When I was pregnant with Elly, I worried frequently about how Evie would handle life with a sibling. How we would ever have enough time to spend time with both girls? A part of me feared that we were ruining Evie's life by bringing another little person into it. Another part dreamed of the close friends they would become, of their precious giggles as they splashed in the bath, and the joyful racket on Christmas with both girls tearing into presents.
I'm sure most parents struggle with similar back and forth when they add to their family. A mixture of joy and guilt. I completely understand why so many choose to have just one child. It's hard to struggle with a decision that's not just going to affect you and your husband. But affect other little lives. Forever. Think how much different one will grow up...an only child. One child of two. Or maybe one child of many. Each is a dramatically different life path.
I didn't always know if I wanted kids. And when I had Evie I loved her so much I didn't know whether or not I wanted more. Didn't know how I could love someone else the way I loved my Evie. How I could love someone else as much as I loved my Evie. When Elly came along I found I was partially right...I didn't love her the same way I loved Evie. I don't think you can love any two people in the SAME way. Evie will always have a special love. Just as Elly will always have a special love.
Our first six months was incredibly hard. I think it always is when your life changes so dramatically. With Elly sick, then jaundiced, then colicky...and Evie still not talking. Life was incredibly difficult. And during that time we swore off having any more kids. Simply couldn't imagine putting all of us through that again.
But I have always been told that when you're done...you just KNOW. You have that second baby and life is complete. Or you have that first baby and life is complete.
And recently, I've come to the realization that the gosh awful baby phase, the one full of sleepless nights and spit up and poopy diapers, it doesn't last very long. A year of Elly's life has flown by in an instant. Nearly three years of Evie's life have passed in the blink of an eye. The days will come far too soon when my babies aren't dragging me out of bed in the morning, and instead it is me dragging them. It won't be very long before my Friday nights are not spent refereeing an argument over who gets to sit on my lap while we watch Cinderella. So it seems awfully unfair to make a lifelong decision based on a miserable 6 months.
Watching the girls play in the living room floor, I feel like someone is missing. Just maybe.
No, I do not have baby fever. I don't look at pregnant women and dream about returning to that state of swollen ankles and not being able to wear my clothes. I don't glimpse families toting ginormous infant carriers and long to have those days back. Nor do I see darling babies and miss the bottles and the burping and the days of a little being that has minimal personality and does nothing but eat and sleep. If I could somehow skip the first six months of having a third child I might just sign right up. Maybe.
Children are an amazing, wonderful, impossible blessing.
There are moments when I look at my two girls and wonder how on earth I could want anything more. How unbelievably greedy of me. And there are moments when the very idea of adding another voice to the chaos of yelling and crying and screaming makes me feel like I should have a drink and then check myself into the closest mental health facility.
In closing let me state, quite conclusively, that there will NOT be an addition to the family any time soon. I am not pregnant now. And do not intend to be pregnant soon. And I don't know that we will have a third one. It is quite a hefty decision. No permanent decisions have been made. But who knows. Maybe once the girls are off to school and things have settled down. Or maybe by then I will be far too attached to sleeping through the night to worry about that missing person.
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