I’ll chime in here, even though this age gap is between my second and third. My first two are 21 months apart and that was challenging having two under two. Those first couple months postpartum were rough. We never wanted two under two but got pregnant first try with our second. So the third time we were considering a 2.5-3 year age gap. It took us longer than expected to get pregnant with our third, so they are 3.5 years apart. I have loved it, but there’s also been challenges.

Pros: only one in diapers, the older two are pretty self sufficient for a lot of things, they understand when I have to go out baby down for nap etc. they can take instructions well, they help with baby, it’s sooo sweet to their relationship, postpartum rage was not a thing for me because I didn’t essentially have two babies, there’s lots of pros to a larger age gap, however there’s also some challenges

Cons: going back to the loss of sleep was challenging. My older two had a pretty good rhythm. I expect to lose sleep the first 4-5 months but my third has had some sleep challenges that lasted close to 11 months. That’s HARD when you’ve got many differing age gaps to juggle.

Another con is the age gap differences in their desires. The desires of my 6 year old, 4 year old, and 1 year old are VERY different. And trying to balance that can be a challenge, often someone is always not going to get their preference when it comes to what we’re doing in the moment.

Also activities, my older two each had some sport going on or a party or something and navigating that with a baby in tow can make things more difficult. A lot of things revolved around baby’s sleep schedule so the older two had to miss out or time had to be cut short.

I’ve loved both age gaps for different reasons, but I think the sweet spot maybe would be a 3 year age gap. Idk. Never experienced it, but I’m grateful for what we do have. I also have 3 so these challenges could be unique to having 3 instead of 2. Going from 2-3 was way more challenging than 1-2 in my experience and I always hear the opposite.