Family building

OK, so I realize I am one of the cliches now. A new parent who now has to start every blog with an apology for not blogging more regularly. Sorry.

I have been thinking about what I want to do with this blog. I want to continue to participate in the blogging world, not only the many friends I made in the infertility/RPL community, but also the adoption community I've found more recently. But, I also want to respect Seven's privacy and not post all these details about him. I've settled on wanting to blog about being a mother through adoption and a mother after (and still) experiencing infertility. So, Seven will make cameo appearances in my posts, but they won't be about him so much as my experience as his mother.

With this new identity, I want to address the PAIL monthly theme: planning for the second child. We have always planned on having two kids. Or, more specifically, E thinks 1 or 2 kids is ideal and I think 2 or 3 kids is ideal, so we settled on 2 as something we both agree on.

I think about starting the wait for a second child all the time. Of course, with Seven only being 4 months old and his adoption not yet finalized, we are in no position right now to actually go down that path. But it is a topic that occupies a large chunk of my thoughts. I love Seven dearly and want to enjoy this special time with him, especially now as he is so cuddly and fun at this age. Yet when I think about money, I think about how we can save up money for #2. When I think about changing jobs, I think about how that might interact with plans for #2. When I think about how Seven is outgrowing some clothes and will soon outgrow some toys, I think about saving them for a future child. And so on. I think about it all the time.

Being the nerd that I am, I then think about why I think about it so much. I've come down to this. I want the family building stage to be over. I don't particularly want kids that are super close in age, but I want to be done with family building and reach that feeling that my family is complete. And I feel that infertility and the adoption process is the reason. It is a stressful process and I just want it behind us. As long as we are still wanting more kids, infertility is the elephant in the room that hangs over my head, taunting me with what my body won't do. I still want the control that eluded me for so long from infertility and the adoption process and hope (naively?) that I can regain control once our family is complete and that uncertainty is behind us. (Yeah, I've already learned that parenthood itself makes a mockery of control, but still...).