Having a 3yo for a stepchild is nothing like having a ten, fourteen or eighteen year old stepchild. He may accept the situation in the normal course of growing up but more likely is going to learn to resent that his parents are separated.

I don't know how long you've been married but please don't get pregnant until you've reached your second anniversary. First you need a better handle on how this kid is going to grow in the situation. Second you husband is a ex for a reason. You need time to see how he is going to really act in a marriage.

Are you completely pleased with how he parents? Those problems you have with him are going to get worse when it your offspring. How sure can you be he won't treat your kid as a second class family member. Are you sure he's not going along just to keep you happy? Some men are happy with one kid especially if its a boy.

I know you're just talking but keep it at that stage until you are absolutely sure. You don't want to leave someday with a heart broken kid in tow when it could be avoided right now.

He might regress but I'm interested in what others have to say about this subject. I am 15 months apart from my sister and we basically have no relationship except being nice when we see each other or help take care of our parents because we were just forced to be TOO close for most of our childhood.

DH wants another one when BD is 3-4, he and his brother are so he thinks it's the perfect age gap.

me and my sister (same parents) were 8 years apart and it made for more of a second mother type relationship rather than a sibling relationship. i never really got to have a closeness that most sisters experience.

My skids are 13 months apart. I think it's horrible. They fight like crazy, and have no independent lives what so ever. They are the 'XYZ Sisters' at school. They have the same friends, (not many) the same everything. One can't do anything without the other. I think it's obnoxious, like twins, but without the apparent twin bond. My brothers and I all have very big age differences, my oldest brother is 8 years older, and my youngest is 10 years younger, so 18 between them! And my other older brother is in the middle. We had our fights, but for the most part got along pretty well when we were young. My older two brothers got/get along the best, they are about 3 years apart. (they are full brothers, half to me and my little brother) If I wanted to have more than one kid, I would want at least three year spacing.

My brother and I are 6 years apart. We have always been extremely close. That is in large part due to living overseas with few kids. Your friends were who were available including significantly younger siblings. Equally important in how close we are is the expectation that mom and dad had for us and diligently enforced that we would never fight. We could play, we could argue respectfully with each other but if we ever fought with each other then we had to go to the back yard and fight dad 1:1 when he got home from work. We were smart enough to never allow it to go that far.

IMHO a notable gap in age allows each child to have as much focus on them as possible during all phases of their childhood. My parents once told me when I was going through pre teen brain fart years that whatever I was going through could not be allowed to interfere with my younger brothers having their chance at the ages they were at. I had already had my time at that age. Having children with a notable age gap allows the older kids to start having more independence at the same time the younger ones are getting the most parent focus.

At least that is how I analyze the topic.

I am 6 years older than my next eldest brother and was 8 years older the youngest. Sadly, my youngest brother passed away when he was 10mos old so my reference on age difference does not include a long relationship with him.

This strategy also allows you time to adequately test drive the relationship both with your DH and with the 3yo Skid. I am a divorce as well as husband to my amazing bride of 20 years. My bride had SS when she was very young and in a relationship with an idiot that turned out to be a worthless POS. Though we were completely in to each other and wanted to marry we both had reservations due to the baggage we each brought to the marriage. It worked out extremely well though we never did have children together. DW nearly died during her pregnancy with SS and I refused to risk her health or life for another child.

I agree that it's more to do with the personality of the kids than with age, at least within reason. I'm 3 years older than my next sister, and we fought like cats and dogs (we're still not terribly close). There's 6 years between me and my youngest sister, but we are incredibly close.

That said, there is a 12 year difference between my oldest son and my youngest SD (his half sister). He adores her, but I don't think they'll grow up "close", there's just too much of an age gap and he's not going to "grow up with her", you know?

For what it's worth, I'm mom to twins and so I get a lot of twin stories. One lady I was talking to recently said her DH has siblings who are twins. He's apparently very close to one and hasn't spoken to the other in years. So clearly the age spacing made no difference at all there!

Even if you became pregnant tomorrow your SS would be 4 years older than the baby- that is already a pretty big gap. My stepson is 7 and 9 years older than his sisters here- we have him 50/50 (he has a sister 4 years younger and a brother 7.5 years younger at BM's)and they love each other but the girls who are 23 months apart are much closer. They are here all the time and he is so much older and gone half the time. They have to share a room and are usually each others playmate due to proximity. DH and I were aiming for a 2-3 year gap to minimize my time out of the workforce so that worked out especially when I became ill when YDD was 18 months old and we were told no more children ever because we would both be dead. Possible health issues are not a reason to have kids close together but I was 33 when we married and I knew we wanted two. I am so glad we were done at 35. So many of our friends started at 35+ and either couldn't have #2 or had to work incredibly hard to make it happen. Are you thinking about one or more than one? You will want to think about how old you are/will be and work from there.