PARENTING:With Ireland experiencing a record number of births in recent years, more parents are entering third baby territory but do they know what they are letting themselves in for?

ONLY A few decades ago, three children would have been considered a compact little family in Ireland but now making the leap from two to three or more children can provoke comments like “Aren’t you brave?” or “God, you’ll be busy.”

Smaller families became the norm with the average number of children per family declining from 2.2 in 1986 to 1.4 in 2007. However, with Ireland experiencing a record number of births in recent years more people have been venturing into third baby territory and beyond.

The number of births registered in the State in 2008 was the highest since the end of the 19th century, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO), and Ireland had the highest birth rate in Europe in that same year, above that of the UK, France and Estonia, according to Eurostat.

For some couples who take the plunge, the prospect of being outnumbered by your children can initially be daunting.

“It’s a quantum leap from two children to three,” says Siobhan Von Engelbrechten, an interior designer and now a mother of four.

“It’s hard to define why it’s such a leap but I suppose you’ve only got two hands and there are only two parents and once you decide to have three it’s kind of jumping in at the deep end and making an even bigger commitment to family life.”

She says she was “terrified” when she discovered she was expecting her third child, Anneliese. “The eldest, Thea, was four when Anneliese was born and Tomas was only 19 months, so it was very scary, I didn’t know how I was going to cope with work.”

Kate Byrne, a psychologist and mother of seven, agrees that going from two to three children “is the biggest jump. You have one child each and then suddenly you have to multi-multi-task. A situation often develops where one parent splits their attention between the two older children and the other focuses on the baby. The older children can be put out when visitors are all over the baby, giving presents.”

A number of Von Engelbrechten’s friends gave up work on their third child. “They were all qualified professionals but found it too difficult to keep working. They might have a situation where the eldest is going to school and they have to factor in school runs, on top of looking after a toddler and a baby.”

Giving up work wasn’t an option for her. “Financially having another child was a worry and, if I’m honest, I was really worried about being taken out of the equation career-wise.

“The more children you have, the more the stereotypical role of mother as full-time carer is forced upon some families because of the cost and quality of childcare available.

“I needed to think up something that would pay well without taking up all of my time.” She came up with the idea of franchising her interior design business by training and recruiting associate designers.

She says physically it was very tiring trying to manage a hefty toddler who’s not yet out of nappies, run around after a four year old and mind a baby. She found breastfeeding the baby tricky with a toddler trying to jump on top of her. “Tomas was big and strong and went through a throwing phase and you couldn’t leave him on his own with the baby. You need a lot of help on the third.”

Fortunately her husband, Sebastian, was able to take time off from work “which was just as well because after having a Caesarean section I couldn’t lift Tomas or drive for a good six weeks. My mam and dad collected Thea from playschool two days a week”.

Being self-employed Von Engelbrechten couldn’t take too much time off work and had the help of a childminder three days a week. “It’s just tricky at the start until you find your feet.”

For the first while she says it was a case of battening down the hatches and surviving. “At home my strategy if things started to get hairy was to have play dough, DVDs and scissors and glue on hand to keep the older ones occupied. We had to introduce more structure because ultimately there’s no freedom without structure.”

She had her fourth child, Sebastian, nine months ago and says this one has been the easiest by far. “The other three were so close together in age it was all a bit of a blur. They are now older and I don’t have to look after a baby and a toddler. It’s like I can go back and re-live having a baby but at an easier pace.”

For some, the logistics of having more than two children can be a deterrent. Going on holiday with three or more young children can also be a daunting prospect particularly if they are close in age and then there’s the often huge expense of childcare if both parents work.

Full-time day care in a creche for a baby is often as much as €1,000 a month while fees for older children range from €650-€900 a month. It can also mean having to buy a people carrier if all of the children require baby seats. Simple things like going to the supermarket and out to restaurants can be a hair-raising experience and babysitters are harder to come by.

Kate Byrne says if going places with three or more children becomes an issue, “part of the problem could be that you are looking at yourself as an above average sized family and putting your own connotations on the situation and going into a restaurant with the attitude that you’re about to invade with your children”.

She says the key is to not worry about impinging on other diners. “Concentrate on yourself and the children and don’t worry about what other people think or any looks they might be giving you, it’s not important.”

Lorna O’Callaghan says she decided to have a third child because she and her husband felt two children was “too neat” with “just one child relying on the other”. She says while three is great fun, it can be hectic. “The house is full of noise and there’s no getting away from it, it’s just full on.”

In the first two to three months after Oscar – her third child – was born she spent time concentrating on the baby while her husband dropped the other two children off to the childminder, made meals and “let me recover from the birth and get breastfeeding established”.

She describes the arrival of Oscar, now two, as being “suddenly pushed into family life with a capital F and there’s no way of getting away from it any more”.

The logistics of having three children meant spontaneity went out the window with huge preparation involved in making even the shortest trip.

“We didn’t go too far for a long time because it was physically too hard to get out the door,” she says describing how just as they were going out the door, one child might need a nappy change while another would ask for a snack or want to go to the toilet.

“In the end sometimes I’d just take off their jackets and say let’s watch a video.”

Among the lifestyle changes they made was a move from their two bedroom house – which was sold two weeks before Oscar was born – into a bigger family-sized house. She says a trip to Tony Kealys to buy a baby seat for Oscar was an eye opener when she discovered a third child seat wouldn’t fit into the back of her Renault Scenic. “What do other people do?” she asked the sales person who replied “buy a seven seater”.

She says the big challenge is to cater for the needs of all three children – Ronan (six), Tara (four) and Oscar (two) – who are all at different stages.

“There’s a lot of compromise involved but it can be great fun. While there can be aggro between the older two, they both get on very well with the youngest.”

Kate Byrne believes that by child three a parent usually learns to let go a little.

“By number three you have it down to a fine art, the attitude becomes more ‘if my son is wearing pink trousers and my daughter blue, then so be it’ but if you have to modify your lifestyle to enable you to have more children it’s important you make any changes without resentment, otherwise you might never fully enjoy the children.”