Mum who had 10 children in 10 years welcomes 11th [photos]
Courtney Rogers never planned to have a big family, but as soon as she had her first baby she completely fell in love with being in a mum.
The 36-year-old, who has rarely been without a bump or a newborn in the past 10 years, has just welcomed her 11th child, a beautiful baby girl called Caris Audrey.
Along with her pastor husband, Chris, 32, she is already looking ahead to baby number 12 – although they’ve said they will wait a bit longer this time around.
While you might assume that life in such a big family is chaos, they have a well-structured system in place, which is vital as Courtney and Christ homeschool all of their children.
Courtney, from Santa Fe County, New Mexico, USA, explains: “I don’t know why I like it so much – I don’t think I ever imagined having this many children when we got married.
“I just knew that I wanted children and when I became a mother, I realised how much I loved it.
“I love being a mother and I would really like to have another one.
“We’ll probably wait a year or two to try.”
Caris’ birth was traumatic and mum and baby were in hospital for over a week, but they are now back home and adjusting to life in a family of 13.
They are settling back into an everyday routine, with the parents home-educating all the children over four or five years old and working on their small farm.
Courtney said: “We do plan on homeschooling all of them, so we haven’t been affected at all by the school closures in the pandemic.
“They get a lot of time outdoors too and this year we want to grow our farm a little bit more.
“We weren’t impacted too much but some other big families struggled with the limits at the grocery stores – that was harder on big families because we have a lot more people to feed.
“We are growing our farm and want to be able to produce all our own meat, so we don’t have to worry about that.
“Now we are back in school and everybody has settled again.
“For the last two to three years, we do school all year. We do it in the summer and on Saturday and Sunday if we have to.