Three has been my favorite number for as long as I can remember. I pick 3 on any type of lottery game, and anytime someone says “pick a number 1 through…..” I pick 3. Since elementary school I remember doing this. If I find a shirt or pair of shorts I really love, it’s likely I own them in three colors.
For some reason though, there is a lot of negativity surrounding the number 3.
“Bad luck comes in threes.”
“The THIRD wheel in a relationship.”
“A THREE ring circus.”
“Two is company, THREE is a crowd.”
We have two children, but for years I’ve told my husband that when I picture us old and gray, I picture us having three kids. It was always just a comment in passing, but nothing either of us ever took very seriously. We are extremely content and happy with our two kiddos. They’re in school and they’re good friends, and they are easy to travel with. We are past all of the sleepless nights, the diapers, wrestling with a pack n play and stroller while traveling, etc. The idea of three kids has become a distant thought that neither of us give much attention to anymore; we truly thought our family was complete.
BUT. Just as I gave away our very last baby item a few weeks ago, I noticed some hormonal changes that I wrote off as “that time of the month”. But that time never came. I’ve never had a “regular” cycle, so I still wrote it off. Then my dog started following me everywhere around the house, like she has with my last two pregnancies, and I started to panic a bit. I took two home pregnancy tests, had my OB draw blood, and had a sonogram showing a healthy sac and heartbeat and I was STILL in denial.
I couldn’t really pinpoint why I wasn’t as excited about this pregnancy as I had been about the first two, and why I was having such a hard time wrapping my mind around having three kids. But then I thought of all of those idioms at the beginning of this post and realized there is a lot of negativity around THREE and a little bit of fear set in.
Will my youngest become the ignored middle child?? How will I have the brain function and heart capacity to give enough love and attention to three kids? I only have TWO hands. How will all four of us get across the street? My two kids share a room, which makes bedtime easy. How will I add a third to that mix and be in two rooms at once for bedtime? Do I have to stick one kid all by himself in the third row of the car to make room for a new car seat in the second row? I just got a tattoo with my two kids’ names. Where am I going to put another name?? I had a plan to have all my kids before 30, and now that is out the window.
Amidst all of those seemingly DUMB thoughts and senseless worries (thank you motherhood anxiety), I had a bit of a premonition. This was my lucky number 3! The number I’ve loved and bet on my entire life. Of COURSE I would be having a third baby. And guess how old I will be when this baby is born? Thirty-THREE. And he or she will be born in the year twenty-twenty-THREE.
So from now on when I think of the number three, I will not think of the negative phrases that surround the number. Instead, I will think of Bob Marley’s lyrics to “Three Little Birds” – “Don’t worry about a thing. ‘Cause every little thing is gonna be alright.”
We can’t wait to meet you, sweet baby number 3!
