Another baby
Is it in the cards for me
I just can't decide
My heart, tugged this way
and that, so confused and sad
what is right for us?
No, not that pregnancy issue. I talked about that last Friday. The pregnancy issue I'm talking about here is mine... should I or shouldn't I?
It's a touchy subject for me. When I finally got pregnant with Sam, we'd been trying for almost two years. I was literally convinced that I was never going to get pregnant and we had started setting money aside to adopt. Now, Sam is two. The chances of us getting pregnant on our own are pretty slim, and in no way to we have the money to go through more rounds of IUI right now. While it would be nice to have $600 extra dollars a month, we just don't, and I don't see us having that money for quite a while.
The other day, I brought up the issue to Justin. I asked, are we ever going to have another baby? He replied that he didn't see anything happening for at least a year. I felt my heart tear a little with his words, and was speechless. I have a raging conflict inside me when it comes to this issue.
Say we wait a year, then start trying. It's likely to take a couple of months. Say it takes three. Sam will then be three and a half when I get pregnant, and will be four when I have the baby. The question is, is that what I want? Do I want to start over with an infant after four years? I just don't know.
Part of me thinks that it would be fine, four years is not that far apart, it's not adding that much time to the amount of time we have children in our house. I've always wanted two kids, and I wanted Sam to have a sibling. In my perfect world, I would have had two kids, two years apart. I admit that the way things have gone for the last year, I'm glad that we didn't have an infant during this time. With all of the stress, moving, money problems, and Sam's delays, I'm glad that we didn't have another baby in the mix. But when I think about having children so far apart in age, it's just not familiar to me. I'm not saying it wouldn't turn out great, I just don't know as much about it.
Part of me thinks that I don't want to do it. I don't want to start all over after having spent four years with my little boy. The older he gets, the more feasible it seems to me to just have one child, to focus all my time and energy on the one I already have. I wonder if it would really be so bad if I was never pregnant again, if Sam was my only child and I just loved him with all I have.
Right now, neither part seems to be winning out. Both options break my heart a little bit. I do really want to be pregnant again - I want that feeling of having a baby growing inside me, feeling the kick for the first time, seeing the baby on the ultrasound, giving birth and holding my beautiful, perfect, tiny baby in my arms. I want to see the look on Sam's face when he meets his little brother or sister and watch them grow up together. It breaks my heart to think of never experiencing any of that. But I also miss having time for myself, being able to write, and I'll be starting over with diapers right as I've finished potty training and starting over with bottles and binkies when my child is almost in school. Maybe it's selfish, but I would be giving something up. I guess I'd be giving something up either way.
There's also always the possibility that we wouldn't be able to conceive. Adoption would be our option then, and that adds a lot of other choices, decisions, work, money, and confusion to the mix.
It's all very confusing. I have no idea what I want, although after writing this, I'm leaning more towards the 2nd baby option. I love watching siblings together, and couldn't imagine how wonderful it would be to watch my children play. I'm just impatient. It's hard for me to imagine waiting another year to even try. These days, my life doesn't seem to have turned out how I thought it would.
What about you? How many children do you have and how many did you want? How did you decide?
