I'm sure that gets the grandmothers' attention!

Many of our friends with kids C’s age are either pregnant again, or have already had the second child. Let’s see if I can map out my mental journeying in relation to this.

Stage One. Good for them. Another child to love, a sibling for their first one, how neat.

Two. Oh, we could do that too. It’s basically always been the plan. Our daughter is almost two. Why not now? I forget sometimes that my husband and I are adults; we don’t have to consult anyone before making this decision. Being pregnant is an amazing pilgrimage, and childbirth is a parable in its own right: equal parts dark night of the soul, sweat lodge, marathon, and spiritual catharsis.

Three. We could do that, but are we called to do that? Our life is working pretty great the way it is. Occasionally it just doesn’t work at all, and even that is fine, because it keeps us on our toes. Basically the family machine hums along quite nicely: mentally, spiritually, emotionally, financially. It works, and even though it gets tinkered with and recalibrated from time to time, really it’s no big deal. Do we truly need an upgrade?

I have a job I love. I have personal projects that bring a lot of satisfaction and that I am deeply committed to. Three is a holy number in my religious tradition, a number of completeness, and our little trinity is just wonderful.

Four. (Here’s where insanity starts to seep in) Our child is an easy child. She breastfed easily, she slept through the night early, she doesn’t get sick often, she loves her daycare provider, she’s not allergic to a blasted thing as far as we can tell, no special needs, she goes with the flow and does everything a toddler is supposed to do. And still the last couple of years have been unbelievably hard. Still I wondered how we were going to get through it. Still I have friends, dear friends, soul friends, that I almost never talk to because life is so insane. (KKF and CKG, I’m looking in your direction.) Still I wonder how to keep from losing myself in the labyrinth of roles and responsibilities.

Five: (The wheels are really coming off the wagon here) OK, perhaps there is room in our lives for another easy-going child. But what if Child #2 isn’t? What if the child turns out to be chronically ill? severely autistic? mentally disturbed? Do I really have what it takes to parent such a child? And forget the extreme scenarios. The mere idea of getting up three, four times a night with a newborn exhausts me; I fear the reality would undo me. This is my life, and my husband’s life, and my child’s life. I’m not gonna let some newborn Johnny-come-lately mess it up!

Six: Hello, crazy woman.

Would I love C less if she were chronically ill? If she were still getting up at night? Heck no! Am I honestly so achievement oriented that I would use as a reason not to have another child the possibility that Child #2 would not “measure up” or fit nicely into our lives? How nicely did C really fit into our lives the first several months? And yet how could we imagine life without her?

Crazy, crazy, crazy.

Well, partly. It’s also a matter of perception. Child #2 is nothing more than an idea at this point, a set of hypothetical attributes. You don’t love a set of attributes. You love a person. And I would love that person. I just don’t yet. That’s OK. Right?

At the bottom all of this is the question: Sometimes fear is a healthy thing, a demarcation of boundaries, an intuitive “no.” And other times fear is unhealthy, a crippling case of False Evidence Appearing Real.

How does one tell the difference?

And that’s stage Seven, another significant number in my tradition.