There may be trouble ahead...

It’s been a little over three years since I decided that if I wanted children then me and the husband better get a move on and start trying. I was 32 and bored of the world of clubbing and drinking, it was time for something different. I didn't actually feel grown up enough but I realised that if I wanted two children (and that was always the unacknowledged scenario floating around in the back of my head) then we really ought to make a start now.  My other half always wanted children someday so the way we saw it, why not make that someday now? We do tend to make our major life changing decisions that way, with a shrug and a sense of,  “Ah go on then, why not?”

We didn’t expect it to be so hard, although actually we’ve had a relatively easy ride compared to others. Okay I fainted my way through most of the pregnancy and could barely walk I got so big, and life didn’t respect my wishes to have a zen pregnancy (how dare it!) I saw myself doing yoga, swimming, meditating... creating the perfect environment for a baby to develop, stress is bad for the baby y'know? But oh no, life threw all kinds of shit my way – bereavement, threat of redundancy, taking out risky loans, debt collectors, family arguments… then what seemed to be the angriest baby I’d ever seen was cut from my womb, a whopping ten and a half pounds, and thus began a whole new set of challenges!

It has not been the easiest of times, but then I know plenty of people have it much harder so I mustn't complain too much. We all have our different challenges. I know people who seem (to me) to have had an easier ride than us bemoan how much hard work it is, how they can’t even think about having another child. I also have other friends who have spent three years trying to conceive unsuccessfully who would do anything for our ‘troubles’. It’s all relative.

But what really, really puzzles me now is this… Why I am pining so much for another baby? When someone announces they are having a baby, rather than scream “Run!!!” at them I well up with tears of joy, I have the sudden urge to look after them and become their new best friend (creepy!), but most of all I feel jealous. This is truly baffling. Have I forgotten all the worrying? The feeling of my blood turning to acid in my veins when I thought I was having another miscarriage, I was almost afraid of sneezing in case I lost my precious baby. It was nine months of terror. Even now sometimes I get this irrational feeling that if I let little Taters (aforementioned precious baby) out of my sight he’ll disappear and I’ll wake up, realising it was all a dream and that he never existed. It makes my blood run cold.

So do I think I’d be any different if I were pregnant again? Do I think second time round I’ll be the laid back earth mother I wanted to be? That I’ll float through pregnancy glowing with good health, then give birth at home and successfully breastfeed, and well, just generally feel like I know what I’m doing (instead of watching other mothers with their children and feeling like a rank amateur in comparison) I’ve heard people say that the first baby is really hard, so would it be different second time round? Or am I crazy even considering it, am I just inviting disaster? Would my marriage survive the strain of another newborn or would my husband completely lose his sanity this time round?

I also don’t like to think of Taters as my test baby, the poor kid I practice (and get it wrong) with, so that I can be a wonderful mother with the second. What a horrible thought! One of my main motivating factors is that I'd love him to have a sibling.

But then there’s that nagging worry of my age. I’m 36 now, will it happen a second time round? Will there be problems? I know women have babies much older than me, but you never know personally when your time will be up. I don’t like to take it for granted that it will just happen. Although saying that my grandmother was 47 when my dad was born - so much for older mothers being a modern phenomena (take note Daily Mail!) Older women have always had babies, before contraception was rife they pretty much had them up until the change.

So many questions and no real way of knowing what the future holds. And faced with this kind of gamble all I can do is give myself the best odds possible – isn’t that true of life in general? And so from today I’m in training, healthy eating, healthy living… hopefully for now that will be enough to satiate the broodiness. And if life does bless me with another 10 pounder, then I really had better get training too!

Really?