Thoughts on Subsequent Mating

Posted Thursday, April 30, 2009 1:26 PM

By Jill of the popular online blog, Baby Rabies 

When?

There seem to be key times in your life when people feel it’s necessary to ask you when you plan to procreate.  The first is the moment they discover you are engaged to be married, the second is around the time your first child turns one.  Clearly, now that you’ve survived the first year as a sleep deprived parent and are finally getting a taste of what’s it’s like to function as a remotely sane person again, you must be itching to play the whole crazy game again as soon as possible, right?

While the idea of back to back offspring may sound crazy to some, there are many people who ARE itching to do it all again.  Through a discussion with my best friend, who also has a little boy just over a year, we determined there seem to be two schools of thought when it comes to deciding when (if more than one is even an option at that point) to head back into the pregnancy/newborn vortex. 

You either want to get it all over with before you get too much of a taste of what it’s like to sleep again, to go out to eat, to get your body back.  You don’t want to pack away that crib only to dig it out of the dust in the attic a few years later.  You want your kids to grow up as best friends, close enough in age to share everything.  And, in 5 or 10 years, when others are still dealing with the sleepless nights and pumping, you will be sleeping soundly, all kids away at school, and you’ll probably even have enough time and energy to hit the gym on a regular basis.  Plus, you get the added bonus of at least another nine months free from the horrific periods that have returned.  That alone seems to be enough reason, at times, to get pregnant again.

Or, you could be the type of person who wants to cry at the mere thought of doing this all over again so soon.  You need to get some sleep before you can even think of putting your body through the stress of pregnancy again.  Plus, you’re really not sure how you will even go about getting pregnant when you have a toddler running you ragged, and you and your husband haven’t been on a real date since the Obamas resided in Illinois.  There are big things you have to cross off your life to do list first.   You have races to train for, transatlantic vacations to plan, and you simply must get your body back to at least a shadow of what it was before.  THEN maybe you can think about doing it all over again.

Of course, then there’s always the mindset of “Isn’t one enough?”

I have to say I seem to waiver in and out of all three nearly every day.  Some days I think I should just rip off the Band-Aid and go for it, get all the exhaustion out of the way in the shortest time frame possible.  Other days I think I would be crazy to try this again before my son is at least old enough to go to school 5 days a week.  Still, other days I look at him, my heart so full of love and joy, and the thought of adding one more to the mix is incomprehensible.  I don’t think I’ll have the time, the energy, the money, or (as cliché as it sounds) the love for another.  How could I possibly make room in my already welling heart for one more?

I guess the timing of it all remains to be seen.  One thing is for sure, between now and then, whenever “then” happens to be, there will be a lot of naps, a lot of stockpiling of sleep.  And if “then” ends up never happening, there will be no excuse for these bags under my eyes to keep hanging around.