Ramblings From the Now-Empty Womb

Originally published on For Me For Once

Jackson will be two soon. Samantha will be five in January. They are the brightest parts of my life (along with my husband), and I can't remember my life without them. But I CAN, and do, remember being pregnant with both of them. The time that I carried each of them was sweet, fun, exciting, depressing, painful, overwhelming, scary, life-changing and meaningful, all at once. Some days I look back on my pregnancies with each of them and think "Dear God, how did I do that twice?" and at other moments I wonder why everyone doesn't have twelve. For some reason I'm thinking a lot lately about being pregnant, or rather NOT being pregnant, and how I feel about that, and I'll tell you why. (NO, it's not because I am pregnant, so you can leave that thought by the side of the road. Seriously. No seriously, knock it off - I am NOT pregnant again. Fine, whatever. Think what you want.)

Here's why. Right now, Jackson is the age that Samantha was when we conceived him. Just a couple of months before she turned two, we decided it might be nice to give her a sibling fairly soon. I had always wanted my kids to be two to three years apart, and I'm not even sure why. Part of me wanted one child to be at least close to being out of diapers before the next came along. Part of me wanted one who could at least bring me a diaper for the other, if not actually change it. For some reason it all seemed to center around diapers. That's kind of jacked up, now that I think about it. Hmm. Surely there must have been other reasons.

Whatever. Regardless, we wanted them two to three years apart. And by "we" I mean "me-and-Greg-who-showed-up-when-I-asked-him-to-with-sperm-at-the-ready".