I love you birth control

It’s spring, and babies are cropping up everywhere.  At Parent-Tot Open Gym I encounter a young blonde woman with 6-week-old twins– and a frisky 2-year-old. This is my personal nightmare, but the mom looked happy and calm as she told me what a good helper the toddler was, bringing her diapers, entertaining the infants.

The boy-baby sat placidly in his car-seat, mellow as a Buddha, taking in the world with big gray eyes.  The tiny girl twin yowled like an angry cat as she was buckled into her seat.

“She’s a little diva already,” said her mother proudly.

“You look GREAT,” I told her in awe.

And she did– svelte and smiley, sporting clean clothes, no dark under-eye circles.  I would have been in my nightgown on the kitchen floor..

By now I know I shouldn’t be comparing myself to other mothers– shouldn’t be comparing my children or choices to theirs.  But how the mind loves to compare!  This time of year, the green energy of birth and propagation propels us forward beyond the rational.  The urge overwhelms me to go against my better judgment, surrender my career plans, throw in the towel and murmur dreamily, “Let’s have another BABY!”

Before my spouse and relatives start to panic, let me back up.  I’m 99.9% done.  As one friend, an insightful and exhausted mother of two, often says, “You have to know your limits.”  Your own limits– and those of your mate and your resources.  They have nothing to do with your neighbors or the angelic mothers on the street.  And nothing to do with the current media fixation on oversized families, like “17 Kids and Counting,” “Jon and Kate Plus 8,” or Angelina and Brad jet-setting around the globe with their brood of six kids and six nannies.

I come from a close-knit family of 4 children.  Growing up as one of four was a central part of my identity.  For as long I can remember, I assumed I’d have at least 3 children myself. “Oh, I’m going to have 3 or 4 kids,” I used to say as an attention-getter in college.  I didn’t know anything then.

Now I’m letting go of that fantasy family and looking with clear eyes at my real one.  Some of my friends remain child-free, either by choice or circumstances beyond their control, and I feel ashamed to admit that I have two beautiful children and still feel a lack.  Yet some part of me believes a small family is incomplete, even lame.  A “family” means the bustling chaos of many bodies, a crowded mini-van, a horde of playmates– not a one-to-one parent-child ratio, a four-man tent.

Perhaps every woman, no matter how many children she has, reaches the point when she asks herself, “Am I done?”  It’s a question of aging, the clock ticking, the tired eyes looking back from the mirror.  Can I gracefully surrender my time of reproduction–that sense of possibility– and accept a new phase, a different kind of generative energy?  If I stopped resisting these life changes, what creative potential could they unleash!

Still, some voice whispers that I’ve failed my husband because I didn’t produce more offspring.  What is the root of this warped, medieval psychology?  I blame myself that the whole baby-making thing has been so hard for me.  I suffered depression in pregnancy, then I had two traumatic birth experiences and two emergency c-sections.  Finally, both my babies were colicky little creatures, fussing and screaming for three months straight.  I don’t think I could survive another few years of sleep deprivation.  I don’t think my marriage could survive it.

Luckily, my toddler is the best birth control I know.  Still nursing, still night-waking, rarely napping, still screaming in wild, daily tantrums that leave my head pounding and nerves jangling, her very presence won’t let me get starry-eyed about babies.

“Some people just have mellower kids,” observes my husband, thinking of his buddy’s new bundle.  This contented 6-month-old sleeps from 6 pm to 6:30 am, takes two or three healthy naps per day, and happily coos and rolls around on the floor the rest of the time.  Comparing this guy’s temperament to our high-octane offspring is a form of torture.  It impedes our flow of gratitude, our ability to be present.

“Some people simply have more energy,” observes another friend, thinking of a power couple in Boston who run four thriving yoga studios, have three cheerful kids, are expecting twins, and eat an all-raw diet.  The gorgeous mother has a blog called Supermom.com.  Don’t check it out unless you want to feel like a piece of crap.

But now I’m doing it again– the ceaseless comparing.  It’s a predictable trick of the discontented mind, but it becomes a habit, a compulsion, like picking at a sore hangnail or wiggling a loose tooth with the tongue.  Only when we consciously stop can we be content with the life we’ve made.   That beautiful, messy, blessing of a life.

So I’ll say it now to anyone who’s curious:  my baby-making days are over. No more third-baby dreams to take me out of the present moment.  That’s what my four-year-old wants, anyways.  “Two is enough kids for our family, Mommy,” she says.  “How else would we all fit in the bed?”

Tags:   17 Kids and Counting · Jon and Kate Plus 8 · making babies2 Comments