On having more children

Let me start this off by saying I am not pregnant. I repeat, I am NOT pregnant. Okay now that that’s out of the way, on to the topic of deciding to have more children. Ash turned 2 last month and I turned 35 in August and so I currently feel like I’m plucking flower petals, should we or should we not have another baby.  A few months ago, I was talking to a fellow nurse practitioner, mother of two, who is almost 30 years my senior and she said to me, “It’s not something you think about like that Amyre, ya just gotta do it.”  I am totally pro Nike right now but I’m on the fence about applying their tag line to my uterus.

About eight or nine months ago Brian woke up with a high baby fever.  We were sitting in church and he leaned over and whispered something like, “I want to have more babies…I want 3 boys…We can start trying now…”  I think my response was something like a chuckle as I averted my eyes and stared at the pulpit, a smart remark, “Did Jesus just tell you this?”, or a side eye, or maybe it was a combination of all three, I can’t remember the specifics.  At any rate, at that time I was not physically or mentally ready to be pregnant again.

I’ve had a few moments of baby fever since our little church chat. Of course by the time I got baby fever, Brian’s fever had broken so, yeah (hashtag dilemma, hashtag missed my window).

I’ve had a few of my patients (who have I have taken care of since I was pregnant with Ash) say, “Oh you have to give Ash a sibling, a playmate…”  Yeah, I could see the benefit in Ash having someone to talk to about me and Brian behind our backs when he gets older and when he feels we are being lame or irrational.  But what if they aren’t even close?  Brian’s response to that is, “We will raise them to be close.”  Ok.

I was talking to another fellow nurse, mother of two (only about a decade my senior), a couple of weeks ago and she was telling me her story of how she initially did not want to have any children but she ended up getting pregnant with her daughter. When her daughter was 4, she and her husband decided to have another baby because she wanted to give her daughter a playmate.  Except, getting pregnant wasn’t so easy like the first time.  It took her two years of trying before she got pregnant with her son.

Her children ended up being seven years apart, so the “playmate” thing didn’t work out quite like she had planned and her daughter apparently took on more of a “motherly role” to her little brother.  Her advice to me, “you should give Ash a playmate and start trying now.”  She followed up with, “but there is no right or wrong answer (to having more children) …”

Ok, moment of candor, there are times Ash is in some type of “mood” and I’m so exhausted and stress ridden from trying to juggle working motherhood that I think I literally feel my hair turning gray.  At those moments, I think, “Why in the world would you add to this?  You would have to confess some degree of madness to commit yourself to such persecution.” But, the storm always eventually calms to a nice divine warm drizzle and I find myself staring at him while he is playing or engaged with Sesame Street, feeling pure love.  I love being his mommy.

Children have this special beautiful magic ability to show you the depths of love.  When we lost Ethan, I literally remember saying, “I don’t want another baby, I want Ethan…”  I felt my heart would never love or connect again to another child like it had with him.  Cheryl (she has been doing my nails for over 10 years and is basically the absolute best so I refuse to go to anyone else) has three children.  She said to me once, “you think you couldn’t possibly love your next child as much as you do your first, but you do. You realize how big your heart is. …You love all of them for different reasons…”   Maybe it’s the love that drives your madness to keep going back for more.

When it comes down to it, I know Brian and I could picture ourselves with more children, but I think the biggest factor for us has been pregnancy itself.  There are some women who describe their pregnancy like a trip to Disney World, totally magical and beautiful and the happiest place to be.  Pregnancy has not been that way for us.  Both of my pregnancies and births were hard, very hard, with multiple trips to the doctor’s office, two sometimes three times a week, days of labor, and scary complications. So with getting pregnant again, we are going in with our eyes wide open knowing that it’s going to be a fight to build our family. Honestly sometimes the thought of that part seems like a mountain I can’t imagine climbing again.

I’ve never been skydiving before but I feel like I am all suited up with my goggles on and both hands holding on tightly to something very anchored to the airplane as I nervously and cautiously peek over the edge of the door in uncertainty at the far awayness.  Could I actually make that jump?

Maybe I am overthinking it all.  Sigh.  Well… if we do get pregnant again, I’ll write about it **eye winkie emoji**.  Until then, I am going to book a trip for three to Disney!

Anybody else thinking about having more children? What are your thoughts? Would love to hear! Xo

Photo credit: Timothy Blanks

 

P.S. 4 things I hated hearing after we lost Ethan…