Are you kidding me???

Life is not fair sometimes.

I have three beautiful children. I've been blessed because all three are healthy and happy. I should be happy and content, satisfied and done. Right???

After I gave birth to my first child I decided I wanted to have 4. It was such an amazing experience that no one can describe to you until you experience it (kinda like the sleep deprivation and screaming baby that no one can calm down). At the moment of his birth I fell in love with him immediately. I also fell in love with that "first meeting." There is NOTHING like meeting your child for the first time. I think I became a birth junkie because the pregnancy AND labor & delivery were so awesome.

Fast forward 3 years - we start trying to get pregnant but are unable to. It ended up taking us 2 years to get pregnant. But lucky us, after our countless 2 hour drives (one way) to a fertility clinic, numerous tests and too many fertility treatments, we were able to get pregnant the old fashioned way...ON dh's 27th birthday :) This pregnancy, however, was the complete opposite of my first. I was so sick for the first 8 weeks. I mean SICK. It seemed every negative side effect of pregnancy offered, I received. I was even blessed with insomnia so I was never able to escape the nausea. Good times! I made it through and at 18 weeks found out we were having a daughter.

Now, for those of you who don't know us, girls don't run in dh's family. So it was a HUGE shock to see an absence of the penis we were all expecting to see. A wonderful shock! Because it meant I was done having children. Yep, the number 4 went out down the drain the first minute of MS. I won't even go into the things I prayed about during that first trimester. And since I would soon have a boy AND a girl, what else was there to try for?

Then I gave birth to my daughter. All the aches and pains, morning sickness, crazy mood swings, and pretty much the hell called pregnancy was forgotten the minute I held her. I was in love. I became a birth junkie all over again. I was already plotting how I would get dh to say yes to one more child, because at this point he is done with a capital D. I think he already had Dr. Vanderslice on speed dial (yes, that is an actual dr.'s name who performs vasectomy's around here).

Fast forward again 7 months - I don't know how I did it but I convinced dh one more baby would complete our perfect little family of 4. So we started the fun process of trying and when Avery was 13 months old the familiar waves of nausea caused me to start thinking something was up. So at 4:30am on a Friday morning Tom and I found out we were going to be parents again! We were getting ready to hop on a flight back home for my 10 year high school reunion but I just had to know before we left. The whole day I was freaking out but by the time we were in SA I was excited. My girlfriend bought a cute "big sister" shirt for Avery and we made the big announcement. YAY - life was good :)

Once I was past the first trimester morning sickness it was the best pregnancy because I didn't even feel pregnant. Then all of a sudden at 32 weeks my little munchkin decided he was ready to come out so I was put on bed rest. For real? I already have 2 children at this point and a pretty busy schedule so that was a hard pill to swallow. I did as well as I could but anytime I was on my feet for too long the pain would kick in. And I'm talking serious pain...it felt like someone was pounding my pelvis with a sledgehammer. I didn't think we would make it to 38 weeks, which was when I was getting induced because I was having another whopper of a baby.

Well, I did make it and Cole Randall entered the world after my epidural failed. Funny story - at the beginning of my labor Tom and I were listening to a woman in the room next door give birth. She was screaming like a cave woman, grunting and making all sorts of sounds that shouldn't escape your lips. I kinda laughed and told Tom "thank goodness I get epidurals!" That wouldn't be me. Well, here's the funny part - my epidural ran out about an hour before I gave birth and the ONLY anesthesiologist working the floor was in a c-section. Perfect! So before long I'm in a lot of pain. I'm crying. I don't know how to breathe because I never took those unecessary birthing classes - THAT is what the epi is for! Or so I thought. Well, I must say mother nature took over at one point because I started breathing like a champ thinking in my head "just a few more minutes and my drugs will be here." Nope, a few more minutes went by and Cole decided it was time. Oh. My. God. I then gave birth to my 9lb'er drug free. I thought I was being ripped in half and I became that woman I jokingly told my husband would never be me.

I had stared at the ceiling the entire time (unable to even glance at the mirror they put up for me to watch my final child's grand entrance into the world) thinking THIS.WILL.NEVER.HAPPEN.AGAIN. No more children for me. I was DONE. DONE.DONE.

Then his broad shoulders finally "slipped" out and I held him for the first time. It was love at first sight. He was amazing. He was perfect. He looked just like his brother and sister had looked at birth. And then it happened - the birth junkie came out again. I told Tom I could do this one more time :) He about passed out.

But something over the course of the last year changed my opinion. I have THREE children. That is not easy. They are three distinctly different people who always need something. I love being their mom and I love being able to care for them on a daily basis. But the first year with a baby is the hardest - the sleep deprivation makes it hard to deal with the two whiny older children, your hormones are a little out of whack, you have baby weight to lose, etc. It's such a demanding time. And when you don't trust leaving your baby to a sitter, trying to spend time with friends is next to impossible when you have no family around. As time went on I started really appreciating how much easier each day got with Cole and something started over riding the birth junkie in me. I actually became content. I love being a mom who can move instead of a beached whale with a dizzy head. I was happy with my little family of five. I was 99.9% sure I was done.

THEN my husband tells me a couple of days ago that he wouldn't mind having one more. That over the course of the previous few days he had really been thinking about having 1 more - almost like male baby fever...is that even such a thing?? I always tease him about wanting another baby but in my mind I'm pretty much over it and want to get on to the next phase of our lives - the FUN part! But his thoughts stirred something in me, unfortunately, and now there's a little tiny part of me that really wants that 4th child I always thought I would have.

So of course I had to take dinner over to a friend tonight who just gave birth to her daughter. An absolutely beautiful and precious little angel. I was holding her as we were getting ready to leave and she started making the faces that new baby's make - the quivering lips and almost scared look like they are having a bad dream and then she hiccupped a couple of times. I can not even begin to describe what went through me at that moment. I seriously got a wave of baby fever that almost knocked me over - UGH! I don't WANT that!

But it's here. And I need to figure out how to get rid of it. I've decided to put a muzzle on my husband if he makes one more comment about wanting one more, and I'm just not allowed to look at newborns. I'm pretty sure I can pull this off until menopause makes it physically impossible for me to have one more :)