Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Baby Addiction

We had planned on having three kids. More actually, but settled on three as a nice number, since the hubby and I both came from families of 3 kids and thought it was pretty fun.  But after the experience with Adeleine (15 weeks in the NICU is a little rough on people) we thought we'd had enough. I hesitated to make a full decision on this until Adeleine was older and the NICU experience was behind us a bit. I said we'd wait at least a year to decide if we were going to have a third child. A year is quickly approaching and...well...I still don't want to say for sure...but it doesn't look promising for a third.

One of the reasons I don't want to say "no more kids" is that I'll suddenly think of Adeleine as my last: last time I kiss baby cheeks, last time I bath baby rolls, last time I put on tiny clothes, last time I smell baby hair, last time I get bit on the nose by baby gums, last time I breastfeed..last everything. This makes me incredibly sad. Mostly because I LOVE BABIES. I love babies sooooooo much. I love taking care of them, nursing them, watching them grow, every stage is amazing and my favourite! My friend who is also struggling to come to terms with this said that she loved the "squishy fresh ones", OMG me too! And the thought of not having a squishy fresh one of my own again is incredibly sad.

Do I think a third will cure the addiction to squishy fresh babies? Nope. It will feed it for awhile and delay these feelings a few more years until I have to admit that there's no more coming. The novelty will not wear off! I will never, ever get sick of the idea of having a new baby around. I love them too much! No amount of puke, poop or snot could ever deter me. They are just too cute and adorable to let a little yucky get in the way of enjoying them. Maybe this is another reason why people have 6-13 kids (ok besides lack of birth control)? Baby addiction.

But most importantly, will a third baby be good for our family? Hmmm. We're struggling to take care of the two peanuts we have already! But I think a third would be fun, add a little more chaos to the mix, tilting the scales in favour of the peanuts:  More kids than hands! More kids than parents! Ok, maybe it won't always be fun, but it will always be exciting! Is more chaos good for us? Ah, we can handle it.

There are lots of other (not fun) things to think about: Can we afford a third one? Will my body be able to handle a third pregnancy? Will it be premature again? Will it survive? Do we want to tempt fate again? These are the questions that scare me most (obviously). The chances of me having a prefect pregnancy and a perfectly healthy baby are not what they used to be.  This is reality. This is not my dreamy world of natural birth with midwives, perfect cutesy babies and breastfeeding them in a field of clover. My reality is doctors, countless ultrasounds, oxytocin and risk of death. If we both came out of it unscathed it would be a miracle (again).

So, like I said, it doesn't look promising for a third. But, I won't say this is our last one...not just yet. 

Don't make me say it yet.

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