the path to baby bunching: how did you get here?

By Jessica Pond

Many of us become Baby Bunchers willingly, choosing to have children back to back for one reason or another, even if that "choice" was just a matter of not preventing a pregnancy. Others are thrown a loop when they become pregnant with multiples.

I fall somewhere in between and give new meaning to the term "twiblings." We belong to a small (but they are out there!) group of Baby Bunchers who have children whose spacing is of the not-found-in-nature variety. We are not raising twins, and we are not raising normally spaced children, so it's an odd place to be and in a lot of ways it feels like a lonely place sometimes. Twin parents seem to think "at least it's not twins!" and "normal" families seem to think that if they can do it with kids 10+ months apart, what's the big deal? However, many of the challenges we come up against are not a thing like normally spaced families or even twin families deal with.

There are only a few ways to get this type of family, and they all include adoption since you can't get pregnant with and carry children who are less than 8-9 months apart (unless of course someone is extremely premature and you are extremely crazy!). It can only roughly be called an "accident" because you do sign up for it and ultimately choose to go forward with it, but for us and many others, it still is very much a surprise when it happens to you. We were deep in the adoption process and at a post-treatment consult with our endocrinologist, decided to do one last-ditch IVF (we had been in treatment for a few years by this time including 2 failed IVF transfers). We figured that if we happened to get matched with a potential birth family, we'd stop the IVF process for a while, and vice versa. A match would have to happen at almost the same time (we're talking a window of a little more than a week from transfer to blood test) in order for it to even be an issue. Who would think that would happen after years of infertility? And besides, we had practically just started waiting for a match....

Well, we LITERALLY had everything happen at the same time. We were called for an interview on a profile we had put in for and assumed we had not been chosen for, and ended up matching on the spot. The same few days found us pregnant from that last fresh IVF cycle, and within a week we were expecting two babies...both tenuously, but expecting nonetheless. We chose to tell the expectant parents right away and they were very happy for us, which was a relief since we very much wanted to keep the match. In May '07 our daughter was born and in December '07 our son joined the family. Since we have an open adoption, we were able to be at our daughter's birth...at the time I was 9 weeks pregnant...talk about a wake-up call about labor and delivery.

Now, although it's rough sometimes having two kids so close together with no one to really model after in real life, I'm glad we kept our hearts open and jumped into both adoption and biology and were willing to hope. Our family is bigger and infinitely more joyful because there are two and not one (though I am pretty routinely glad that we were not pregnant with twins or triplets). And although they fight (a LOT!), they also love each other with a passion and have each been good for one another. And of course, they have been very good for us.

So now that you know my story, share yours...how did you become a baby buncher?

Jessica is a SAHM to a daughter through domestic adoption and a son through IVF, 6.5 months apart.  She blogs at The Problem With Hope (email [email protected] if you're interested in an invite or visit her blog's public annex at http://virtualworldtourjess.blogspot.com/).

Comments

[Rachel O.]

For me it was an act of God. ;) We were using the same contraception we had successfully used for the first five years of our marriage, but got pregnant with #2 when #1 was 7 months old. They are both little blessings, and I'm very happy to have them!!!

[Kimie]

We are also bunchers through adoption. Our son was 9 months old when his birthmom became pregnant again. So, we adopted that boy too, and are now a happy family of 4. Life is crazy for sure, but as they get older it is getting easier, they are now 2 and 9 months....sleep is elusive but cuteness and fun is in abundance!

[jennifer]

We're baby bunchers because of a "happy accident" ;-) I just wrote a series of posts about my last little baby. Here's the one where we found out about him. http://wp.me/pJB69-2q

[Lindsey]

Our two are 360 days apart. I started the mini-pill 6 weeks post partum, didn't take it as directed i.e. every day at the same time, and {whoops!} got preggo again, just 10 weeks after the birth of my first.

We love our little Irish twins and wouldn't trade it, but miss having a support system of such closely spaced siblings. I've only found online folks with less than a year spacing.

[Sara]

It took a while to conceive the first one, so I expected the same kind of fertility challenges the 2nd time around (we did want another but maybe not quite yet). Not to mention that we were on the "I'm too tired to even think about nookie" contraceptive method. In fact when I kept missing periods, I thought nothing of it, until the 16 week point when I started having pregnancy symptoms (was quite nice to skip to the 2nd trimester). Thankfully, at 17 months apart, there's a little more of a space gap than some of you. It's a struggle, but getting easier with each day.

[Beckie]

We found our way into bunching through adoption as well. We adopted a beautiful baby girl (April 2008) and found out we were pregnant one month later. The beginning was a blur, but I'm already starting to see the benefits of two little girls who are interested in similar things at similar times.

[Shanna]

Ours was adoption and multiples! We tried for 7 years to conceive, then decided to adopt. One year later we had a gorgeous baby girl. When she was 12 months, we had a situation of twins presented to us. We decided to go for it. They were born a few weeks early, and despite some legal issues, we were able to adopt- that led us to having 3 kids in just 15 months!

It has been a whirlwind, but fun also.

[Natasha]

Like a few people I know, it took us longer than we thought (years rather than months) to conceive our first child, so as soon as knew we wanted to go ahead with a sibling, we did - and things happened unexpectedly quickly, hence the 19 month gap between the two. So, it was planned, but not planned!

My good friend was similiar in the timing - went through IVF to conceive her first, was 100% breastfeeding and thinking she had no need to use contraception when she conceived her second without any medical assistance at all! So, not planned, but wonderful :-)

My favourite baby bunching story is in Jools Oliver's book 'From Minus 9 to One' - her first two children are bunched very closely together, and she seems to have done the same with her 3rd & 4th (I don't know whether there was the same lack of planning this time around or not.)

It's great to hear the adoption stories. I didn't realise there was such variety in our bunching families, it's wonderful. I have to say it makes me wonder how I will be next time around as my girls will be 4 and 5 and a half when our next baby arrives!

[Mary]

It is nice to hear all the adoption stories. We adopted our son after 4 1/2 years of infertility and then conceived our daughter 2 months later. We were completely surprised, but thrilled. Having only 11 months between the children has been challenging, but oh so much fun, especially now that they play so well together. Not sure if it would take another 4 years to have another one, we were again happily surprised to conceive our third when our daughter was only 10 months old. In July we will have 3 under 2 1/2!! We never would have believed this was possible just a few years ago!

[jenni]

Number two is a very happy accident. He ended up being the exactly right baby at the exactly right time.