Guest Post: Ten Reasons Not To Have Another Baby

I always thought I’d like a big family. I thought I’d have glowing, energetic pregnancies like my mom, who taught aerobics even while in labour with my brother. (True story.) I thought my generous hips meant I’d pop babies out with no problems.

Then I fell pregnant, discovered that morning sickness lasted all day, and energy and glowing skin was a myth. I had to be induced and ended up having an emergency C-section. “Two kids,” I told my husband. “I’ll do this twice and no more.”

I was barely home from the hospital after my second daughter was born when people started asking, “So, are you going to try for a boy?”

I glared at them through sleep-deprived eyes and muttered variations of “When hell freezes over.”

Here, then, are my top ten reasons why I don’t want to have another baby:

 

1. I actually like sleep. I average about six hours these days – and that’s six hours of unbroken sleep, compared to the six hours total sleep I was getting this time last year. I’m hoping that I can one day experience the joy of sleeping for eight consecutive hours.
2. “Morning” sickness. The first time around, it was just nausea. The second time around, there was vomiting too. See where this is going?
3. I only have two hands, one to grab hold of each of my daughters when we’re navigating a parking lot full of crazy drivers who seem to think they’re on a race course.
4. The inevitable, “So, are you hoping for a boy this time?” and all variations of that phrase. What is wrong with just having daughters? We’re not still living in the Middle Ages, are we?
5. The belly-touching. If there is anything in the world that sparks homicidal impulses in me, it’s the idea that a pregnant woman’s belly is public property. No one walks around touching fat men’s boeps, do they?
6. We got rid of all our baby stuff. I cheerfully donated clothes, gave away my breast pump, Bumbo, sling, and sold our cot. “Are you sure?” Hubby asked, and I nodded happily. “I’m done having babies,” I said.
7. We’re in the process of toilet training our youngest. I can’t wait to say goodbye to nappies forever.
8. Gynae visits. I don’t mind the scans or the peeing on a stick every time, it’s the initial internal scan and the last few internal checks that I don’t like. And let’s not talk about pap smears, okay?
9. The C-section. While I found that the elective C-section was a better experience recovery-wise than the emergency C-section, I still remember the pain of that first day post-op and the nurse telling me, “We can’t actually give you anything for another two hours.” Then there’s the drain, and the catheter, and the regular wake-ups to check blood pressure and temperature when what you need most in the world is some sleep.
10. The first year. I’m not going to lie to you: The first year is really hard. With both daughters, I was a wreck – sleep-deprivation, emotional yo-yoing, someone continuously attached to my breast, body image issues. It got better, but my husband deserves a medal for surviving me.

And yet.

Earlier this year, I thought I was pregnant. I was convinced. I even took a couple of pregnancy tests. Of course, as soon as I did, my period started. But for that week or so that I thought maybe, I started to think that having another baby was perhaps not the worst idea in the world.

Since then, I have been so broody that my ovaries twinge every time I see a baby.

Can someone tell me, will my biological clock ever stop ticking?

 

Melanie is a wife, mother, tea-drinker and chocoholic. She blogs at Wind In a Letterbox and Confessions of a Zombie Mom.