If This is It, Is It OK?

Getting married at the ripe age of 20 something and looking excitedly into our future we would flippantly spout off some nonsense of “oh, we want 3 or 4 kids” when someone would ask and continue on our merry way as if we had no idea of what would lie ahead of us or what parenting even looks like in real life.

Oh wait, we didn’t actually know any of that. We were young, living solely on love, government cheese, and big dreams. We called a small one bedroom apartment home when we tied the knot and 8 months later found out we were expecting our first little guy. We spent that year moving two more times and eventually brought our first son home to a nice upgrade from the one bedroom apartment, a double-wide trailer down the street. We were learning how to prepare a bottle the correct way and function on very little sleep when surprise! Five months later baby number two was on his way, ready or not.

Fast forward now almost 3 years later and with no new pregnancy news coming from the Southerland camp we are starting to wonder what is next for us. We love where we are, we love the dynamic of our kids and we have even grown to love their close age gap. The ease of throwing them in the car with minimal baggage is amazing and we are (almost) completely potty trained!

I wish so much to be the mom that knows in her heart what the magical number of kids is, and she isn’t satisfied until she reaches it, and then feels a complete peace about. I have SO MANY friends who planned their families that way and it seems to work so well for them, and they seem to know what the perfect gap for their kids is, like being potty trained or sending one off to school, or even just waiting until one slept through the night!

To be completely transparent having two so close was a really big challenge for me, and even though I KNOW it would be different this time, I have a lot of hard memories of the early years and I really struggle with the newborn and baby stage. But then I wonder if that is selfish to think of my wants and desires in the consideration of our family? Newborns, sleep deprivation, recovery from a c-section and trying to parent two other children as well would be hard, but I know that season would pass. The first year is the hardest and then the newest little one would be toddling around with their older brothers and life would settle down again… right?

But then again maybe it’s not selfish to think of me in the planning of our family. It is okay to admit that I feel completely out of my element with the teething, neediness and sleepless nights. I love the one on one time with both of my boys. I like that right now my entire family can fit on a love seat and that is exactly where you can find us most nights. It’s okay to look at the facts of our life right now and admit to myself that adding another might not be good for me and in turn my family.

In the good moments though, the really good moments, where my kids are playing nicely, a load of laundry is in the wash, the sink is empty and there aren’t any “smearish” things on my kitchen table, I do sit and think what would another little one be like? Would we have a girl this time? Would she look like me or more like her dad? Would it be another little boy to add to their wrestle mania sessions? Are we missing out on someone else? I wonder.

I wonder if I never feel another little life twirling and dancing inside my womb if that would be okay, if I never walked into another freezing OR room to deliver a baby, shivering with nerves, excitement, and the temp, would that be okay. I wonder if I never sleepily walked the halls of my home in the night with a baby on my shoulder would that be okay. I wonder if I never watched my husband carry a baby carrier and set it down just so tenderly if that would be okay. If I never watched three or four or five little ones chase after their daddy in giggles and squeals if that would be okay.

I have wrestled with all of these thoughts for a while now and the conclusion I get to every time is the flashback to how we built our family in the first place. Planning our family in a traditional sense of waiting for one kid to be potty trained, or heading to school, or whatever the case may be was not our story. My husband and I looked at our future life with an irresponsible abandon and truly believed that whatever was supposed to happen would happen, and we did not think much past that like you do when you’re 20. But now, the adulting is real and the nerdish planner in me is coming out and it is driving me nuts that I can’t say I know the right answer for us. I might never feel a peace either way about this. But I hope that wherever we end up we learn to enjoy exactly where we are.

I wonder what your story is. Are you wrestling with these thoughts too friend? Are you waiting for a milestone to arrive to show you a flashing arrow pointing to your next step? Or are you more of a go with the flow type of person? Maybe you have added some bonus kids through a marriage along the way and that wasn’t in your plan years ago but now you couldn’t see life any other way? Maybe your plan was to add to your family a long time ago but the answer is still “not yet.” Maybe you have a ton of kids and you’re not really sure where they came from but you’re embracing the crazy!

Wherever you are on your journey, you are not alone.