Sole benefactor

Ok, so, I’m still slightly traumatized by my travel experience. For the most part I think I’m fairly competent at this mom stuff – I don’t get too frazzled, in general. But I just found travel with the baby – and he’s a really good, content baby – to be infinitely more stressful than I ever imagined. Maybe it was just because it was the first time, and after this it’ll be easier…but so many moms have told me, with memories of screaming toddlers and spilled Cheerios in their haunted eyes, how much easier travel is NOW with a small baby who just wants to nurse and sleep. You mean…it gets even worse?

I agree with Shannon that the only way to handle travel with two small children is to just not do it at all. I realized during my trip that travel with a baby and a toddler would not only be difficult but actually physically impossible – I mean, I just plain couldn’t do it, period. Which as I’ve mentioned means no seeing the relatives for several years. Which means not only would the relatives miss out on the kids, the kids would miss out on the relatives, and I would miss out on the relatives. And if we’re talking years, this means there’s an outside chance that some of the more elderly just plain might not be around when the kids are older and we can travel again. All of this really put me into a tailspin. It made me think, for all that Robert and I would have to sacrifice for him to have a sibling, is it really worth it?

Yesterday I had a lot of paperwork to do and Robert was especially fussy.  He needed me a lot, and I had to keep stopping my work to entertain him. And I was ok with it, since I planned ahead to not be stuck with mountains of work at the last minute that couldn’t be spread out over several days. But again I had the thought, “imagine trying to get all this work done, AND have a fussy baby that just wants to be picked up, AND have a toddler who needs you?” It just sounded horrible. I think multiple children is when the whole “importance of the dad” thing really comes in to play. One woman can manage one child just fine. It’s when you’re outnumbered that the trouble happens.

So let’s just examine again my desire for two children. The possibility of a girl, sure. Someone for Robert to play with. Someone for Robert to have who’s intimately connected to him other than me. The lifelong gift of a sibling. But more and more I feel like my desire for two kids really has to do with keeping up with the Joneses – as if I still have something to prove (ie – “see, not only can I have one awesome baby without a man, I can have two, ha ha!!”). When in reality there’s nothing at all wrong with only children. And he’ll have tons of little buddies in the dance world to grow up with, maybe even biological half-siblings if I get to connect with some other choice moms using my donor.

I know for a fact, just based on how my feelings for my dog have declined since the baby (they hadn’t initially, but when she started barking all day and night and pooping and peeing on everything, I seriously wanted to “re-home” her), that it would certainly at the very least deprive Robert of his current share of attention if a new baby came into the picture. Is this wrong? Not really; all kids have to learn to share, and that’s one thing siblings give us. But oh, the difficulty! The expense! The toll on my body and state of mind to have to endure another pregnancy and labor! The struggle of balancing a newborn and a two year old! Ugh!

Right now I can still kind of hang in there – my life hasn’t really changed that much. I can still go to my clubs and do my activities, I still get sleep and time to do things like blog and mess around on the internet and care for the house and animals. And it’s affordable. But with two all of that would change – I think the sacrifices would start coming hard and fast, and with it all that resentment and bad feeling I had so hoped to avoid in motherhood (and so far have avoided).

It sucks that if there were a husband in the picture, baby #2 wouldn’t even be a question. But the fact is there is no helper, and I’m not rich enough to hire one. I discovered on this trip that I only have two hands, one lap to pee on, and two shoes to be spit up on. Lately I’ve just been thinking two children would not only be hard on me but actually kind of impossible.

In other news, I started a $500,000 life insurance policy today. Guess who gets to be the sole benefactor?