I never had to "decide" to have a kid. I mean I always knew I would have kids, barring some unfortunate circumstance. But there was never a moment where I sat back, alone or with my husband, and said "Okay, now is the time". Granted, nine months before my daughter was born, we were well aware we were playing with fire (like playing hockey but without a goalie), but it was still theoretical fire. That's how everything baby-related seems before you actually have a baby: theoretical. You don't actually have any idea what it will be like. It's all just romantic and sweet smelling and cuddly. Nothing is covered in spit up or poop. Nothing is keeping you awake other than pillow talk of potential baby names. It's lovely. A beautiful ignorance.
Then you actually have the kid and shit gets real. Fast. That's why I'm glad that although, again theoretically, we knew we'd give our girl a sibling, we never had to "decide" that either. We were still functioning under the delusion that my continued breastfeeding created some kind of baby-free force field around my vagina when oops, here we go again. And I am beyond thankful for that. Except now I find myself in uncharted waters. Because somewhere deep in the recesses of my head, this crazy voice keeps begging for another baby.
So how does one make this kind of decision, especially when it's not a process they have been through? Another thing making this difficult is I'm kind of out there on that limb all by my lonesome. I could probably get my husband on board if I wanted to. We make really freaking cool kids so the balance is skewed in my favor. But really, my husband would probably be perfectly content having two. And I should be too. We have two incredible kids. We're just getting out from the baby craziness. Judging from the stories I hear, we sleep way more than most parents get to. The little man is starting to "use his words". My girl is getting more self-sufficient by the minute.
And yet here I am. Sitting around thinking about a third. Yearning really. Thinking is a woefully inaccurate description. Thinking implies some form of reason or rational thought. This is not that. There is nothing rational in this. Rational would be taking a big sigh of relief that we are finally almost done with diapers. Rational would be excitement and a fierce protectiveness over finally having my body back. No babies in there. No milk. No excess squishiness around all the edges. Rational would be realizing that we have no empty bedrooms in our house and no huge caverns of money hiding beneath it. That would be rational. But again, this is not that.
This is guttural. This is instinctual. This is fucking annoying. My husband, and I would venture to say most men, do not walk around with clocks ticking and uteruses screaming for tenants. Men do not yearn for babies. They want families, yes. But I don't think their bodies actually physically demand such things. And some women's don't either. But fuck. I am not one of them. I have the fever. And the fact that a very close friend of mine just had a little nugget and I was stupid enough to hold him and smell his annoyingly perfect little head did not help matters.
So my ridiculous and suddenly rather desperate desire to have another kid is not rational. But that doesn't mean reason doesn't enter the equation. It does. Just on the opposite side of the scoreboard. Reason comes barreling into my consciousness most nights during the two hour athletic competition known as dinner and bedtime. When I have a four year old not listening and jumping around in bed like some kind of Ritalin-addled squirrel, and a two year old calling "Mama" from his crib, and a dog barking, and a cat pawing at me for attention, and the clock dwindling ever so closer to my own bedtime, you can bet your ass reason enters my head. And tells me I'm insane. Reminds me that I am almost at the stage where someone in my house besides my husband will stop needing my help to wipe their own ass. Assures me that my house has more than enough love and stress to go around. Tries with all its might to convince me that I done good. I had two. A boy and a girl. Statistically I am golden.
The moments of chaos and frustration are where the reason reigns supreme. Where it feels as though it may actually be persuasive enough to quiet the rumblings in my soul. But it isn't enough. It isn't enough because the stress and the sleep deprivation and the screaming and the wet beds and all the other chaos that goes along with having kids is nothing compared to the really scary part. It's nothing compared to what actually has the capability of stopping me from jumping off that cliff again.
You can prepare yourself for all the chaos. You can babysit kids and have puppies and kind of get a sense of what it would be like to co-exist with a helpless yet adorable creature so utterly dependent on you. What you cannot prepare yourself for is the intensity of emotion parenthood presents and demands. The first time I held my kids in my arms I was intensely aware of every nerve ending in my body. It was as though I was on the verge of exploding, my own body incapable of handling the transformation contained within it. The extent to which your heart must grow, the magnitude of love it must wrestle to contain is immeasurable; it is earth shattering; all consuming. You feel as though your body may split in two, may succumb to the volcanic force stirring in your soul. The love that now encases you, that defines your very existence and determines the course of your every waking moment until the end of days, is the same love that threatens to incinerate you, both in that very moment and in every moment that remains.
Because with every child, with every new chasm you rip in yourself to make room for the blinding love that comes with becoming a parent, you expose yourself in a way more intimate, more vulnerable, more utterly terrifying than you ever have before or ever will again. In having a child, you instantly create an entire world of opportunities for unimaginable, life-altering pain. You take a piece of your soul and leave it to exist outside of your body, vulnerable to the world and all its horrors. Let me expose all my dorkiness right now in saying that I feel akin to Voldemort. Voldemort and his freaking horcruxes. That's what it is. And just as with he-who-shall-not-be-named, the more you create, the more vulnerable you become.
And that's the really scary part. That's the part that actually makes me pause and try to bolster all that reason and ration begging my uterus to shut the fuck up already. I can handle the spit up, and the pooping, and the tantrums, and all of the tears, theirs and mine. The question is whether I can handle the fear and the worry. And that stuff is a lot harder to dismiss. All the other stuff is temporary. There will come a day when everyone's bodily functions will be their own. There will come a day when no one wakes me up because they lost a sock or because their Teddy has run away from their bed. But there will never come a day when this chest-crushing weight of fear will lift. No matter how old I get, no matter how old they get, I will always be their mom, and with that comes exhilarating love and paralyzing fear.
So while my heart yearns for the love, my head wonders, can I handle the fear?
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