From two to three.....

[Fuschia]

I am oldest of 3. Better balance than 2, I think. More relationships - 3 1:1 and 1 of all 3 of us.

[laurac]

Also the oldest of three girls and agree with Fuschia - my sisters are 2 and 6 years younger than me which makes no difference at all now we are in our 20s and 30s, I have an equally good - but different - relationship with them both. When we were children though we were very mean to my youngest sister, completely disinterested in playing with her which meant she spent all her time trashing our things to get our attention. However I also know of other families with two children close together and then a gap to a third and this has worked really well for them with the older children making a fuss of the little one - I think we were just a particularly tight twosome.

I have two girls and definitely want another baby relatively quickly - I have a three and a half year gap between my first two.

[Pickle]

I'm also the oldest of 3, although between me and the youngest there's a 10 year gap so my experience probably isn't relevant. My brother is 4 years younger than me and to be honest we've never been close - but we are very different people and that was obvious very early on. My sister and I have a very close relationship... for the first 16 years or so of her life I did feel a bit like her 2nd Mum (which I loved) but now that she's an adult I don't notice the gap so much.

She definitely got "babied" a lot more by our parents, even now at 26 her and Mum still act as if she's 6!

[The Nappy Lady]

Pickle, your post reminded me of O, who at 4 and a bit years older than C refers to herself as C's "Little Mummy"! Informed me she needs to start drinking tea in the morning as she is a little mummy the other day!

[pebbles]

I'm the youngest of 3 - 2 older brothers. There is 18 months between them and then I'm about 3 yrs younger. I idolise them and always have - even when they kept on beating me up! There have been times over the years that i've been jealous of their closeness (I think as they're boys they just told each other of their antics which they didn't want their little sis to know) and I did find this difficult.

I feel extremely lucky to have 2 siblings and although i mostly see them together I definitely feel that i have different relationships with them both and need them for different things (drunken nights out, shoulder to cry on etc!!)

Bizarrely, although both my husband (oldest of 3) and myself have loved being families of 5, we have always only wanted 2. Very very happy with our 2 and our lives and just feel that having another one would rock the balance - odd and we aren't sure why!!!