Stuck In The Mud

I’ve got a decision to make, yall, and I am having a really hard time with it.  What do we do with the possibility of more children? 

Hubby is all for it.  He would love more; he would love for us to have a big family, a house full of rambunctious kids.  It’s what he knows; he’s one of six.  Prior to trying to build our family we always talked of wanting a big family and even wanted to just let the Lord bless us with as many children as He saw fit.  That was back when pregnancy equaled living baby. 

Of course, pregnancy no longer equals living baby for us.

Pregnancy instead equals four miscarriages, full term stillbirth, lots of shots and medications and doctor’s appointments and fear and anxiety.  It also equals two beautiful, living girls that we are blessed to be able to hold and love on and parent.

We are fertile folks, hubby and I.  Seven pregnancies makes that clear.  We’ve got to decide what we are doing, soon, before we just end up pregnant without meaning to.  Bee is nearing six months old and that is the point at which I will not be comfortable relying on ecological breastfeeding any longer.  After L I didn’t mind taking a slight chance and only using ecological breastfeeding but that’s because I wasn’t scared of pregnancy then like I am now.  Now, I can’t take any chances.  I mean, let’s be realistic here.  It’s not like if we get pregnant then we’re going to end up with a baby.  It’d just be another loss to suffer through while trying to parent my two living children, one of which is a bitty baby who needs me to be present for her and not off crying in the corner.

Being pregnant and miscarrying over and over and losing Micah and then making it through Bee’s pregnancy and delivery really took a toll on me.  And more so than that, it took a toll on L.  She really lost a lot of her mama during some of that time and I wonder how can I continue to whittle away her childhood chasing the dream? Of course now I have to consider how much of B’s childhood I’m willing to whittle away chasing the dream, too.  How many more miscarriages would we have to go through to even get to the end of another pregnancy?  And then, goodness, that doesn’t mean there are any guarantees as to the outcome.  All three of my kids have been born with their cords around their neck.  It killed one of them.  How can I know that and even consider going through with it again?  I mean, what are the chances of it ending well?  How could I knowingly put my family through all that again?      

Most days I’m pretty decided that I’d like to be done.  For good.  Take my womanly parts and leave me with my two girls and never again will I pee on a stick or get an ultrasound or leave the doctor’s office with tears streaming down my face after they tell me, again, that my baby is dead.  It sounds pretty good to me to just be done with all that.  I’d like to move on to another time in my life where that kind of stuff isn’t filling my head and heart 24/7.  I’d like to be able to slow down and enjoy the family that I have here with me. Start a new chapter.  I think life would be so relaxing.

As I mentioned earlier, though, hubby and I aren’t on the same page with this.  And truth be told, some days there will be moments in which I look at L and Bee and think it would totally be worth it to do it all over again if somewhere down the line I ended up with another living child.  I mean, they are worth it.  Both of them were completely worth it and now, here with them both, it seems so easy to have decided to continue on.

But also, with both of them here, it feels a little greedy to even be considering more. Maybe not greedy. Maybe pushing our luck? Playing with fire? Maybe we should just sit back and enjoy what we have and not try to grab for more? Sometimes it feels like two is really more than we should have ended up with and we’ve been so lucky to get these girls and I just don’t want to be around if we push it and our luck runs out, know what I mean?  Sure, other people can get big families so easily and it ain’t no thang, but we’re marked and maybe we ought to just learn our place and then stay there. 

I just don’t know what I really want to do.  Hubby and I have talked about pushing up our plans for adopting (we’ve always wanted to adopt, wanted a little multi-national, happy, busy, love filled home) and letting that be the only way we move forward with family building, but at the moment it’s just not financially feasible.  Not to mention that many countries won’t consider us for adoption until Bee is older, anyway.  Also, I think I need awhile before I’m emotionally ready to devote myself to the rollercoaster that is international adoption.  For now I will continue attending the monthly orphan care meeting at church and making plans for one day following through with that.  It’s just not something for the immediate or even near future right now, I think.

So that brings us back to pregnancy, as that has to be decided soon.  There are birth control issues – because of my funky monkey blood I am very limited as to which chemical birth control I can take. Read: hardly any.  After much discussion with my OB, we’ve come to the conclusion that the choices available to me are not ideal for our situation and there is really only one choice that we are seriously considering, which is the copper IUD.  I am rather tempted to just go for it except that there is the super rare chance of us ending up pregnant with the IUD still in place which tends to equal all sorts of scary and bad outcomes.  Hubby says that, dude, we are the people who end up with the rare and scary and bad outcomes, how can we take that chance? And I hear him. I really do.  We seem to be the poor saps that end up with the .00001 percent of crap that isn’t supposed to actually ever happen.  But it does, and it happens to us, and it feels like it happens to us a lot.   

Yea, so there’s that whole how do we go about avoiding a pregnancy business which just complicates this whole mess and adds to my standing here with my feet in the mud and not moving one way or the other while I fret and wring my hands and wish I could make a decision.