Unwellness

MOVED!

The move is complete! My archives are a mess of missing photos but they are all in a folder on my desktop and I will be going back to add them in again.

I am also password protecting some older posts - approximately 2002-2005, I think. All reproductive parts will stay public but all work stuff will go private. I will be happy to share the password with anyone who asks - just trying to be wise in case I ever want to appear professional to strangers.

PLEASE add the new site to your readers... and admire the pretty Calliope-coached space!

I am really going to give this thing another shot so please come along for the ride, Reader readers.

Yeah, that didn't happen.

I'm moving the pictures off Typepad with a goal to finish and transport to Wordpress by BlogHer. Then I will try to rebirth this blog. I still miss it.

End of the school year.
Moved every book in my library. Hand picked 1/4 of the collection to stay with me in my tiny, temporary library (brought on by construction). Boxed some for storage.
Worked weekends for extra vacation money.
Fibro pain so, so, so bad.
Goal: finish last 2 Disney reports before my next vacation. And then write about that vacation!

why you are an only child, my son

Because after nearly a month of trying to figure out what to do about this one-more-baby problem, we found ourselves on a Sunday afternoon in downtown Brooklyn. We went to the Transit Museum and you were a little grumpy, so we left to get ice cream and then walked around, waiting for you to fall asleep in the stroller. You did, and we took the opportunity to go to Barnes & Noble and grab a pile of magazines and sit in the cafe and drink coffee. This is one of our favorite things to do, as we don't often get a chance to be out in the world together without monitoring you. It felt like a date. And the magazines we grabbed were... these. The ones up there in the Travel section. That "Afar" one was particularly good. We read a pile of them, and we oohed and aahed and shared amazing photos of exciting and far away places. And we made plans. And we dreamed dreams. And we knew for certain in our hearts that we were ready to move on into another phase of life, one where you are an awesome, growing kid who wants to see the world with us. And we knew we didn't have the patience to wait another half decade for another kid to grow up to do this with us. And we knew we certainly, certainly, certainly didn't have the money to travel with more kids (since we don't truly have it for travel for three!). And we felt solid in our decision, both of us, at the same time, for the first time in a long time. And I'm sorry. I know that there are moments when you wish for a younger sibling. A theoretical younger sibling, I'm quick to point out in my head, since there are a lot of things about babies that I don't think you'd appreciate so much right now. And I'm confident that your father and I can smother you in enough love to make it up to you. And besides, we are both quasi-only children and we ended up liking it that way. Hopefully you will, too. If not, you can take it up with the Barnes & Noble Travel section.

Good(ish) reasons not to have a baby

I mentioned a lot of our "Cons" in previous posts and they are important ones (private school, the psychological thud of 10 years of teens and 40 years of kids, far fewer vacations, pregnancy, infancy...). But there are a couple I didn't really list. And they feel bigger.

One is fear. This was alluded to in a comment on a previous post. Fear is giant. Fear of another early loss. Fear of a later loss. Fear of finding out something is terribly wrong and having to go through the decision to abort. Fear of not finding out something is wrong and giving birth only to discover something is wrong. Fear of something big but invisible being wrong down the line.

Yes, things can go wrong with any of us at any time. But I just know too many stories now. Creating a child, carrying it to term and bringing it into the world are all terrifying prospects to me.

But we might have been able to move past that, as most people must, with our heads down in a firm state of denial.

 

The other is my stupid fibromyalgia. Today I am hurting, so I can say that it seems unimaginable that I would bring more work into my home life. Right now, I am grateful beyond belief, grateful every second, because as I sit on the couch and type this to distract myself, Wes is upstairs putting kiddo to bed. And he gets that I am in wormy pain and can barely cope and need to check out and sit still. And thank god. But if there were another squirmy child needing attention.... no couch break. No checking out. Yes, some distraction is found in children, but a LOT of physical movement, labor, and strength is required. And those things waste me. They make pain happen. I walked home today, pushing Beckett's stroller, gritting my teeth against the arm worms and focusing, HARD, on this moment after dinner and playtime when I would be able to sit still. And now I can.

Honestly, I am in pain a lot still. And I feel guilty a lot. I feel like a crap mom a lot. I feel so sad for my boy that he got such a lame mom who often can't do all the things he wants to do. He got a sucky deal. And sometimes I do feel like it was unfair to him, that it was insanely selfish of me to create him into a family with only one physically healthy parent. I hate that I am a sick mom, a mom who he will remember as sititng on the sidelines of the play instead of being in it with him.

NEVER MIND that I don't even actually enjoy playing all that much. NEVER MIND that I actually think some parents actually play with their kids a little too much, filling them with the sense that their every movement and idea is of incredible, priceless value and all adults should stand at attention because of their brilliance. Don't try to be logical when I am very busy being down on myself for my lameness. And don't worry. I snap out of it.

BUT... I could probably have plowed through fibro with a wall of denial, as well. That wasn't even on our "Cons" list!

 

I hope to get my lovely Keynote presentation to turn into a movie I can share here. But I made it on an iPad. And there is a bit of trouble getting it off there because I don't have Keynote at home. And it feels weird to work on it at work. I will solve this dilemma but it might take time. I will only be sharing it in the interest of fully showing the process. The Keynote was made more than 2 weeks ago when the decision actually felt hard.

It doesn't feel hard anymore. It's felt firm for 4 days and counting. And I will share that story, too.

SPOILER: It's still a no.

Not good reasons to have a baby

• We have this Haba playmat Wes made us put on our registry or something amid my objections at price. Another kid would mean it had been more worthwhile.

• Wes, similarly, has a kid bike seat he put on his own wish list despite my even stronger objections since he rarely rides. Then his bike was stolen. Then it took years to get a new bike. By the time he first put Beck on the bike last fall, Beck had almost grown too large. We think we might be able to use it this spring and that is probably it. A baby would mean we can use the bike seat again.

• I could continue to ignore the return of the weight I lost. Better still, the nursing would involve that part where food tastes incredible and I do nothing but lose weight. I hate myself for thinking this but I honestly think about this one EVERY DAY.

• Cute photo ops for Wes. He says he would actually need several more children to really create the shot he has in mind, so I should get to it.

• Many interesting baby products have been created in the past four years and we would get to research all of them. And buy stuff. With that imaginary money we'd have in this fantasy world in which we have a baby. Have I mentioned that this whole conundrum started (for me) with stroller shopping?

• Um... Maternity leave? All that sitting in one place, nursing and watching Sex in the City all day sounds easier now. Of course, I'd have to get off my ass to pick up Beck every day. So scratch that.

more about the no

There are a lot of things I wanted to share about the process of slowly landing back at a "no" after a few weeks of serious Only Child upset around here. But I just read months and months worth of posts about how difficult it was to get Beck to sleep and night wean around 18 months and I suddenly have a lot less sadness about not having another one. So it's harder to write this post now. Much. In happy news, I am working ever-so-slowly on the photo transfer project. I've taken all the photos from present back to 8/08. Only 5.5 years to go. Sigh.

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It's money. We have just barely enough money. We have crushing debt. We have a child only half done with college and another we intend to keep in private school as long as we possibly can. We love to travel and the past three years without any travel were super depressing. We really like buying stuff, sometimes impulsively.

We would need to change everything to have another child. We would really like another child, we think. We look at pictures of Beck as a baby and a toddler and we want that again. We talk to him now, so amazingly funny and clever and sweet, and we melt into puddles of goo who wish we could stay at this 3 year old phase forever. We think we like the idea of a sibling, or at least we don't find it as objectionable as we once did. We love the idea of a bigger family, of more children, and possibly grandchldren, down the road.

But we really, really hate the sacrifices. We really, really hate the idea of sacrificing things that feel important to us, especially travel and the kind of education we want for him. This might seem silly. We know no one regrets their second child and that we may regret not trying for one before we are too old to do so. We know that Beck may hold it against us that he didn't get a sibling (closer in age to himself, anyway). Beck has already explained that he'd like a sister, please.

And the decision isn't 100% made. But..

the changes to our life would be huge. We'd have to ask my mother-in-law to nanny for us again, moving her into our basement which still flooded a little this year and will need more repairs (we won't even go into that year where she lived with us and I lost posession of my kitchen and grew really depressed). We'd have to come up with multiple years of daycare money before we even got to a place of attempting financial aid for two at my school. That money just absolutely doesn't exist. Not at all.

And then we wouldn't be able to travel.

And so it's money. As it is for so many people.

But also? Things are really good right now. Really calming down. We have barely enough but we have enough most of the time. We can have dinner out once in a while. We are going on a cruise. How much of this baby urge, which SERIOUSLY riled us up for the past few weeks, is about trying to add another thing to a slightly mellow existance? That's what we tend to do... when things get calm, count on us to find a way to complicate them.

It's also worth mentioning, though, that if we had another one now we would be facing TEN CONSECUTIVE YEARS OF TEENAGERS. IN OUR HOUSE. EATING OUR FOOD.

And it's even more worth mentioning that if we had another one now we would be looking at FORTY CONSECUTIVE YEARS OF CHILDREARING by the time the littlest went to college.

As though that is so crazy compared to the 35 years we are currently serving. HA!