Curly, just further to what you said about the support. This is why it's really important to try to build your village. If you don't have family you expand your friendship circle so that you build your own little support network that helps out when you need it. We do have a village made up of family, but we choose to do it all on our own. It's tough and we aren't doing it to be martyrs and say we did it all ourselves, but thats just the way we want to do it. We've been so lucky that we've not had kids with sleep issues till we had #4 and in all honesty its been pretty cruisy for us really so I think I have had it a lot easier than a lot of other people we know, but then you make the most of it. If life hands you lemons you make lemonade kwim?

In regards to being able to spend enough time with your kids, well you make time. You can be just as busy with half as many children and you still need to make yourself find the time. It does all work out though.

With sibling relationships, we have 6.5yrs between our DS's and they are the best of mates. THe age hasn't been a barrier at all to them forming a very close bond and it melts my heart to see it. Sometimes he is the pesky little brother, but you get that with a closer gap too.

Either way hun, you have alot of food for thought over the next few years