Yeah, I'm Really Consistent With Blogging...


I had no idea it has been almost a year since I've touched my blog. Time truly has flown by. And things have changed! 
I have a husband who not only survived but graduated nursing school in June. I have two children who currently nap at the same time during the day, every day, and I thank God for my "Mommy Quiet Time".
We welcomed a new little girl into our lives three days a week which we are enjoying her company, and overall the friendship of this family we are delighted to be sharing our lives with weekly. 

The biggest thing on my mind lately is babies. Are we done at two??? That's the huge, resounding, "can't get it out of my head" kind of question lately. The reason this has thrown me for such a loop is because I'm dead-centered, in the middle with my thoughts on this.
 There are pros and cons to either side of trying for a third, or just staying where we're at.

The Pros
We have a boy and a girl. Not everyone's dream, I realize, but it has definitely been my granted wish.

 Four fit nicely into cars, vacation packages and restaurants. It's just the truth. With only four of us, we never have to worry about one kid left out on carnival rides, paying for an extra kid in a hotel room, or "nope, there's no WAY we're all going to fit in THAT car."

Equal "Mommy and Daddy Dates". We can easily switch kids and have kid-dates that are solely focused on them. Our time won't yet again be divided into, "Okay, who's week is it this time?" 

For Sanity's Sake. We (my husband and myself) know a LOT of families who have a large number of children (we're talking 5+ kids). And we all have noticed a consistent trend with MOST of these families...that the mom's tend to be a little on the batty side. 

Now don't get me wrong, some of these moms seemed to have needed most of the kids to leave the nest and they recovered nicely from staring at the wall and drooling into their cold coffee, but some...have not. I'm not sure I want to risk being one of those moms that completely looses herself for decades only to discover it's too hard to remember who she was before and can't recover from that. 

Birth (and really the three months after that when you're in the fog of no sleep). Need I say much more? I experienced a C-section and then a VBAC (look it up if you don't know what I'm talking about). I feel like I've truly experienced all the birth I want to experience.

The Cons

It's strange for our family culture. We both come from families of four and five children. Stopping at two feels so foreign to our culture and to what we always said we wanted pre-marriage and up until this point in our lives.

Who would they be? We will never get to see what a third baby would look like, who they would be, or the joy we would experience in simply delighting from the inside out in how that child is growing and what they discover daily. 

Will it mess up my older children's relationship with each other? My kiddos are about 20 months apart, and although there's more arguing than you think there might be between a 3 and a 1.5 year old, they are truly the best of friends.

Will it put more pressure on my marriage?   Mmmmmm...k...

Three kids are hard to juggle. My husband and I are considering home-schooling our children, at least for a time. We both agree we're both more of a "three plate-spinning" type of person and not someone who is type A enough to spin fifteen plates at a time. Is adding a third kid like adding five more "plates"?

As I've been thinking about all these things over the past couple months (a couple months ago was the only point in time I could even THINK about the possibility of having a third child)...I realized something new today. Whether we end up having a third, or a thirteenth, there's something deeply engraved on my heart and who I am, where I consider a large part of my identity to come from, in being a mom. When that is final, when we say, "Okay, we're done." I am going to need to make room to mourn that "loss". 

Not that there aren't wonderful things ahead. Not that there aren't seeing your children grow and discover and struggle and become these people right in front of you, but that stage of my life...where I grow human beings and complain about how much I hurt during pregnancy and give birth to this precious little baby...will be over. 

Will you join me in making room in your life? Whether it's making room for someone's child coming into your home three days a week, making room for your own new baby who is going to arrive soon, or making room for complex thoughts and feelings, it's good to stretch out and take a moment to breathe. Even if the breathing part hurts a little.