If I was tagging my blog entries with certain themes, this one would certainly go under the "TMI" tag. So continue reading at your own overloaded informational risk.
Today I am mourning the (reversible if I am ever crazy enough) end of my fertility. When Nina was born, I looked at Josh and asked, "Are you sure you don't want to do this again?" Her baby-ness was just too perfect--soft, cuddly, cute, innocent.... a second chance for me to be softer and cuddlier through the infant and toddler phases than I had been with Elena. "Yeah, I'm sure. We're done." Matter-of-fact, no room for argument, not even entertaining romantic ideas of having 8 kids.
As Nina started daycare and our monthly bill swelled to just $20 shy of our mortgage, the financial realities of having multiple children started to set in. When Elena turned two just a few weeks before my brother's wedding, her mandatory plane ticket purchase tipped our family's east coast flight costs into the quadruple digit range. Before we had kids, the adage about kids being expensive was just some vague cliché. Now I get it.
Money aside, there's also an adjustment to the time and attention you are able to spend with your children. Most kids are resilient enough to handle this adjustment well, and eventually most enjoy having a sibling to pal around with, but it doesn't mean that the adjustment period is easy or without moments of meltdowns. I tend to over-analyze things, leading to not-so-helpful feelings of uncertainty or guilt, which may explain my feelings of inadequacy when trying to meet the needs of my girls. Nina is just about 10 months old. I can't believe it's gone by so quickly. With Elena, I felt like I was able to savor her baby-hood a bit more. Nina's just raced by as I was losing my mind trying to keep things together at home, at work, and in my head. She doesn't know the difference, but I do. Most of the time, I feel like I'm doing okay. When the two are simultaneously melting down and howling about the pain of it all, I do feel a little paralyzed. Which one do I comfort first? How will that affect the other child in the moment? And in the long-run? Should I just let them both cry and get us to our next destination?
Leaving the house in the morning was hard enough when I just had myself to get ready. With Elena as a baby, she was always pooping on the way out the door or spitting up all over herself. Now she's amenable enough, but I can't get her to eat breakfast before getting into the car (thankfully it's just the timing she's been most picky about--she still eats a variety of things willingly). Nina wakes up happy, but she starts to get cranky and tired when it's time to leave and wails if I put her on the floor to get dressed, brush my teeth, eat breakfast, etc. Our tear-filled mornings are constantly cited by Josh as a major reason we shouldn't have more kids.
And then there's my selfishness. You know, the desire for "me time". I need time for myself, and that is inversely proportional to the number of kids we have.
Watching Josh's sisters gain back their freedom by taking their kids with them to later than 9 pm social events, eating/peeing/showering without children climbing on/towards them, leaving the house alone without kids, etc makes me hopeful that we'll get to that place at some point. That point would just grow more distant with another child, and my sanity has been thread-bare at best lately. Not really advisable to drawing out the journey towards greater independence.
So I guess I've drawn out a good enough argument to myself why having an IUD placed today was a good idea. I'm just sad to be done having babies. It's weird to be on the other side of having kids. Before having children there was a wide open world of procreational possibilities. Even after one, there was still the realistic possibility of more. And now.... we're done.
But I suppose it's just being done with the beginning, and now we're just at the start of the middle which as I've mentioned above, is the parental sweet spot between toddler tantrums and teenage drama. I've been savoring Nina's early bedtime followed by Elena's request for snuggles. Indulging Elena is made all the more easy by her clear little girl voice asking politely, "Mommy, can I please have some special time wiff you?" How can I say no? Let the parental sweet spot.... begin!
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