‘We’d love a girl’: Family welcomes 14th son into their huge brood

Almost everyone has that one family member who tries for years for a girl or a boy baby, only to continue to add to their brood of entirely one or the other. However, not many people will have tried as hard as this mum and dad! 

Seriously though, Kateri Schwandt and her husband Jay are just a couple who adore having a big family, and although they’ve said they would’ve loved to round out their family of beautiful boys with a little girl, they’re done reproducing after welcoming their fourteenth son on Wednesday, the Grand Rapids Press reports. 

The couple from Michigan in the US are reportedly celebrating after welcoming their healthy 8-pounds, 4-ounce baby five days early – despite insisting they’d stop trying after their thirteenth son. Kateri is one of 14 babies herself, and while she and her husband had hoped for a daughter, they’ve said they’re over the moon to add another boy to their huge family. (Their oldest is in his 20s and the youngest, other than the new baby, is just a toddler.)

“I would love to have a girl, but I just don’t think it’s in the cards,” Jay told NBC 4 News earlier this year.

The whole family has received a lot of attention over the past few years thanks to its unusual size but it wasn’t always so rare, of course, and many families just a few decades ago will have had a similar number of siblings.

MLive in Michigan reported that after the couple had their twelfth son, a genetics counsellor calculated that the chance of giving birth to 12 sons in a row was a tiny .02 percent, making their run of boys pretty amazing. The couple were unaware of the fourteenth baby’s sex until he was born and haven’t yet announced his name.

However, according to the Mail Online, Jay has confirmed they really are done having babies. “I’m thinking that this is it,” he reportedly said. “It just feels like this is going to be it, and we’re going to enjoy every second of it.”

After welcoming their thirteenth son, Jay told WMXI: “We are crazy. I mean to each their own, you know what I mean. We have  a lot of friends that have you know one child or no children. You know, we get plenty of comments, you know out there online about you know how crazy we are and how unfair it is and everything. It’s not for everybody. We enjoy it. We love having 12, now 13 kids. It’s fun.”

Are you one of a large number of siblings? Did you have your heart set on having a boy or a girl or were you always just grateful to have healthy children?