I am looking forward to a summer without a lot of things planned, with the exception of a trip to Iowa to see our family there and our new niece who will be born in just a couple of weeks! Little Blake is keeping me busy with her various doctor and therapy appointments. Next week, we will take her to an ENT to discuss putting tubes in her ears since she has had at least 4 ear infections since Christmas. Since she is still learning to walk at 20 months, we have to be extra careful with her ears since they will affect her balance. Last week, she was taking several independent steps at a time; this week, she doesn't want to try. She will get there eventually. I'm so thankful for the Ohio Help Me Grow program and the services we are getting through the county.
But on to what I'm actually meaning to blog about....It seems like so many people celebrate their 10th anniversaries with either a vacation or a baby. I'm excited to announce that for ours, we will be welcoming...a cruise to the southern Caribbean. I think I'm at this weird point in life where I've had the babies I intended and hoped to have, but a small voice keeps whispering, "There's still time for one more!" A lot of my friends and peers are having their third or fourth baby right now, so I'm still in that mode where it seems like a perfectly reasonable idea. Only, for us, it really isn't reasonable. We both work a lot, we have two kids who take absolutely all of our time and attention, we have support but most of our family lives beyond the reasonable "help" range, we are stuffed in an already-too-small house and have no idea when or if we'll get one with more room, and we're just plain tired. In addition, we rolled the dice and won with the fertility treatments we've already done, and what are the chances we'd wind up with just one baby if we tried again? Like I've always said, one of my main aims in life is to not qualify in any way for my own reality show.
Simply put, we're stretched thin, and I'm positive I couldn't handle another baby. I couldn't be more thrilled or fulfilled with the two little girls we have, and neither of us are disappointed in the least that we didn't have a boy. I was so miserably sick when I was pregnant with Blake, and by the end of the nine months, I could barely walk or breathe because she was so big and putting so much pressure on my body. Still, I can't help but think about pregnancy wistfully when I walk by the maternity section in a store, and feel sad I'll never feel another baby kicking me from the inside or doing flip-flops in my stomach. The newborn phase of not sleeping, the commitment of breastfeeding, and the struggle of making sure the baby gets back to birth weight- I could definitely do without living through that again. Yet, I get this stabbing pain in my heart sometimes when I go through the latest round of out-grown clothes and wind up hanging on to some that I just can't part with. (I told myself I could save one box of special clothes...it has already turned into two.)
As Blake gets bigger, I feel an aching inside that I can't keep her little and that the baby days will soon be over for us. For some reason, it's easier to let Bennett grow up. A part of her was grown up from the minute she was born. But Blake, she is the baby. The sweet, chubby, can't-walk baby who is slowly but surely becoming a toddler. The older they get, the more semblance of a life I regain, which makes me feel both happy and devastated at the same time. I often ask myself, do I really want another baby- or do I just want to relive the good parts of my pregnancies and my kids' babyhood all over again? And, whatever its source, when does this feeling go away? Does "one more" ever cure it, or does every mom feel this way and have to go through these emotions, even if she has six kids? If anyone has the answer, I'd love to know!
Sweet Beezy lying next to me today while I worked. Still a baby...for now.
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