When are you having another baby?

“When are you having another baby?”  

Oh the question I dread – for many reasons.  Now, I understand this question is a typical conversation starter, or in my case a conversation ender, I try not to get irritated every time I get asked this question. Some of you may be thinking, crap, I asked her one time.  Truth is I don’t get irritated by the one time offenders, I get irritated by the people who ask me multiple times.  I use to answer the question, “My husband and I are going to revisit the idea when I turn 30.”  That kept most people off my back.  Now that I’m 30, it’s been an overload of “When are you having another baby?”  When I politely say my husband and I are happy with our two children and we have no plans in the near future of creating any more love seeds, I immediately get asked, “Why?”  “Well, two is enough for us.  We are able to balance both children and provide for them financially and physically without feeling overwhelmed.” (We all know even with one child it can be overwhelming at times, but you catch my drift.)  “We don’t want to be outnumbered.  At this point, we love where we are at.”  “But, don’t you want to have another?  You should give Mia a sister.”  At this point, I think the line has been crossed.  (1) What if I have some medical condition that doesn’t allow me to have any more children?  (2) Why can’t we just leave it at “Two is enough for us.”? 

When I was younger, I saw an episode of Oprah where this lady had 6 kids and while it was a challenge, the reward of having these children overweighed all the exhaustion.  I remember thinking, “I want that.  I want a big family.”  When I was pregnant, I was already slowly becoming a mother before I was a mother.  I came into a relationship where my significant other had a child from a previous relationship.  There wasn’t any hesitation starting this relationship with the realization that I would possibly become a step parent, but for anyone who is a step parent, you don’t know the highs and lows until you actually go through it.  At 23 years old, I had two children.  One I gave birth to and the other was given to me at 8 years old.  After I had my daughter Mia, I wanted to have another somewhere down the road, but adding a third is different than adding a second.  So we had to wait.  Financially we weren’t prepared for a third, nor did we have the time to devote to another child.  As time passed, the kids got older and I went through different seasons from wanting another to being content with our two.  They call this “baby fever”.  We talked about it a lot as a couple.  My husband always told me, he would be happy with more or with just our two.  Sometimes I wanted another just for the reason of experiencing pregnancy all over again.  I was not married when I had Mia and I had a very difficult pregnancy, that at times I feel scarred me for life.  It was hard, painful and unpleasant. I missed tons of work, I was put on bed rest and I ended up having Mia 4 weeks early.  Luckily, there were no complications during labor, but I remember feeling scared to get pregnant again. 

I was learning to be a mother to a newborn and an 8 year old at the same time.  It’s like having twins in a way – you try to balance this new adventure, but it’s double the work and in my case, two different age groups.  I know there are tons of areas that I look back at, and I feel I could have done better, but we all know you learn through experience, and there was no way that I would know what I know now at that age.  Today, I have a six year old and I have a 15 year old.  Because my son is not technically mine, I do have to share him, so we have to give up 1^st, 3^rd and 5^th weekends, the month of July and we have to alternate holidays every year.  Because people see us with Alec and without Alec, some people don’t realize that he lives with us.  It must be a stereotypical thing, because most people assume he lives with his mother.  That is not the case.  At times I feel people don’t know the full story and think we only have him on the weekends and therefore, believe we only have one child at home and wonder why I don’t want more.  We have two at home and they keep us VERY busy. I really am content where we are today.  It’s the four of us and I get to experience having a boy and a girl.

The irritation of the questioning sometimes feel like an attack, “You should have another.  I can’t believe you are not going to have another…..etc.”  Just the other day someone told me for the umpteenth time, “You should have another.”  When I said no, we are okay, I got this look of judgment.  “She must not want to gain weight and ruin her body.”  I know what people think because they’ve said similar things in front of me about other people. As women, why do we judge a woman if she decides to have one, two or no kids at all?  Also, not until recently did I learn that the questioning can offend and be hurtful.  Some women are struggling to have another, they want to keep it private, but when people are questioning over and over, it can be disheartening. I’ve been guilty of asking – I think we just have to remember, it’s not that easy to answer sometimes.  Women are going through different seasons, different medical conditions, marital issues, etc.  I just dislike having to explain myself over and over to people.  Our two love seeds are more than enough for us right now.

I hope my vent fest didn’t sound completely like I was complaining.  I just needed to get this off my chest.  And I promise, I won’t jump on the next person that asks, as long as they don’t question me why over and over. 

       XO,