Recently, I have been contemplating whether our family is complete or not. It’s such a big, big decision for a woman to make. I am in my prime baby-making years and evolutionarily speaking, I’m wasting it. However, reason quickly takes over and I think about how many people are currently on this earth and the two beautiful little girls that I have been given, and one more (although I would love to have a baby again) doesn’t equate in my mind.
When I was pregnant with my first daughter, I can remember being terrified of the unknown. Would I be a good mother? Could I adequately tend to her needs in the proper way? What if I messed this up? I assume that these are normal responses and any mother pregnant with her first child has a number of concerns about the future may hold.
I wanted to ensure that I did it right, because babies don’t come with cute, little instruction booklets, nor do they typically offer second chances. I immediately sought prenatal care, after checking out a handy dandy pregnancy calculator. Then, headed to my local drugstore to stock up on horse pills prenatal vitamins (seriously, where were the gummy vites when I was pregnant?). I then combed every.single.website. for information on how to do this “pregnancy thing” properly, such as pregnancy information from Bounty.com, among other parenting websites that offered up a “guide map” for the next 9 months.
I was overwhelmed.
Eat this – don’t eat that. This can be linked to cancer – that can be linked to ADHD – ahhhhhhhhh! I thought that labor was supposed to be the hard part? I was excited for our upcoming arrival, but my goodness is there a lot to learn during those nine months. Of course, regardless of what I put into my mouth, or how many jumping jacks I did, she arrived beautiful, healthy, and perfect in every way. In fact, we enjoyed her so much that we decided to have #2.
Little miss #2 provided her very own set of challenges. I was sick for the first 3 months so severely that I had to crawl off of the couch just to use the bathroom. Once the severe morning sickness subsided, I rather enjoyed my pregnancy and had an easy C-section delivery. Then, she began to cry. She was the loudest baby in the hospital by far and she showed no signs of slowing down.
I was prepared for this. I mean, babies cry. I knew the routine, and I had this baby thing licked (or so I thought). The problem? She kept crying…for two years. Often times when I tell people this story, they think I’m exaggerating. I mean really, can a baby cry for two years? Why yes, yes they can – I lived through it, never once losing my temper, but I’m sure a little of my sanity was gone by the end of it. In fact, I’m certain of it.
So, baby #3, although an endearing prospect, isn’t really going to become a reality. I long to hold a baby and smell their sweet skin, but I don’t know that adding another baby to our family flow would be a good choice for anyone. On the flip side, it’s hard to say goodbye to my baby-making years, and I will look back fondly on them.
How did you decide when you were done? Was it hard to say goodbye?
I thought I was done. Here we had our beautiful four year old, blonde haired, blue eyed son and our sweet two year old daughter. People said to us “You have one boy, and one girl, you should be done.” My parents told me that they worry about me when I am pregnant because I have high blood pressure. But the first two pregnancies went just fine, despite me having high blood pressure.
We live in TN, our family lives in CA. We have a few friends here, and we have lived here for almost 5 years, but we are just now starting to really settle in. So having another baby, we just stopped talking about it. Then when we did talk about it, we knew that if we didn’t have a baby with in the next few months, that it would be more than 3 years in age from our daughter, and more than 5 years apart from our son, so, we decided to try.
One night, one act of intercourse, and BAM! On October 29, 2011, I became pregnant with our third child. I can say I was surprised to say the least. I had a pap smear 2 days later, told the OB that I thought I was having implantation bleeding, but that I wasn’t sure. He was very gentle. 3 weeks went by, test came out negative. I waited till the day that I would have started my period, and there was a light pink line! Then a few days later, a bright pink line! We were both happy, but yet knowing that we will have to go through the whole “baby” thing and c-section, again, is a whole other story.
I love knowing that we will have 3 kids, and not just 2. I always wanted 4, but I will settle for 3. As we could end up with my niece living with us soon, and by then, she will be a teenager. Three girls living in one room, oh what fun that will be! NOT! But that’s another discussion for another day.
Looks like we are having another baby girl! I am over the moon if this is a girl! If it’s a boy, it will really be hard to 2 boys to share a room who are 5 years apart in age from one another, and I really don’t want that. Plus our son has sensory integration disorder, and possibly aspergers, so things are hard enough as it is taking care of him everyday.
But I am so excited about having another baby, I can hardly tell you! Feeling her move around inside me at 11 1/2 weeks. Now I am almost 24 weeks along and feeling her move, kick, do summer saults, hiccup, is so awesome! I look forward to holding her, putting cute outfits on her, and putting little bows in her hair, when it’s long enough, like I have done with my 2 1/2 year old little girl. She loves babies! They are both the perfect ages to be big siblings! I can hardly wait to hold a little newborn baby again! To watch her crawl, walk, run, talk, etc. It’s so awesome, and so amazing!
I know now though that after she is born, I am done. But, if I had the chance and my husband said let’s have one more, I would probably go for it! 🙂
Congratulations! I feel like it’s such a back and forth decision, and a big one at that!
So excited for your new arrival and thanks for sharing your thoughts!
I am not sure how you know if you are done…as we are asking ourselves the same question right now. My daughter just turned 4 and my son is going to be 2 in June. My hubby and I decided that we didn’t feel settled with just 2 and thought 2 months ago that we would just stop trying NOT to get pregnant. We have never had problems getting pregnant before, I was off of BC for 3 months before having DD and I got pregnant first try for the 2nd and it did end 10 weeks later in miscarriage 🙁 but then as soon as we could try again we did and now we have DS 🙂 So now the trying NOT to get pregnant ended 2 months ago and i was not using BC so nothing was in my system but it has been a no go….My heart goes out to people that have to go through this for months cause it is definitely a super bummer. We know that it is God’s timing and not our own, and maybe He is going to tell us that our family is just the right size for us. I don’t know, but I will listen for that peace if He does. But right now I think just one more would be great.