Another one

It's funny, I never wanted kids.  I was never one of those people who grew up and couldn't wait to be a mom, who knew that was their calling or destiny.  I actually never even considered having children until I met my husband, and gradually my thought pattern began to change.  The idea started to grow on me.  Once we made the decision to have children, I knew I wanted at least two.  I never wanted to have an only child, I always wanted them to have a sibling like my husband and I both did growing up.  But when my daughter was born, the game plan went out the window.

 

I just turned 34 and feel like I'm staring down the barrel of a gun that is the ticking clock of motherhood and child bearing years.  Every day, every hour, I think about another child.  It is on my mind constantly.  I feel such a strong desire to have another.  But I'm terrified.  After an incredibly complicated first pregnancy that resulted in a 2lb 27week preemie, I am already considered high risk.  I have some serious health problems that require medication I can't go off of, so I am high risk.  Each year, each month, each week that goes by only adds to that risk.  I feel an intense desire and yearning to have another child, and I feel like I have to do it sooner rather than later, but the fear is crippling and suffocating me.

 

What if I have another preemie?  Am I strong enough to go through another 3 months in the NICU?  Monitors?  Oxygen?  NG & G-tubes?  Surgeries?  Therapies?  Specialists?  Second opinions?  Early Intervention and IEPs?  What if I have another child with special needs?  Can I handle that?  Can my marriage handle that?  I have my own unique special needs.  When I have a bad day, is it fair to ask my husband to handle two special needs children?  Will it break us apart?  Will it make us stronger?  If I have another child with special needs, will it cement that guilt that I feel and will it ensure that all along, it was all my fault?  If I have a second baby with medical issues, will it make me feel broken?  Will it break me?

 

What about my daughter?  Is it fair to Elizabeth to give her any less than 100% of my time, love, energy, and devotion?  Will we see regression with a new baby in the house?  She's come so far and I don't want to see her go backwards.  With all I've been through with Elizabeth, I cannot fathom loving another human the way I love her.  What if I don't love the new baby the same because I haven't gone through the same experiences?  When you have a medically fragile child, when you watch her stop breathing in front of your eyes and be resuscitated, when you fight tooth and nail for better care and better doctors, when you treasure each moment because you don't know what the next one may hold, an incredibly unique unbreakable bond forms between mother and child.  Protector.  Fighter.  Advocate.  MOM.  What if I don't develop that same close bond, that same unique love for the new baby?  What if I don't feel the same way towards it that I feel towards Elizabeth?

 

And ironically, what if the new baby is normal?  I don't know what to do with a normal baby.  Will I expect different things of it than I do of Elizabeth?  Will I come to terms and accept that Elizabeth's issues were one in a million?  Will I know how to care for a baby that doesn't turn blue or have an apnea monitor?  Will I know how to care for an infant that has no special needs?  There will be no specialists, no insurance battles, no extra needs.  Can I adjust to that?  I don't know how to do that.

 

And .... what if we don't have another baby?  Will I always wonder what if?  Will I always wish I had?  I never wanted just one child.  But in the one child I have, I am truly blessed with a wickedly sassy, intelligent, charismatic, funny, charming little girl who has come so, so far in her 3+ years on this earth.  She is my world, she is my everything.

 

So as my clock ticks down the years and months and weeks I have left, I am utterly torn as to what to do.  My husband and I go back and forth every day, our opinions changing as often as the tides.  Introspection leads me to one conclusion, again and again - am I trying to have another baby to prove that Elizabeth's special needs are not my fault, to rid myself of this guilt I hold so close and dear?  Am I trying to prove that I am physically able to have a healthy child?   And if that's the case, I shouldn't have another.

 



But when I see Elizabeth, I no longer see my baby, my little one.  I see a child, a little person.  She is growing up so quickly.  I yearn for those quiet moments of holding a baby, those moments we never got with her because they were complicated by medical equipment or refluxing or destatting.  On my computer at work I have a picture of her at 6 months old - the first picture of her with no oxygen, no tubes, no wires.  Just Elizabeth.  I love that picture.  Three years later I love the child she has become.

 

I think I just long for those moments again when she was just a baby.  Or maybe I long for the moments with the baby I never had.  And I yearn for another child to fill the void I now feel in my life.  I wanted to have two children.  But I am terrified to even consider it, there are so many what ifs.  Some part of me feels deep down that special needs or not, I want another child.  But for now I just live each day with a thousand questions and possibilities flying through my mind.  Maybe sometime soon we'll make a decision.  Maybe we'll be brave and decide to venture on this uncharted journey once again, and see what it brings us the second time around.