Please be honest...should we try for baby number 2?

This is kinda long, but if you have time PLEASE READ!! I really need advice right now...

Ok so my boyfriend and I have been together for 6 years now. But we were childhood friends. We ended up getting pregnant with our first 2 years ago. He is now 16 months. We’re 25 years old.

When I got pregnant all we were thinking was we need to buy a house, we need to get married, etc. We were doing fairly well with savings, but unfortunately he ended up loosing his job and we ended up having a few unfortunate events happen such as our car breaking down, so we had to use our savings.

My boyfriend now is self employed. For him just starting off he’s doing fairly well. Some weeks are better than others. But on average he makes about the same if not a little more than he did when he was working, the only exception is we don’t have benefits. But living in Canada, we have free health care as well as a lot of medications are free. It’s good because he’s home a lot more to help out with our son. But worse comes to worse, he had someone that can give him a good paying job with benefits if his business doesn’t work out.

Right now I am a stay at home mom. I was planning on possibly running a home daycare to make some extra money and have my son have some social interaction. But right now we’re doing ok with me not working. It’s tight, but we’re ok. We also get baby bonus for our son, and would for our next child as we live in Ontario.

We’ve been talking for a few months now and my boyfriend really thinks we should have another baby. He thinks it would be good for our son to have a sibling. If I got pregnant today they would be 25 months apart. So the longer we wait, the bigger the age gap obviously. I really do want another baby, but I’m a little nervous about how hard it’s going to be, and I’m worried about money a little, although I really didn’t find having our son to be that expensive. I also bought a lot of neutral colour clothing the first year of his life on purpose. I still have all my baby items, so there wouldn’t be much we’d have to buy. We also do plan to have at least 3 kids, and it would suck for our son to be so far in age and his siblings close in age (that’s what it was like with me and I hated it - I had no one my age - not even cousins, which is like my son now).

Now we obviously still want to buy our own home, but the way we look at it is that we can buy a home any time, but we can’t turn back time. Obviously we want to get married as well - but again, we’re thinking differently now. I was even thinking of eloping and then later down the road when we have more money we will renew our vows and have a big wedding that I always wanted.

We also still live a good life. We are renting a beautiful brand new 3 bedroom home, we’re not starving, we have a car, nice furniture, etc. The only thing is u don’t have my license yet. I suffer from bad anxiety - which yes I need to fix that, I plan to talk with a psychiatrist soon, then hopefully I will get my license.

My boyfriend mentioned this to his parents that we were thinking of trying again. And they were so excited and said we should and that it won’t be that much harder. His siblings and friends are all saying to do it. When I mentioned it to my family yesterday they weren’t happy about it, they said that I should buy a home first, they said that we should wait. Now I just feel weird about it...almost stupid. My whole entire family is judgmental and we’re going on a vacation soon, so if I’m pregnant then I’m worried everyone’s going to be judging. I told my two best friends and they both said to wait...Also I worry that what if it takes us a while to conceive?

I have an appointment next week to take my IUD out, I’m not sure if I should cancel it or not...

After reading this, what do you think we should do? I know at the end of the day it’s my life, not yours, but I just really want to know!