The band-aid effect

I’ve always wanted more than one kid. Probably just two but maybe three, maybe four? I don’t have any whole siblings, my mom and dad only made me and I always wanted a sister. I definitely wanted my child to have a sibling.

Then I got pregnant and vowed to never do it again. As I was lying on the operating table with my guts split open and tears rolling down my face I made my husband promise me that I never had to do this again. I hated, no, I loathed being pregnant. Then to add to it my baby was premature, had acid-reflux and a milk protein allergy and was just an all around difficult baby.

But then I heard of the band-aid effect, you know, just get it over with. Have the babies back to back, get all the pregnancy and newborn-ness out of the way then have your life back (sorta). That sort of makes sense, I thought. I mean, I want Brady to have a sibling, I’d really love for him to have a brother, and one close in age would be wonderful. I cannot imagine getting through all of this and getting to a point where he can walk and talk and articulate his wants, get himself a snack and most importantly, wipe his own bottom, only to go aaaaallll the way back to square one again. So, why not just close my eyes, take a deep breath and jump in feet first? Get pregnant again, get this part out of the way and then make the hubs an appointment with the ball cutting doctor.

I mean, lets say you carve out three to four years of your life for pregnancies, sleepless nights, a child attached to your boob, few date nights etc. and then its over. You have 40 or 50 years left to be a parent to two children. Because its not children that I have a problem with, it’s the tiny baby children. It’s a small window of time in the grand scheme of life.

Should we? Shouldn’t we? I can’t decide. What are your second child plans?