One of the first things people want to know, when they find out I’m pregnant with a second child, is how old our first is. She just turned three at the tail end of November, and baby brother is likely arriving in early December, so it’s just over a three-year age difference.

Despite the huge number of people who bugged us about when we were going to have another one, starting as soon as M turned one, most people seem to sagely nod when they hear about our three-year difference, and tell me it’s a great range between ages. While I’ve yet to actually live through it, I can see why it may turn out to be a good split.

While M as a younger toddler didn’t grasp the concept of a new baby and what it’d mean to the family, three-year-old M will happily talk your ear off about how she’s going to comfort baby brother when he cries, get him milk when he’s hungry, share her toys, and rock him to sleep (of course, I am not expecting any of that to actually happen, but one can dream, especially when she tells me she’s going to handle the dirty diapers!).

She’s also old enough that she can be helpful, instead of needing all of our help for herself. She understands (mostly) if I tell her that I can’t pick her up because my big belly is hurting my back; she can help herself to snacks from the fridge; she picks up her toys with some cajoling and she really gets joy out of being a helper. Hopefully that attitude sticks around when we have an infant, because her ability to entertain herself independently, and her willingness to take on small tasks could make our whole expanded household dynamic easier.

HelperM

She’s also all about using the toilet, which is a relief! I would’ve changed two sets of diapers, but I’m really quite glad I’ll only have one kid’s changes to contend with, come December.

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I’m not expecting M to immediately or automatically adjust to being a big sister, just because she’s fiercely protective of her big-girl status, but knowing what I know of her personality and how much she’s grown and changed in the past year, I do think that becoming a big sister at age three will be easier for her than it would’ve been at age two.

On the practical side of things, one unintended but AWESOME side effect of this age range is that, by the time baby brother is heading into childcare, M will be eligible for kindergarten. We can enroll kids in Ontario’s kindergarten system in the year that they turn four, and that’s next year for us — it’s full-day, every day, so we’ll only be paying for one set of childcare fees, not two, which is a major, major load taken off of our finances.

She’s also old enough that, to get baby brother into the already-done nursery, we’re giving her a big girl room which is incredibly exciting, instead of a scary transition/a feeling that something is being taken away from her.

For me, the three-year difference gave my body a good chance to heal from the C-section I had with M, a positive factor in trialling a VBAC had we been able to go that direction. I think it’s also better for a repeat C, too, for what it’s worth. And I’ve had a year-long break from breastfeeding, which is much appreciated.

Our original timing and hopes for a second pregnancy would’ve left us with a smaller age difference between the two, and losing that ideal spacing was one of the things that majorly stressed me out when we experienced our three losses before conceiving this baby. While I’m still sad that we lost those pregnancies, I’ve done a lot of work on looking at the good parts of what we cannot control, and the three-year age difference has a lot of benefits I never really explored until that ‘best’ timing had gone out the window.

If you have more than one child, what are their age differences, and what are the benefits and drawbacks?