Briefcase on the Kitchen Table

Many moons ago I wrote a few blog posts on the topic of people asking over and over, especially the later we got into our 20s, if we were going to have a baby soon. After having four children I can say my perspective on the question overall has not changed but it has developed layers.

When we announced that we were pregnant with Samuel we didn’t mention that we had spent the better part of a year yearning for a baby. We had been so careful for so long to prevent pregnancy that internally I really thought that once we “pulled the goalie” so to speak, it would happen immediately. And then it didn’t. It was month after month of agonizing over every single thing my body did and then coming up disappointed at the end of the two week wait. And the thing is this story is completely unremarkable. Overall we waited a relatively short amount of time. I have many, many friends who have gone on years-long infertility journeys filled with sadness and longing and hope and joy and complexity. I have friends who have become pregnant unintentionally and then dealt with feelings of fear and then guilt for feeling afraid. I have friends who were pregnant with the most-wanted baby and then experienced miscarriage or stillbirth. I have friends with special needs children, with complicated births, and with beautiful well planned out pregnancies and birth experiences. All of this to say if I have learned anything it is that it doesn’t happen the way it does in the movies.

When we had Samuel there were lots of questions relatively soon after his birth of when we would have another. I didn’t mind the question, mostly because I knew we definitely planned to have more. Then Hazel entered the picture and other than a few bumps in the road with severe cholestasis and a 24 hour stint in the hospital a week after her birth for post-partum preeclampsia it was smooth sailing. When we let folks know we were pregnant with our third and Hazel was only 10 months old there were some raised eyebrows and some “you know how this happens, right?” We would explain that because we waited until we were in our 30s to start having children and we wanted at least three, Maggie’s timing was very intentional. Mostly we were feeling privileged that her conception had not taken as long as Samuel or Hazel’s. Maggie, matching her easy-going personality, arrived without anything other than my normal cholestasis- her pregnancy and birth were smooth and uneventful. Then somehow when you get to three the question of “will you have any more?” feels loaded, the questioner’s opinion hanging there at the end of the sentence. My instinct was to say yes- Avery and I had always talked about having four children. Yet somehow I also felt like I was on the edge of social acceptance, that somehow three children was a large but socially acceptable size but that four was going to push us into a category of homespun evangelism or environmental neglect. After every baby I was asked “will you have any more” and yet now the question seemed to have a second, unspoken question attached to it. “How will you cope?” or “Do you think it’s responsible?” or “Don’t you know your body will never bounce back from a fourth?” I was nervous too about adding a fourth, questions that would circle around in my brain late at night. Were we spreading ourselves too thin? Could we pour into Sam, Hazel, and Maggie the way they deserved if we added another? Could my body do it again? From November 2018-June 2022 I had given birth three times and I was now 35 years old. What if we were asking too much of our physical space, of our finances, of my body, and of our other children? After some very intentional conversations and some soul searching, knowing innately that we weren’t done yet, we soon found out that Baby #4 would be arriving.

After Maggie’s birth went so smoothly I expected the same of this babe. I could tell I was physically having a harder time. I had never been very ill in any of my pregnancies and yet I felt zapped of energy almost the entire pregnancy this time. I developed cholestasis again (unsurprising, especially with my “geriatric” status) and we were all set for a scheduled c-section right at 37 weeks. And then came Sunday, April 28. We went to church, had a “diaper shower” after the service, and then went home for naps. Avery took one of our kiddos to the store while I rested with the other two. I woke up feeling VERY strange and took my blood pressure with a cuff we have at home. It read 155/110. Too high. I called the doctor and we were told to come to the hospital immediately. After we arrived they took my blood pressure again and I was now at 210/115. Very soon after our arrival to L&D, a premature Baby Georgia arrived into the world. She was tiny but perfect. Georgia was taken to the NICU and I was wheeled to recovery where it felt very strange not to have a baby in my arms. I had always had very easy c-section recoveries but because of the speed with which Georgia was removed my entire lower torso was black and blue and I had a ton of bleeding. We were fortunate in our certainty that Georgia completed our family and took more permanent measures to prevent future pregnancies.

I honestly have no real feelings about about being done. And what a privilege that is- to have given birth to four happy, healthy, very intentional children. But I am very aware that the journey of bearing children is fraught. You never know what is happening in someone’s life. Think about it- we know 1 in 3 women will experience miscarriage in her life, 1 in 150 will experience stillbirth, and yet we rarely talk about it. Whether a person has children or doesn’t have children, decides to have more children or that they are done- it is a decision full of so many variables outside of a person’s control. “Will you have any more?” may bring up feelings of pain, trauma, longing, or regret. What if “will you have more?” was met with an answer of “we would love to but we can’t,” or “we have been trying for years,” or “certainly not,” would that woman feel like she can give you that honest answer? Should she have to? Unless you know a woman intimately, to a level at which it would be normal to talk to her about her sexual life, should you be asking the question in the first place?

I know that, before I started trying to grow my own family, I asked this question of people without thinking what it may bring up for them. Now, on this side of motherhood, I can say there has been nothing more personal to me than my journey to becoming a parent. Just because we have normalized the question of “Will you have more?” does not make it any less intimate of a question, often calling upon the innermost corners of a woman’s soul. The question can be well-meaning, earnest, and fair. I just won’t ever again treat it as casual.