Baby fever…again! 14 comments
We’ve had discussions on the whole baby fever phenomenon before here, most recently from Meagan on being “done.” I’ve posted about it a couple times on my own blog, the most recent being just 2 short weeks ago.
And now I’m suffering AGAIN! Only it’s much, much worse this time.
This weekend we had an extended family get-together with camping in the backyard, s’mores around the campfire and Baby Luke, who is now a whopping 5 weeks old. I happily hogged Luke the entire time, only giving him back to his mom when he needed to eat and letting my youngest son, who is equally obsessed with babies, and my daughter hold him for a few minutes before I impatiently took him back. I was on an infant-induced high, snuggling Luke’s little body, smelling his sweet little head, patting his bottom as he fell asleep.
It’s not like having another baby is even an option for me at this point. Number one, I’m divorced. Number two, even if I were to get back together with my ex, he got snipped just before Logan, our youngest, was born. Number three, Logan is starting kindergarten this fall. Even if I got pregnant today, he’d be 6 by the time a new baby arrived and it’d almost be like starting a whole ‘nother family. Number four, I already have four kids, which is plenty. It’s two more than I planned to have.
And yet, I long for another baby like my dog yearns for the steak we’re eating. It’s ridiculous.
It doesn’t help that Logan, too, thinks we need another baby and tells me so. Often. Actually, he insists that we need two more. He absolutely adores babies, both real and imagined. He still pretends his stuffed animals are all babies and treats them as such, using his “baby voice” to speak for them. The entire time Baby Luke was there, that’s all Logan talked about. When it was time to leave, he started to cry and said, “But I’ll miss Luke!”
Perhaps my recent extra-vicious baby-coveting stems from the fact that Logan is, as I said, starting kindergarten in the fall. I’m truly traumatized about it. A few years ago I thought the day would never come when all my kids would be in school full-time, but now that it’s almost here, I’m broken-hearted. It’s the end of me trying to work with Logan chattering away, while the other kids are at school. My baby is growing up. I’m going to be a wreck when he gets on that bus for the first time.
Career-wise, it’s a God-send. Since I’m a work-from-home freelance writer, the kids being gone five days a week will give me amazing amounts of time to work uninterrupted. As far as my working life goes, another baby would royally mess that right up. Yet another great reason why I can’t and shouldn’t have any more.
So why am I so sad that I’m “done?”
Here’s my baby (Logan, age 5-1/2) holding Baby Luke this weekend:
Do you have or occasionally get baby fever? How do you deal with it? How do you know you’re “done?”
Sarah is the mother of 11-year-old twin girls, who will be starting 6th grade/middle school this fall; a nearly-7-year old boy going into first grade; and the aforementioned kindergartner, Logan. She refuses to think about how few days are left until school starts, when her life will begin a new, somewhat unwelcome, phase. Sarah blogs most weekdays at Parenting By Trial and Error.