I am very excited to tell you that I am supposed to be getting pregnant right now. No wait. Right. NAO.
Just kidding. But we were making plans. I had heard that people planned pregnancies, and I was about to join their ranks. WOW! Do people really do that? I guess so. I was taking vitamins and laying off the smack, and I was pretty sure I was going to know who the father was.
Anyway. It’s always been hard over here. It’s kind of like having one-and-a-half kids, since the big one was only here half the time, would have to integrate in, was sad on the way out, and then all the other times we had an only who missed her big sister. We always told ourselves that it wasn’t about replacing the big one. We fretted that Der Strudelnator would form some kind of alliance with the supposed new one, and the big one would get shut out. We thought the big one could spend more time here in the future, and then we would have a boodle of kids. Or she could decide that her dad was the best thing ever and we would hardly see her. It was complicated. We had to brace ourselves for every outcome if we were going to add another kid to the mix.
But sometime this summer, I think when we went on vacation, we brought it up and kind of went, “NAH.” Did we want to start over? Did I want to be a boobrancher again? Did we want to be outnumbered? NAH.
It feels weird. It’s like a little taste of death. No more making babies. That’s it. Here comes the grave. I am no longer a maker of life. Now my kids will grow up and trod over me and make their own kids and they will eat my liver and push me out on the ice floe.
Part of it was turning thirty, too. Someday I can be a wise old lady, or at least trick people into thinking I am, and say, “Yeah. I had kids in my twenties.” And then I can jump into my yacht and get greased up by jiggly deck boys. Or something. But two is the magic number; I’m so happy to say I’m shutting down the baby garage.
In Other News
While I’m feeling maudlin and stupid, I will tell you something I remembered this morning. Once, about a year before I left my husband I was whinging about the lack of sex (so a normal day-to-day activity) and he said something that stuck with me.
“Sorry. This can’t be fun all the time. After a while, marriage is boring.”
I am laughing as I am typing because I remember how crushed I was when he first dropped this revelatory science on me.
Soon, after all this is settled the hard way or the easy way, I will go back to hardly thinking about him, and only sometimes will the dumb things he said pop into my head.
HAW!
Mmmmm hmmmm. Had twinges after my second one for awhile…like, okay, YEARS. But the snip was snipped so what to do. Now I am glad, and they are 14 and 12 and, I shit you not, just last week I turned to my husband and said, Thank GOD we just have two.
I hate to break this to you, but I was 34 when I had my first one, and then 7 years after that, I found out it was still possible to get pregnant. So I laugh heartily at your “I am too old to have MOAR” decisiveness.
Just saying.
I am too old to have MOAR after already having two, starting at 22!
I think the twinges keep happening no matter when you stop. It’s biology’s way of tricking us into breeding more. I’m glad the snip happened here, so I don’t start getting baby fever next year.
My husband got snipped when he was 19 – he was THAT sure he didn’t want to have biological kids. Me? I adore kids but I just never, ever, ever had that “twinge” to make my own. (I suck at crafts.)
And now we’re adopting “older” kids. Siblings, even!
You can totally change your mind when you’re, like, 50 and it’s STILL POSSIBLE to re-fill your house up with drooling lunatics.
Had the first one when I was 19, the second one at 23, decided *before* we even made the second one that she was the LAST one, as well. For which I am eternally grateful, because whoa. I’d have eleventy kids by now if I hadn’t gotten spayed immediately post-second-kid.
My MIL calls it “Empty Arms Syndrome,” that feeling you get when you see a preety leetle bebeh and wants one, Precious, or smell baby hair and yeeeeaaaarrrrn to make one of your very own to snuggle with, and I got hit by it hard there for a while, after the young one was about three right up until she hit seven. Then I realized that, liek, OMG, I could go out, with my actual spouse, or by my actual self, without fear of SIDS or whatever. And that was a beautiful, beautiful thing.
“Yeah. I had kids in my twenties.”
I am 25 right now, and pregnant with my first kid, and the amount of women I talk to and see that are pregnant right now too and over 30 amaze me. And then they declare I am sooo young and how could I possibly think about having kids yet?
Well a) when you do the dirty things happen that you might not expect, and b) how the hell could you ever be ready to have kids? May as well do it now as not.
Also, when I found out I was pregnant I went back and read all your Strudel posts, and that scared me so much I wanted to give the baby back before it had a chance to come out of me. Now, I’m just avoiding Strudel posts!
Um. Sorry!
umm, i’m 53 now. and quite frankly i started late, 1st at 35. however, in retrospect…i woulda had like….seven…gasp. yes.
the chaos passes and you return to the world, sadly. But of course i respect your decision. I’m just ruing.
In the quite similar boat, but right now the debate is on adopting a 2-3 year old when E is around 5ish. Gives us a few years to struggle through all the paperwork, PLUS no chance ever again of getting PUPPS or a c-section. Don’t know how the 17 yo (my big kid) would take it.
Anyhoo…
I’m 34, was informed my babybox was broken when I was 29, never had kids, yet I am weirdly not on my like, deathbed or whatevs. However, there is an up-side for us infertiles about not being makers of life: we get untold hours of joy from rolling around on our mountains of loot.
So, I’m commenting here on the bulletin above.
Since you were talking about the no more behbees in this post, and it would just be so delicious, I’m guessing PWNT stands for
‘Pregnant With Number Three’
and that things are just hysterical over in I, Asshole land right now.
Who’s with me?
Now you stop that.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pwnt
oh fuck… pwnt!!! are you ok?
No! I pwnt!
YES! (I hope I am guessing right.)