Tuesday, March 09, 2010

Certain, I think.

Today was my last appointment for this pregnancy and birth. The six week check up. I'm officially released into the wild again.

I am sad.

The thing is, I loved going to the Birth Center. I looked forward to my appointments and now they are over. I loved this journey of learning to trust my body and my baby. I loved the whole experience. And now with the help of Zoloft, I'm loving the postpartum period too.

I'm so happy with the way everything went and how everything is, I could be pooping rainbows.

Only now it's over.

I know what people will say. Nice people will reassure me that there might be another one. You never know what the future holds. Maybe you'll have one more. They will be trying to make me feel better.

The problem is, I know in my heart that we're done. It's not that we only wanted three children; truth be told, we would enjoy one or two more. There are so many things to consider though, the biggest of which is time.

Kevin and I didn't get married just so we could have kids. We got married because we love each other and because neither of us can think of another person we would rather spend time with. We got married because we love to walk together, cook together, travel together, make music together, go to concerts together, and 100 other things together. Selfishly, we would like to get back to some of those things as a couple before we turn 60. If that's going to happen (and we remain the kind of parents we want to be), we have to stop having kids.

Another issue with time is that Lovely is entering high school this year. That means in just four more years, she'll be heading to college. We want to be able to spend time with her. We want to go to the football games if she's in the marching band. We want to support her in whatever she chooses to do. A lot of what she'll be doing will take place at night, and right now, I would have to stay home with the boys. And taking a 3 year old to a piano recital? Not a good idea.

And still another time limitation is that I truly believe each child deserves some valuable one on one time with each parent during the week. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, Kevin works his hiney off. Between the amount of work he has to do and the commute, he is easily gone 50-60 hours a week and then still might have work to do from home. Add to that the never ending home addition, and you have a daddy whose time is stretched pretty thin as it is. Another child would likely mean someone's going to end up shortchanged.

I probably don't even have to mention our age. Neither of us are spring chickens, and by the time we would be ready to add another bambino to our clan, I would be 39 and Kevin would be 48. He wants to be able to keep up with his boys and be a fun, active dad. As do I (inserting "mom," of course). Watching him doing flips in the inflatable bounce house on Sunday, I marveled at his youth and called BS on his claim of being an old man. However, I respect the fact that he doesn't want to be 66 when his last kid graduates from high school. I get that.

I know I'm going to have to be talked down from the baby bug again and again. Shoot, even though we've planned on a permanent contraceptive procedure, I still brought home information on an IUD today. Just in case.

But really, I know. And really, I'm okay with it.

It says a lot about a place and the people that work there though, to have them make me want to have another baby just because they helped make the experience so wonderful. Thank you, WBWC. I love y'all more than you know.