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2007-05-07 - 11.59pm��previous entry��next entry
Baby fever... (long and waffly!)
Back so soon?! ;)
I'm only on Cycle Day 4, nothing much exciting to write about. My temps are high for me, at this stage in my cycle, though they did drop down after I got my period. Maybe this cycle will just have higher temps than usual for me? Or maybe they'll drop down more gradually than usual over the next couple of days? Anyway. That's not very interesting for anybody reading, is it?!
I am writing tonight because things are changing for me. A couple of cycles back, I was kind of wanting to have another baby soon. Last cycle I knew we were waiting, but I would have quite liked to have another baby. This cycle (and I'm only 4 days in so far!) I can't even tell you - but I want to try: I want to have another baby. Soooo badly. I don't know what it is! I just feel this ENORMOUS, almost physical pull. Actually it IS physical. I wish I could describe it properly, because my words aren't coming out useful at ALL, they don't do my feelings any justice and they're not telling it like it is.
I know I already have two babies, and they are both still tiny boos. Arthur is 2� and Matthew will be 11 months next week. I have already been blessed twice, and recently too, with precious baby boys. But it doesn't seem to make any difference to the way I feel. I just long to do it all again. The interesting thing is, this is normally a hormone-induced way of thinking, for me. Well, you know I want to have another baby all cycle round, but it's most intense around my fertile time. Hormones have an interesting way of shifting the way you feel about these things! But I am as far as I could be from that stage in my cycle, and the last two days I have not been able to shake this line of thought from my mind. It has been distracting me so much! Yesterday I was particularly broken-record-ish about it. It's like I would start doing something or other, and a few minutes into it, I'd stop and think, "Oh, I want to have another baby!" and then shake myself and continue. And then a couple more minutes later, the thought would resurface, and I'd say it out loud sometimes too. Neil must have heard me say "I want to have another baby!" literally about 30 times yesterday, the poor man! I didn't intend to be dull and repetitive about it, it was just such an urge that sometimes I just couldn't help saying the words.
I know pretty much most of you will think I'm crazy, especially with my description of yesterday! But it's just how I'm feeling right now.
I did try to analyze my feelings to find out WHY I feel so strongly. But I can't come up with anything dodgy that needs "fixing". I have two beautiful little boys. I happen to be one of those women who has always wanted a lot of children, and who tends to be pretty eager for another while her youngest is still very little (even acknowledging the difficult first 6 months ahead, after the new baby is born!). I feel SO happy at the moment, with my life. It's not like I feel dissatisfied in some area of my life, or like I am wanting to fill a gap anywhere. I tried to see if that might be the case somewhere, but I don't think it is. I just WANT TO HAVE ANOTHER BABY! That is all. And after that, I know I will just want to have another.
I confess, I LOVE the having-the-babies bit. I love the "chase" of TTC and watching my chart and testing, even when it's disappointing at times. I love being pregnant and EVERYTHING that comes with it! I am blessed in that so far I have had straight-forward pregnancies with normal pregnancy symptoms, nothing awful to get through. Morning sickness SUCKS but I could have it a lot worse than I have done so far. I love maternity clothes and enjoying my food like never before, and feeling kicks and squirms, and stroking my belly. I love comments and looks and smiles from strangers! I love giving birth - oh my bob, it's the most painful thing ever, but I love the experience all the same! I love having a tiny newborn baby. I love expanding my family and seeing new relationships and interactions between the people I love most in the whole world, and I love thinking of names and waiting to meet my new tiny person.
There's too many things that I love about it to even list here. Then there's a whole list of things that are hard to deal with, but they pale into insignificance compared with the joys and blessings like those above. I love babyhood and toddlerhood (so far!) too, and I don't have any experience with the older years of childhood yet, so I have no idea if I'll be just as in love with that stage of parenting as the stages I've already been through. So far I am wondering if I will always have a soft spot for the tiny stages, more than the older stages. But that's okay. Every mother has her favourite stage of childhood. My own mother's was NOT babyhood, she preferred the interactive toddler and young child stages.
I have noooooo idea how I will ever manage to be okay with stopping having babies. I mean, one of these days, one way or the other, I will need to stop! But I can't imagine ever feeling happy about it. Maybe one day I will feel "done". I have read so much about people getting to that stage where they finally feel "done" having children. Lots of people say, "You'll know when you're done" but I don't know... it's hard for me to imagine right now. I figure Neil will say he's done and I will have to deal with that, not feeling the same way myself. Or else my body will say it's done (!) and I won't be ready to have that happen. But maybe I really WILL come to a stage one day where I have a baby and then think, "Actually, that's it. Our family feels complete!" I just can't imagine it happening after only 4 children, and Neil pretty much says NO to more than 4 (yesterday I finally told him I would love to have six, if only I could fit them in! He said, "Too many!").
Anyway. I hope I'm not being horribly selfish somehow. I know it's a personal desire, a personal goal, to have lots of children. I do NOT believe that having lots of children is unfair to the children themselves though. It doesn't even have to be hard on the kids, from what I can tell, but I think you have to make it that way for them, somehow. There are just soooooo many large families of very-closely-spaced children out there (I am currently reading several joy-filled Christian blogs written by mamas who have 4 or 5 kids, each pretty much ONE YEAR apart, not even a year and a half like my two are), where the kids are happy and well-adjusted and love each other, with no sibling rivalry issues. So there has to be a way, parenting-wise, to make that happen for your children. I have heard of large families where the kids have resented not having enough of their parents' attention because of the large number of kids, and also people who had lots of siblings deciding NEVER to have lots of kids because of their own experience. But I think there must be a way NOT to raise your kids in a way that gives them a negative experience and not enough of what they long for, even in a large family. Other large families do it, and I hope I am not counting my chickens, or thinking too much of myself, but I honestly firmly believe in myself - I really do believe I could be a good mother to lots of children, and that if there were many of them, I really could bring them up in such a way (with Neil too, of course!) that they all are happy and well-adjusted and not lacking for love and attention. I think it will be a challange and a half, but I know it must be possible, from watching other large families. I really believe I can do it. Actually, to be completely honest, I believe I might be made for such a task. It's just that it has been my longing ALL my life, since I was six. It feels like an actual calling. I have never wanted fewer than six children (only more, during my teens!). I have never really wanted to do anything else with my life, except that I would like to be a midwife, if I really HAVE to go out and do something other than have babies and bring them up! ;) I reckon I will get too old to begin midwifery training though, if I have at least a couple more kids and stay at home with them like we're planning, until they are at secondary school. Hey ho. All I really want to do is be a mother and a housewife anyway.
So, I don't think I'm being all ABNORMAL, wanting to have a baby so desperately when I already just had two, and knowing that I will feel exactly the same way even after having another (and possibly even after another). I think it's just part of who I am, part of what I am called to do. I think that is why I will find it hard if someone or something restricts me from following the one thing I feel so called to do. Like if Neil says, "No more!" - I have to respect that. If my body says, "Okay, menopause time!" before I expected to menopause (though I'm expecting it early, so I guess I'll be vaguely ready for it when it happens) - nothing I can do about that. I just hope and pray that God will let me have enough children so that I get to feel "done", you know? I would not like to feel forever restless and incomplete over something so important to me.
Anyway. Waffle waffle!
I am beginning to want to just START trying, and not particularly wait till July. I DO so want my dream of an April 2008 baby, but on the other hand I just want to start trying already. I personally feel ready to get going. I also have a nagging worry that it won't happen for us straight away. You never know, when it comes to TTC. It could happen the first time you try, or take 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, or years, without any explanation. It can happen like that whether or not you had difficulty the first time or the first TWO times. What I mean is, my history of getting pregnant might not mean a thing when it comes to TTC #3. I know I just had a chemical pregnancy on a short luteal phase, and that is pretty good going, fertility wise. But things can change at any time. I don't mean to be negative, I am just voicing a nagging anxiety. I think that if we wait for the "perfect" time and then don't conceive for ages, I will always kick myself for waiting and wish we'd just got started when I felt ready to start. We might have conceived then and not had to wait and wait. You know? But then, I guess that doesn't really support the whole "God's in control" theory that I am trying to live out! ;) Anxieties... they are pesky things.
Anyway. I got to thinking yesterday (through my rose-tinted glasses, hehe!) how NICE it would be to have a February baby (I am one myself, and it's not all bad to be born in February!). Of course that's pretty much only because I know that conceiving THIS cycle would bring us a February baby! But still, it seemed like a nice idea. I DO like February and March so much better than January for a due date. Today I asked Neil, how about starting THIS cycle instead of waiting till July? He said he felt like it was all happening too fast, and that he was happy with trying in July, but not so much before then :( Oh well. Then I joked with him: "How about we don't stress about TTC at all - let's not even talk about it! Why don't we enjoy the sex and you just leave the rest to me?!" ;) Hehe! He said he could just see him coming home from work one day to find me waiting in my neglige (sp?!), and he'd suspiciously ask, "Let me see your chart!" hehehe!
Sooo I guess we are waiting till July. I so so so hope we are blessed enough to conceive right off the bat. I'm nervous that we won't, since statistically that isn't very likely. Before I had my heart set on a special month to GET pregnant, I had no qualms about my ability to get pregnant. Not since Matthew was conceived, anyway. The odds were low for him to be conceived, and my chemical pregnancies were straight-forward conceptions too. So I figured all we had to do was time the parsnips with the EWCM, and bam! But now that it feels like there is more at stake, I am nervous that it won't be that easy!
Despite what Neil has said, I am thinking it's pretty likely that by the time I'm fertile this cycle, we'll be pretty weak on the "we're not TTC yet!!" thing. I mean, I think we'll still be planning NOT to get pregnant, but we haven't had much willpower so far, and this cycle I think I will be quite happy to make a baby, if Neil feels the same way when it comes to it. In many ways I want to wait till July, because I have like a dream month that I would love my baby to be born in. But then I look at my little ones and just don't want to wait any more. What does the birth month matter when it comes to seeing your little ones playing together and all the other wonderful things about having more than one tiny person about the place?
I wonder if part of my increased longing is the fact that Matthew is growing and changing at a faster rate lately? He had his first haircut at the weekend. He took his first step last week. He turns ONE next month! His first birthday - I can't believe it!
Arthur had a haircut at the weekend that made him look so much older to me, like a real little boy, not so much of a toddler any more. It's not that I see my kids growing up and feel a need to replace the baby I'm losing. I DO think there's a certain element of that, but it's like a reminder of my desire to have another baby, more than a catalyst. I know there will be less of me to go around when I have 3 children aged 3 and under, and I know my hormones in the first 6 months will make life difficult for me, and thus possibly more difficult for my children too. I plan to do everything I can to reduce that likelihood this time around - I am going to get help in for the house and maybe some help with the little ones too if I feel like I need it. We are going to try to set money aside for it, as I am sure it will be necessary. But then after that, I will have adjusted, recovered from my hormones, and if only I could organise myself a bit more, life could get back to a normal pace even with several very small children, and there would be no reason why the kids would not all have a happy time at home with me. I am not sure about sending Arthur (or any of the others) to school yet. I am considering homeschooling, but that depends on SO many things, and we have a lot more thinking to do about it.
I don't know why I'm waffling so much here. I have just covered stuff that belongs here in this diary, stuff that belongs in my arthursmummy diary, and even stuff that I normally only write about in my "home and family" diary which I haven't opened for people to read (yet), as it's where I write about the stuff to do with keeping house and raising kids, that I feel unconfident about, or that I don't want to hear feedback about in case that rocks me when I'm just feeling my way, so to speak. Lots of things are covered in this entry, and I don't really know why I came here to write it, but there - it's written, and I guess I feel better for writing it. Tomorrow I might have a shocker of a day with the boys and totally feel ready to wait till July, haha! But I just wanted to acknowledge here my increasing desire to have another baby.
That is all! :)
Now I need to go to bed. Matthew has woken FOUR times this evening alone. He is teething but I don't get the feeling that it's his teeth that are bothering him. I hope he isn't coming down with something.... It could be an interesting night so I'm going to get some sleep while I can! Will update soon, no doubt! Especially when my cycle gets to a more interesting point! :)
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