Baby Fever, Version 2.0

I seem to have developed a problem recently. The kind of problem that involves forgetting things.

Important things.

Like how utterly exhausted I was over the last 13 months.

That's right. I have baby fever again.

It feels like I see pregnant ladies and babies everywhere lately. Everyone else is having them. And they're so cute. And sweet. And not waking me up at midnight and 3 and 6 just after I fell back to sleep following my husband's alarm for work.

Oh right, I do like sleeping the night. In case anyone (including my ovaries) didn't know.

All kidding aside, I do seem to have developed a hyper-awareness of babies again, which tends to hone in on the tiniest, most precious, non-screaming ones. I went through this before Brianna was conceived. But that always felt more like a slap in the face from the universe, a reminder that so many others had them easily, sometimes unintentionally, while we had to wait and wait and wait some more.

This time, I think it's more of an awareness of how much Brianna has changed. She took her first steps last weekend, which officially ended my reign as Almost Competent Mother of Cute Baby and instead demoted me to Happy but Bewildered Toddler-Wrangler. She can say Hi (especially if you're a stranger in the supermarket), and All Done!, and has her own little name for the dog ("Re-ra" for Phedre). She's learning all these wonderful things, including dumping her food in her lap to see just how squishy yogurt can be (HELPFUL HINT #1: yogurt is gooey and you cannot wipe it off of high chair straps).

And with all of this comes the realization that I do not have a baby anymore. I'm thrilled to see her in this new stage, but at the same time I feel a pang of regret that I was so unable to enjoy her first weeks in our life. It's made me quite introspective about what I could have done differently, the help I would have insisted on, and whether I would be at the same risk for PPD with more realistic expectations and better self-care tools this time around.

And yet, even as I consider how much faster we could tackle it in a "next time" scenario, I have to be honest with myself about whether it would be a smart move for our family and for our marriage. Sometimes it takes everything in me to manage Brianna's needs, be a reasonably productive employee, not resort to cereal for dinner, and keep the house in good enough shape to not require HAZMAT suits. (HELPFUL HINT #2: don't stop by my house unannounced. ever.) And even then, I sometimes lose my cool and have to give myself a time out. I've come a long way from where I was last year, but the scars of having PPD haven't fully healed yet. I wasn't the only one affected by it, either; Andy had a huge burden, not just as my biggest supporter, but also to keep life going when I couldn't and fill the gaps for whatever Brianna needed that I couldn't give.

And, like just about every other family out there, we have to be sure we can provide for another child. We went through some unnervingly tight stretches financially, as we adjusted to the loss of disposable income and the ridiculous price of diapers.We've since figured out how to stay comfortable without going into debt, giving up on small luxuries, or working on the corner on a hot night for some extra money (which is good, because post-nursing boobs are hardly money-makers). (NOTE: I would only resort to hooking in the most dire circumstances, such as being unable to feed Brianna after a zombie apocalypse. That was more a joke for my mother. Hi Mom!)

So for now, we're giving ourselves some time. Time to save money, time to get our relationship back to rock solid, time to see how I handle the adjustments and frustrations of having a toddler. I've been on birth control that's just kind of meh for PCOS (more on that in another post soon-ish), but I'll stick with it for a few more months and wait for my boobs to stop tingling when I see a baby or a pregnant lady. It's been so tempting to go off the meds and rely on infertility to keep us in check. But right now, a pregnancy would be more than we're prepared to handle, and the constant guessing game of what my body is doing could lead me down a constant path of hoping and being disappointed.

Because I do want another baby. But right now is just not the time.