One of the great things about being me is that I feel big emotions for short spurts of time. When things are good, they're really good, and when things are bad, they're really bad. This seems to fit with motherhood because my kids seem to run on similar mood swings. My days are full of moments when I look at my kids and think; "Bloody hell, you're beautiful!" When we stop for five minutes and have a snuggle on the sofa, it's the best five minutes of my life.
I don't want to dwell on the bad moments, mostly because I don't remember them. But I did once contemplate, for a millisecond, crashing the car just to make the fighting in the back seats stop. I don't let it get to me because even in the depths of a bad bit, I know there's a good bit around the corner.
This makes the decision to have a third child difficult because I change my mind on a hourly basis, and once the deed is done, I can't ever take it back.
Almost three years ago, it was my main goal. I wanted to lose all the previous baby weight so I could have the pregnancy I'd dreamed of without the overzealous doctors complaining about my weight. I was working out at the gym three times a week with the image of a growing human as my inspiration. I never succeeded with the weight loss because I enjoy eating too much but that's not why I gave up on the baby dream. I gave up over a year ago because I realised how difficult I was finding being a mother of my two little boys. I was struggling to home educate them, while running the house, ignoring my online business and entering into the mission that is getting Ed's diagnosis.
Now they're back at school, life is of course very different. I get a lot of time to work on my own stuff and the boys are settled into the routine of school runs and the like but there are still moments when I really struggle with my boys, like at bedtime or when we're out. Moments when an extra person to worry about would be way too much for me to cope with. How can I round after them in the store with a buggy? How can I get them to settle at night when they're having a mad half hour and I've also got a hungry baby to contend with? Of course Mr Strawberry would help a lot, but those moments are already super stressful.
Despite this, as I head swiftly to my late 30's, the inner panic of losing my fertility is rising. For some reason my head just keeps coming back to the idea of having another baby. When we got married, we wanted to have a big family. We are both from large families and we'd planned of having four ourselves. This plan changed when we'd had two children 16 months apart, promising ourselves we would never do that again.
My biggest problem is that I am super gullible. I can be sold a dream in less than two paragraphs. I'm also a bit of a fantasist. So all this imagery the media throws at us fools me every time. Beautifully airbrushed mothers with their chubby little babies, laughing and playing in their sparkly clean homes. I know it's not real, I know, but it's a nice dream.
Only the SMA TV advert is truly honest. It shows those moments when you might think 'this might all just too much for me to cope with'. Those moments like when you're ready to leave the house finally, having packed the equivalent of a weekend away only to find the little monster has done one of those poos, the one when it goes all the way up his back.
So, do I really want to enter back into a world of nappies, crying, sleepless nights and living with a little human who has no sense of reason? I know what real sleep deprivation is like and what it does to your mind. I know what shower fear is, that guilt and worry you feel when you're finally taking five minutes to wash your hair. I've listened to my baby scream constantly as I washed the skanky breast milk from my stinky body (I leaked...a lot). But it's all just temporary.
As bad as it got, it's gone now.
I love that on Sunday mornings, while I lay in bed, my little ones take themselves downstairs and fetch themselves some breakfast. I love that they are perfectly capable of fixing themselves something to eat (I'm always listening out, forever the worrier, but you should see their faces when I come downstairs to find them chomping away). They are quickly turning into reasonable and independent men and I love it. I have loved watching them grow, establish their personalities, and change from a squishy little squeaky things to learning how to be grown men.
And that's the pinnacle of parenthood: watching them grow. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to have another human to observe.
A few fellow mothers I know well enough to have this conversation with would also love to have another baby, but are terrified. Life with two small children is hard enough, and they worry they won't be able to cope with an extra person. And rightly so. Especially if you have children who appear to be a little extra high maintenance.
But what if having a house full of giggles and silliness is what you want? Of course it will also be full of demands of more food, dressing children in clothes only to realise they've grown out of them...again and the nightmare that is instilling a bedtime routine.
And there are of course Mums I know who are doing a fabulous job of raising a large family.
As cute as babies are, they need you 24/7. Sounds do-able until you realise just how draining that is. After six weeks of hard work, those first smiles are pretty much guarrenteed to be aimed at someone else and when he learns to talk, he'll say Dada and Nana way before he says Mama.
Everything will always need wiping, food splashed all over the walls, carpets pee'd on, but you won't have the energy or the inclination to bother. Cleaning a house with children in it is like trying to bail out a boat with hole in it using a teaspoon.
I'm finally starting to gain control over the cleanliness of our home and having a new baby would change all that, which in turn would literally depress me. I need my surroundings to be clean and tidy-ish to stop my mind from going completely wild.
But I can't cope with what if's. I know baby number three will haunt me for the rest of my life if we don't try. But we also know now isn't the right time. Not right now, we've both got too much on our plates. But it may not always be this way.
I saw a meme the other day which said "your child will be your best teacher and most beautiful work of art". The reality is, is that some of those lessons will be painful to learn.
We don't regret the things we do, but the things we don't do. I've never heard anyone grow old and say they wish they'd spent more time working but I have heard people say they'd wish they'd had more children.
We don't regret the things we do, but the things we don't do.
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