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Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Baby fever?

I think I might have baby fever, which bothers me a little. I have a craving for another baby. I see babies and I want one! I see pregnant women and am jealous. This emotional (or hormonal?) response is opposed to my head. My head does not want another baby right now. The Pepper is a wonderful almost-15 months old. And while we do want to try for another, that is at least a year away. Luckily D and I are aligned in that. I have friends who chose to have their kids close together and I know there are benefits to that approach. But for me the reasons to wait a little longer are:
  • I love our little family of three. I like our family dynamic right now. We spend time together as a family, but when we do have parent-child one-on-one time the other parent gets some alone time. It's not always easy but we can find balances that work and everything gets the time it needs.
  • Financially it will be better to wait. I'm not even sure right now how we'd cover a daycare and a nanny. We liked having The Pepper with a nanny that first year and I don't think we could afford to do that for a new baby if we had one right now. I hope we'll have more options from a financial perspective if we wait.
  • The Pepper is still learning who she is, and we're getting to know her too. Of course this will never change but I want to give it a little more time before making a big change in our lives.
  • For me and my work, I feel like I just came off of maternity leave. I will be easier for me to take off the next maternity leave if I give more time to my job right now. I'm not saying my employers would have any problem with it, but it's just something I feel.
  • My mother is a psychologist and she always told me that developmentally, children can deal with a new sibling best once they are three yeas old. Something about them being at an age where they naturally want to separate from their parents anyway so it's not as traumatic to introduce a competing element. I have no idea how true this is and if this is a widely held belief in psychology or not. But it was put in my mind and it does make sense to me.
  • I'm not ready to sign my body up for that again. Not ready to go through those changes again right now. I'm happy to enjoy my body as is for a bit longer before starting that journey anew.
I'm not planning to wait forever. And a year from now isn't that far away! I wish my body would get in line with my head and chill out. I'm a lucky lady and I want to enjoy what I have, which is a lot :)

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