Making space

Spring cleaning has come early to L'ambiance Court. 

I find that at 17 weeks, Miss Tempest has outgrown all of her clothes from newborn through 6 months.  The child is just so dang long and lean!  Now I'm washing and drying, purposefully trying to shrink, her 6-9 month onesies just to give her something warm to wear in layers through the winter.

Pruning her closet was eye-opening.  People sure do love buying baby clothes but the wardrobe mostly stops at 9 months.  Some outfits she wore approximately once but hey, at least she wore them.  I know plenty of people (cough: certain family members: cough) who don't even know what their children own, let alone have the space to store all of the outfits they've accumulated over the years.  I have vowed to never let this happen.  Unless you stay on top of it, the closet becomes a rabbit hole and there's no getting out again.  Don't even get me started on the bins and bins of toys accumulated since Christmas.  All this for one child!  Who is 4 months old tomorrow! 

It was with a pang of wistful sadness mixed with a slight hint of accomplishment that I sifted through the baby clothes, now too small for Tess' growing frame.  Has it really gone by so quickly?  I lovingly washed and dried them all before packing them away in vacuum sealed space bags for...someday.  True, my baby girl is no longer the 6 lb 8 oz peanut we brought home from the hospital.  She actually got to wear newborn outfits for her first three weeks when most children start off life in size 0-3 months.  I held up the outfit we brought her home in: so delicate, doll-sized.  A new emotion washed over me: these must be worn again!  They're too cute to pack away for good.  I want another one.  Desperately.  I need to try for another baby - and pronto! 

I have always wanted to be done having children by 30.  Medical circumstances have made that self-imposed deadline an advisable goal.  I am now approaching 28.5 so you do the math. 

Pre-baby me used to scoff at women who warned me, "Believe me, you'll reach a point where you want another one, like, immediately.  This urge will overtake you and then one day you find yourself with 2.5 children."  Hahahahaha.  Smile and nod.  Sure...That's never going to happen.  

FALSE.

It did.  It did happen, like, immediately.  True story: Tess was about 5 days old and I actually said out loud to Rhett: "You know, that was way easier than I thought it would be.  I mean, my pregnancy sucked but it went so quickly!  Didn't it?  It felt fast and now she's here and she's perfect and I really want to do it again soon.  Don't you think we should have another one?"

...And a loud record scratch could be heard throughout the land.

Hormones?

Yeah, sure.  The blissful new mom thing is real enough but I was saying this after an emergency C-section, excruciating referred pain, disgusting full-body swelling, AND dragging our newborn to the hospital twice for blood work during her first week of life.  I really meant it. 

Motherhood agrees with me and I'm loving every messy moment of it.  It's a full-time commitment and I am fortunate enough to be able to make it, 24/7/365.

Here we are, 4 months into the parenting gig, and it really hasn't been that difficult.  Sure, there are good days and challenging days when mother and daughter barely get bathed/dressed and then change three times from all the fluids spilled/spewed/leaked over various body parts.  For someone who is lactose intolerant, I've never smelled like a one-woman dairy before.  There are days when poor Oscar gets all of ten minutes total outdoors.  But hey, that's life with an infant and it goes by shockingly quickly. I don't want it to end.  I don't want her to keep growing at this incredible rate because soon, she won't want to be held constantly and even sooner, she'll be tasting new foods like cereal and purees and she won't need only my milk to thrive. 

I look ahead to the next two months when we will begin to introduce solid foods and I get a little misty-eyed.  Just one year ago, we were waiting for our transfer date and here we are with a beautiful daughter who is determined to roll over, sit up on her own, and stuff everything she can grab in her mouth.  (She's teething, btw, and oh, is that an adventure.)  I'm not saying that a second child is a second chance to do it all again, though many people probably view it that way -- you know, righting rookie mistakes and that sort of thing.  A second child, for me, would be the ultimate gift to our first: someone close in age to grow up and grow old with, someone who would be a human sibling (sorry, Oscar) to share in the journey.  I don't want her to be alone unless that is how she's fated to be.  Not trying would not sit well with me.  And really, I'd go on having sweet, sweet babies forever if it were that simple but it's not so I two is plenty.  

There are no guarantees in any of this: I don't know if I can get pregnant again.  I hope I can, but we have many moving parts to monitor.  I'm not about to pretend that pregnancy was easy.  It wasn't.  It was pretty terrible from about 7 months onward.  I have not forgotten that.  I do not have willful amnesia.  The pain and frequent scares are still fresh.  Will I have some of the same complications?  Maybe.  Is that fair to a toddler?  Probably not, but there's no "good" time to do this.  My endo is fairly prohibitive for conception and I know that the time is now rather than later.  Biology is beckoning me to give it a go. 

We have our daughter and she is my everything.  If it doesn't work out, I know we'll be okay.  If it does, I will be elated.  Either way, it's a win.  We overcame the odds and our super frosty is asleep in her crib as I write this.  Maybe we'll be the lucky ones and get to do it again.  Just in case, I am making space in our home and in my heart for the possibility of loving someone else as much as I love my firstborn.  It's a tall order but I'm confident that if it's meant to be, it will happen.