, my wife and I had different expectations about exactly how many kids we wanted. (Side note: a theme I expect to become apparent through this blog is mine and my wife’s frequently differing expectations. It’s amazing how two people can simultaneously be so similar and yet so different.) Based on my family experience growing up and the expected financial consequences, a goal of two or three kids has always been appealing to me. On the other hand, my wife initially liked the idea of a large family – six kids! As much as I love my wife and I look forward to growing our family together, the idea of that many kids is daunting to me; not only managing the lives of six little ones, but wondering whether we could afford a house that could reasonably fit a family of eight and provide each of those kids with the many diverse opportunities we hope to expose our children to. Needless to say, I knew I had some work to do either convincing her that a smaller family would still be fulfilling, or figuring out where all the extra money was going to come from to feed a family of eight!
Thinking Evolves
An initial shift in my wife’s mindset came a few years ago when we took a trip to Brazil for the holidays. During the trip we spent a couple weeks with several of her family members: mostly cousins, but also aunts and uncles, several of whom had infants and toddlers of their own. Although my knowledge of Portuguese was non-existent at the time, my wife would translate for me that many of them were explaining to her how difficult having a kid can be. From the time we spent with them, all of the kids seemed reasonably well-behaved, so these insights seemed related to the process itself more than the individual children. Because of the language barrier I didn’t have the opportunity to further question the difficulties my wife’s relatives were experiencing, but even so, the messaging seemed consistent. So consistent, in fact, that when my wife and I discussed family planning after that trip, her goal of six kids became three or four. Thank you Brazil: now my wife and I were in the same ballpark of expectations!
Reality Hits
Leading up to our wedding, my wife and I had decided that we would begin trying to get pregnant soon after the wedding because of the likelihood that it would take several months of trying to be successful. Fast forward to one month after our wedding, which also happened to be one week before our honeymoon (its own challenge I can discuss another time), and my wife is gifting me a guitar with a positive pregnancy test inside to let me know it’s real… we’re pregnant! The joys of being pregnant and knowing we will be able to start a family together were quickly combined with the challenges that a woman’s body can face as she goes through her pregnancy. Unfortunately for my wife, some of the side effects of pregnancy were particularly challenging, especially the nausea. Through the first two trimesters of her pregnancy, one of her favorite sayings was “I don’t know why they call it morning sickness when it’s morning, afternoon, and night”. Thankfully, she was able to get past the nausea and while every stage of pregnancy comes with its own challenges and changes; overall, she has had a healthy pregnancy so far. Despite the excitement my wife has for becoming a mother, it’s pretty clear she is not a big fan of being pregnant. As a result, she’s now of a pretty strong mindset that two kids, and most importantly, only one more pregnancy, is the right amount. While I’m holding out hope there is some wiggle room to potentially agree on a third kid, no matter where we end up my wife and I are much more closely aligned today on our family planning expectations than we were when we were dating.
Change Demonstrates Growth, Not Failure
I share this story not to say that we should all convince our wives to have the number of kids we want, but to highlight that in life, we all have goals, hopes and dreams that are developed with the best of intentions at a point in time. For some of us, those things remain the same throughout various stages of life but for others, they get adjusted to accommodate our new experiences of the realities of what pursuing and achieving those objectives may mean. Although my wife and I are going through this pregnancy together, we obviously experience the process very differently. Despite my jokes to her to the contrary, my wife’s pregnancy experience has been much more difficult than mine, causing her to reevaluate how many kids she wants to have, which makes complete sense. Alternatively, my experience has been more consistent with my expectations before my wife got pregnant, reinforcing my previous desires for children. Neither my wife nor I is right, nor has the better approach; we are both just doing what we think we need to keep ourselves healthy and sane.
As an Ambitious Dad, we’re going to have our own goals in addition to being fathers. Whatever those may be, it’s ok to hold on to those goals and continue to pursue them, but it’s equally acceptable to alter those goals as we learn more about ourselves and what we really want. It’s not so important what the goals are; but it is important to figure out what will make us happy and fulfilled. Being an Ambitious Dad isn’t about being stubborn and sticking to a goal because we feel that we have to, it’s about being the best version of ourselves, which sometimes means adjusting the expectations of what the best version of ourselves is. As long as we do everything we can to maximize our potential in all areas of our lives, I’m confident we can consistently turn our ambition into success.
