I have been asked a few times why I had 12 kids.  While I stammered the first 2 times that was asked me, now I can articulate why:  because I felt it was my duty to God.

If you are reading this section, you probably want to know more, so with permission from Annie, I will share.

I will start off by telling you that I did not propose to Annie as follows: “Annie, I want to have 12 kids; will you marry me?”  I don’t think that would have gone over so well all those years ago and I didn’t know then that I would get so much joy from having 12.

I can also tell you that I am not a person who always longed for 12 kids.  I don’t have what I will term as “baby fever” which I will define as an overwhelming desire to have another child so I can hold or be with that new baby.  Although as I have grown older, I have found that one of the things I treasure is holding a young baby or child.

Going into marriage, I thought I might have 8 and Annie thought we might have 5.  I think we got these notions from the families we grew up in as I had 7 siblings, and Annie had 4.

I don’t remember how far we were into our marriage before we made a goal to have 10.  I think we must have decided that when we already had 6 or 7.  When we got to 10, we kept going and were blessed with 2 more.

But what drove us to have so many children?  When I was a young man in my mid 30’s, I began an intensive study of the words of the prophets.  From my studies, I concluded that if the man and woman were healthy both physically and mentally, that God wanted them to have a large family.  In fact, under those circumstances, I concluded that is was selfish for them not to.

Furthermore, the man and woman should not wait until they were well-established, until they had substantial savings, owned a home, finished college, or what not.  God’s first commandment to Adam and Eve was to multiply and replenish the earth, and that commandment had not been rescinded.

It helped that Annie was blessed to be very good at having babies.  Although she had some morning sickness in the first few months, she was able to carry babies well and deliver them with perfection.  People talk about children that come out with cone heads.  None of ours did.  Only on our first did Annie do an epidural.  Unless someone knew her very well, they couldn’t tell Annie was in labor.

I want to tell a funny story about Annie and delivering children.  When Annie was pregnant with our second child, I went to Provo, Utah, for a semester to finish up my classes for my Computer Science Master’s degree.  My law program allowed me to take some credits from a different major, so I took advantage of it for one semester.

One day in the morning I got a call from Annie.  She said, “Your child is coming today.”  I booked the first plane I could from Salt Lake City, but when I arrived, our child, Adam, had already arrived—but not without some drama.

Specifically, when Annie got to the hospital the doctor told her that she was not ready and that she should go home.  Thank goodness my mom was with Annie.  She suggested that they go on a short walk around the hospital.  They did so and 30 minutes later, Annie delivered Adam.

But that experience affected Annie.  She was embarrassed.  She thought she was ready, but the doctor said she was not.  She must have made a silent vow that she would not go to the doctor in the future unless she was sure the baby was about to be delivered.

I can’t remember what child it was where we went to the hospital, but it must have been our 8^th or 9^th.  We were sitting in the waiting room, and the nurses were casually moving around waiting for some unknown reason before they would admit Annie.  My stoic wife Annie—about to give birth right there—was showing no signs of pain or distress.  Finally, I said to the nurses, “This is our 9^th child, and the nurses have only had to catch one.”  It achieved my desired result: the nurses jumped up and started running around in a flurry of activity, and Annie did not have to deliver our 9^th child right there in the waiting room.

I’m sure you have many more questions about timing, etc.  I believe that the decision about how many and when to have children is a personal, private joint decision that rests with the husband, the wife, and God.  But I would say that if I had to go back in time knowing what I do now, I would go through all the trials of having 12 children and have even more.