I'm concerned about the cost of raising multiple kids in the sense of being able to provide adequate shelter and food and some "enrichment activities", be it sports, music lessons, etc. I don't believe in spending excessively on children, and I don't think it's necessary to pay for their entire education, but I would like to save something for them. The more kids I have, the less I can spend on or save for each, but there are probably economies of scale. Spending quality time with all of them is a concern too.
Vacations are nice, but I'm fine with low key camping or road trips to visit family while they are young, when I was a kid most of our vacations were like that. But I would like to do some more international travel before they are born, because I've always loved to travel and I realize that it's way more expensive and difficult with a family.
I did mean impact on my body in the sense of health issues, not aesthetics. Best case, I get conceive easily, have a low risk pregnancy, natural birth, recover easily and breastfeed. Obviously, lots of things could go wrong and then I'd have to deal with the consequences to my own body and impact on future pregnancies.
I'm not opposed to adoption, but there are a lot of things to consider with that, like raising older kids who have previous traumas, waiting a long time or spending a lot of money to get a child, and potentially raising a child with a different racial background that I'm not familiar with. Not saying I wouldn't do it, but having my own kids is preferable if at all possible.
Career wise, if my partner earns enough to support the family, then I think I'd like to be the primary caregiver and household manager. I think it allows more time to spend with kids, more insourcing of household tasks and the time to cook healthy meals and save on daycare and commuting. Best case would be to FIRE before starting a family, but that seems highly unlikely given the timeline. It might be possible to save a lot, leave it to grow, and live off one income, it would really depend on our income and expenses. If I did work between kids, it would just be for short periods and I'd have big gaps by the time they were in school and I'd go back to work, so my lifetime earnings would definitely be affected and I need to figure out if I'm okay with that.
There's so much to consider, but the discussion here has given me a lot of stuff to think about. I feel like I'm quickly shifting from young, unencumbered student to being a grown up with serious decisions to make, it's exciting and scary at the same time. I like making plans but it's hard when there are so many shifting variables involved, and I have to accept a certain amount of uncertainty with this kind of thing.