My daughter is one of the few only-children left in our circle of friends. All of my mommy pals now have their final two or three kids, most of them spaced close together. Personally, I've always been a fan of the four-year gap in spacing children. There's no way I could manage two children in cloth diapers at the same time or attempt tandem breastfeeding. And, yes, I know you can wear two babies in a sling at once. However, I want to do my best with each child. I want to take my time with them and savor these mothering years. Having babies is not something I simply want to "get over with" as I've heard so often. I want to enjoy being pregnant, I want to have an empowering birth, and I want my first daughter old enough to help out a bit.
Not to mention, I can remember when my sister was born and I was four-years-old. I was old enough to remember her as a newborn and I want my daughter to be old enough to have memories of natural birth and childrearing. God willing, this will provide a positive influence in her life and natural parenting will be her "norm". One of the best gifts I can give her is a picture of healthy, confident, natural womanhood. She won't remember her own infancy, but she'll remember that of her younger siblings. So, with that spacing in mind, I've decided to try for a second baby. This decision came several months early when events just lined up perfectly...eerily so. All of a sudden my IUD was out and I was having a consultation with a midwife. I'm going with it since I know that a bigger power has my life in His Hands. I have a feeling there is a soul that wants to come into existence on this earth.
I kept waiting for that deep desire to have another child to return. And, boy, did I have that overwhelming drive to have my first child! What an amazing force put out into the universe when a woman wants to have a baby...nothing will stop it and it will eventually happen some how, some way. I could sense this from my husband, too, who seemed ready to have a large family the very first day we met. So, it's not just women who have ticking biological clocks. Sure enough, he has been an outstanding, committed, involved father. Our little girl is everything to him.
I remember when I was pregnant and we were assembling the new crib and changing table. He took this task so seriously. With hammer and nails in hand, he beamed about how he had fantasized of this day. It was a dream come true for him in that moment doing "daddy things".
He's been wanting another baby for a while now after all of his friends have had more than one child. I know there's a part of him that wants a son. I want that father-son experience for him, too, just as he's had the father-daughter bond. With this next pregnancy, we've decided to wait to find out the gender. We're going natural on this one and we'll know soon enough.
My question to all the mothers reading this is when did you decide to have another baby? Was it planned? What influenced your opinion on child spacing?
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