Baby love, my baby love, I need you. Oh how I need you.

Sept. 3rd edit: Lots of people are finding their way to this post while searching for the lyrics I used in my title. So, to make this easier on you, here's a link to the lyrics to Baby Love by the Supremes.

I want another baby. I am not, however, having another baby.

After my son was born, we were smacked in the face with the reality that he would most-likely be our last (well, I was smacked in the face. Dh just had more fodder for his fire. I don't mean that to sound as bitter as it comes across).

Everyone around me is pregnant and honestly, it's killing me. I don't want to turn their happy news around into a story about me. I don't want to jump in every time they tell me something new about their pregnancy. I don't want them to stop sharing the joys of pregnancy with me. Honestly, I'm absolutely thrilled for them--all of them (and yes, it's quite a few folks. If you don't want a baby, please don't drink the water. Trust me, just don't do it. Use several forms of birth control if you're even going to LOOK at the water). For the most part, I stay focused on them, but then someone will say, "Next time you have a baby, you can do XYZ," and I have to remind them, there won't be a next time. Or someone will tell me how their baby is kicking and I think longingly back to my pregnancies. I hate to admit that I won't ever know that again.

There are days I think, "Just snip and let's be done," but honestly, I want to have another baby. I occasionally try to say/do/think things to force myself to not want another one, but I do.

At the end of my last pregnancy, dh said, "Maybe this will be the last one." I believe my exact response was, "Um...NO." I resisted the urge to smack him. Oh my word did I want to hit him. You just don't do that. You don't throw that on someone without warning. You don't ask them to change their vision of their life, of their family without time to process it. If we had discussed that prior to that pregnancy or even in the early stages of that pregnancy, it would have been a different story. I still wouldn't have been happy, but I would have been more open to the discussion. I need to know if this is going to be my last pregnancy. I needed time to consider what that means for all of us.

I LOVE being pregnant. I once told dh that I wanted to have 12 kids so I could be pregnant forever. I already had one potential pregnancy cancelled when our first two kids came as a matched set. So I already crossed off one of my 4 planned pregnancies. If you even want to discuss crossing not only another pregnancy off the list, but a WHOLE OTHER PERSON out of the picture I've always had for our family, then I REALLY need time to process that.

Well, that point is probably mute. I still need to go over my records with my fabulous, wonderful, awe-inspiring midwife (no, I'm not being sarcastic. SHE FREAKING ROCKS!), but it looks like the "care" I got when I had to transfer to the hospital probably left me unable to have more children. The trauma of it all left me unwilling to put myself in a hospital setting again. So even if I can get pregnant, I'm really terrified of what would happen should I need another hospital transfer.

And I have to qualify this because some people just don't get it: I adore my children. I realize how lucky I am to have them in our lives. I realize there are women who go through far more than we have to have children. I realize there are women who go through heart-wrenching loss and never have a full-term child much less three of them. I am not saying my pain is worse than anyone else's. I am not trying to deny anyone that pain. But at the same time, don't deny me my right to mourn.

I want another baby.

With dh gone, it hasn't been so bad. He's not around to discuss the topic. Since he hasn't been here, I haven't bothered to try to schedule an appointment to review my records. I want him there when we do that both as support (it's difficult for me to revisit what was done to me in the hospital) and also so we can make a decision together. I'm fairly certain that our decision will be that we're done, but there's a part of me that can't stop hoping. I don't want to be done.

I have no plans of having the baby discussion with him when he comes home. In fact, I'm planning on biting my tongue when the thought is bouncing around in my throat just trying to get out. I don't want to put that on him when he comes home. He needs to adjust without me dumping issues on him. And I just need to accept this issue is pretty much dead so I stop harassing him about it.

After The Boy was born, I often asked Dh if he thought he wanted another. His response has always been pretty much, "No, but let's not make anything permanent just yet." I didn't want to keep asking him, but I did. I guess part of me hoped one of those days he'd have something more to say. Honestly, my son's birth was one of the biggest events of my life. Afterwards, I wanted to talk about it ad-nauseum. Dh never did. When I tried to, he didn't have anything to add to the discussion. I got lucky and found a midwifery student friend of mine (who has a Psychology degree. How lucky is that?) who was willing to let me ramble and talk it over with me. She was a HUGE help, but I really wanted more of that help and validation from dh. Maybe that's part of the reason I kept asking.

What all this comes down to is that I'm not ready to give up on the wonder of another pregnancy. I'm not ready to give up on the hope to finally give birth. I'm not ready to adjust my image of family to include only three smiling faces (albeit 3 ADORABLE smiling faces), but I think I have to. I think this hope would be more accurately filed under "torture" rather than "reality."