The Constant Struggle with the Decision to Have Another Baby

It finally feels like my family is in a good rhythm. My husband Dan and I have a relatively solid schedule. Our two boys (Dax is four and Case is 20 months) finally sleep through the night, and Case still takes two pretty substantive naps each day. We’ve also finally settled into our cozy little 970-square-foot, three-bedroom house, four months after moving in.

So naturally, I’ve started thinking about shaking all of that up by trying for a third baby.

If you ask Dax, the world’s best big brother I’ve ever met, he believes that we should have TEN more babies. My husband is really fine with the two we have, but would obviously be thrilled if a third was on the way. Case, however, is the babiest toddler around; a stage-five clinger if I ever saw one, who has zero plans of weaning and spends his every waking moment quite literally attached to me. If he could articulate his feelings, I’d bet he’d say that he’s quite fine if we never have another baby.

As for me, most days, I live on the fence. On one hand, I’m so in love with the life my husband and I have with these two precious boys. Dax and Case are the best of friends, and I’d hate to mess with that. But on the other hand, if I never got pregnant again, I’d be so sad that I didn’t appreciate my pregnancy, newborn stage, and infancy with Case more. It all went by so quickly the second time around. It was almost as if I peed on a stick one day, then I felt him kick for the first time the next day, found out he was a boy the following day, and birthed him the next day. And then he turned one.

If I were to get pregnant again, I know that it would most likely be our last child, and I would truly savor it. I would do my best to relish every minute in the first trimester (morning sickness and all), and I would pray for the slowest second trimester ever (it’s when we all feel our best, right?) and I would love on my ever-expanding, incredibly itchy belly throughout the torturous third trimester, all the way up to and through my last birth, no matter how close to death it makes me feel. (During both Dax’s and Case’s births I screamed at the nurses that I was dying because I was SO CERTAIN I WAS and both times I was, of course, very wrong.) And then, I would do my best to appreciate even the night-wakings, the clogged milk ducts, the eye bags, and all the gloriousness that is the newborn haze, from one microwaved mug of coffee to the next.

But these full nights of sleep I’ve been getting? They’re pretty lovely right now. And I usually am able to couple them with hot cups of coffee, too. I feel so spoiled and don’t want to give that up just yet, if at all.

So who knows? If we were to start trying for Durrenbaby number three, I know it wouldn’t be until after Case turns two, so we’ve got some time to think and pray about it. Either way, though, I can’t believe we’ve been so blessed with two healthy pregnancies and these two healthy, spunky, snuggly boys, who love each other and us to the moon and back.

Regardless of whether or not another little on crashes this party of ours, how lucky are we that we get to host it every day?