How does one know?

Gosh I'm struggling right now. Maybe it's all in vain, I don't know. All the really important decisions in my life, I've really felt the Lord guiding me. Serving a mission. Marrying Matt. Having children. Moving to VA. Changing career paths. Moving to a bigger house.

I always knew I wanted a lot of kids. As a little girl, I was always drawing pictures of my future house, my future husband, a page FULL of kids, and of course dogs and cats. Maybe even had a few gerbils in the picture. Today, I hate pets.

7.

I always wanted 7. Why 7? I don't know.

When I was pregnant with #7, I remember thinking, "now I'm gonna get all fat again, but that's OK. It's my last."

Then I miscarried.

And I had a distinct feeling that the 6 children I had were literal gifts from God. He ALLOWED me to have them. And He didn't allow me my 7th. And it was His decision. And worrying about getting "fat" was about as shallow as a puddle.

And I suddenly felt like if it were the Lord's will that I had more than 7, then I was perfectly fine with it.

But then I read that the Duggar lady had the same experience. She miscarried her first, and felt, "We'll have as many as the Lord sends us." She has 19 kids.

There's got to be a reasonable stopping point, ya know?

After giving birth to our 7th, both Matt and I felt so strongly the Lord's hand and the sense that, "Everything will be OK." And we felt that if the Lord wanted to send more, we'd be honored.

Anyways, the thing is, I feel like, when we're all together, that "someone is missing" feeling. Matt says it's the dog I won't allow (permanently) into the house. Whatever. I've felt that from the very beginning. My question is, does that feeling ever go away?

I've had this discussion with a handful of people, my sister included. Many of my friends absolutely love babies, would have more. But for one reason or another, KNOW they are done. I don't KNOW that I'm done.

And I think I have every right to KNOW. It's an extremely important decision.

Is there one or even two up in Heaven, wanting to join our family? Is "Feeling" like the family's not complete a legitimate feeling? Do I want more because "more is better?" (I don't agree with this, but you get the scartastic undertone.) I've been perfectly healthy physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually thus far, would having more severely compromise this?

Personally, I KNOW I'm cut out to handle a large family. I don't stress over little things, boogars on my sleeve don't ruffle my feathers, I love seeing the kids behave as I did as a little kid, enjoying life as I did. I multi-task with the best of them, I laugh a lot. Matt's a great husband and an even greater father. We're on the road to a financial lifestyle that would support a large family. Probably couldn't take the family to Germany anytime soon, but they do get Hanes socks.

We've prayed about this, discussed the issue together. Matt would like to be done. I would like to be done. But then we ask ourselves, "do we want to be done for selfish reasons?" And who knows, maybe my eggs are all dried up and there's nothing but an echo in my fallopian tubes, so this could be a waste of time issue, who knows.

So my question is really to all you mothers of 6, 7, 8, 10, 12 kids. When you finished, how did you know? And I'm not really wanting to ask this to moms who hate being moms, but have kids left and right anyway. Because I won't agree with whatever your reason is. I'm really more concerned with asking moms who absolutely love being a mom, have defeated cry-outs at times, keep an orderly (not OCD Martha Stewart clean) house, can say no to requests of service because you know your limits, have regreted yelling the way you did the other day, and eat pizza from Ceasers every once in a while.

I'm interested in hearing from the regular mom with lots of kids. How did you know to stop or make the decision to have the number of kids you do have?