Do you think we should have another baby?

Ok so my boyfriend and I are 24 years old and we have a beautiful 20 month old daughter. We currently rent a beautiful home. We have a spare bedroom. We have been talking about having another baby. We really wanted our children to be close in age and our daughter is growing up so fast! We don’t have all this money to spend, but we are doing well. I am honestly proud of us.

When I told my parents and grandmother were planning to have another one they told me it’s not a good idea to have another one. That we need to get stable. That we NEED to OWN a home first. That we need to get married first. Then after that if we choose to have another one then fine. It made me feel dumb and just down about the whole thing.

Ok yes, we obviously want to own our own home. Yes we want to get married. Yes, we need to save up and buy a better “family car” But we really want another baby for our daughter. We want her to grow up close with her siblings. I was 6 years apart from my siblings and it sucked so bad. I was always left out. I didn’t even have cousins close in age (just like my daughter). Even now I’m not close with my siblings. I don’t want that for my daughter. Having a close family is very important to me. It always has been. But obviously so is all the other things.

But I feel like you can’t turn back time...I feel like yes we need to get married, yes we need to buy a home, but we realistically can do that with more kids. It’s not like having more kids is going to stop us from doing those things. Yes, it’s more money having children obviously, but how much more really? Plus, we live in Ontario so we get child tax benefit which helps a lot we expenses. I breastfeed too so there’s no extra costs for formula.

I feel like we can get married and buy a home whenever we can afford it and our children won’t even know or care if we are married or own a home. But we can never turn back time on when we decided to have children. And that can actually affect my daughter.

But with all that said... I suffer from anxiety. I am a perfectionist. And other people’s opinions actually matter to me (stupid I know) but I can’t help but think if I get pregnant what is all my family going to think of me? Is everyone going to be talking about us? Thinking we’re stupid? Thinking we should own a home first? Thinking we’re never going to be successful? Will others think it’s weird we’re going to have two children and not be married?

My SO family keeps saying we should have more. So it’s like night and day, so weird!

I’m only asking here because I cried about it. I’m so conflicted on what to do now. I feel like my family stole it from me. If that makes sense?