XSLT - First Time Matching a Template

I am writing a XSLT stylesheet to convert XML to HTML (as many people do).

Well my dilema is that I need to output a certain row of a table ONLY the first time the template match occurs.

For example-

xml:
<parent><child>jack</child><child>jill</child><child>joe</child></parent>

html:
<table>
<tr><td>IVE GOT CHILDREN!</td></tr>
<tr><td>jack<td></tr>
<tr><td>jill</td></tr>
<tr><td>joetd></tr>
</table>


this is what im trying to accomplish, where the "IVE GOT CHILDREN!" displays the first time on the match of child node, however the other two times it does not output.

This is difficult without true "variables" in XSLT.

Please help!