baby clothes on the goodwill pile

We did some spring cleaning a bit ago. Made a nice big pile of stuff to go to goodwill. I tackled our son's room and decided that all the baby stuff we had been holding onto just needed to go. I'm not planning on having another child, let's free up some shelf space. When DH came in to take the pile out to the car, and saw all the baby stuff I had put on it, his shoulders slumped a bit. "Oh" he said. "This makes it feel so final."

It's not something that comes up too often, but I know that my husband would like more children. Just when I get feeling at peace with my family planning decisions, I realize that it's my peace and my planning, but not the decision that my significant other would make. So, not family planning... selfish me planning.

A one child family.

It would only take one more child to appease his disappointment. A sibling. So our son would have someone to share with, grow up with, grow older with. And this is where my insecurity about my family planning concerns really hits a tender weak spot- what is best for my son. I'm tormented by the anecdotes about the lonely only child. About what my not having any more children will mean for him in his life. I cling to stories about normal healthy people who were only children.

Fecundity and procreation are all around me. At church on Sunday it seemed the bellies of every woman under the age of 40 were blooming with newly implanted life. At church, in my neighborhood, among family, I feel like such an anomaly. An ovary-ed freak of nature deaf to the call of multiply and replenish.
I'm okay being a freak.
Occasionally I get twinges of guilt/sadness over my husband's regrets about our family. However, what really gets me is the doubt, the the worry about what possible harm I am inflicting upon my son by my unwillingness to give him a sibling. (Mom guilt. We will never be good enough. We will always be the cause of so much harm.) Sometimes, just for that, in insecure moments, I waver; Okay, Yes! Fine! Let's make a sibling!

Ha.

I keep a stash of pregnancy tests in the bathroom. Sometimes I get this wave of terror that my birth control has failed and I am pregnant. I rip out another stick to pee on, praying to my goddess mirana that it isn't so. She has not failed me so far.

I should just get my tubes tied.

But then...

I see the slump in his shoulders;
"this makes it seem so final."
"Well," I say,
"If we have another baby we can just get new stuff."

[meanwhile the clock ticks away.....]

you sanctimonious perv!!!

I say a lot of stuff in my head that will never ever make it past my vocal chords. The most recent non-verbal conversation that keeps banging around in my head has to do with finding out that my underwear has been a topic of discussion for a particular LDS male acquaintance.

"Get your mind off my underwear!"
I'd love to say to this upright and utterly self-righteous prig.
"Do you think your sanctimony hides the fact that you are obsessing about what's under the clothes of another man's wife?!?"

Oh the things I dream about saying, but never will.
Unless he actually brought the topic up to my face. Maybe then.

shhhhhhh.... (quite II)

I sat down to write a post the other night and after working on it for almost 4 hours I deleted the whole thing in frustration.
I make lists in my journal of things I want to write about, but when I finally get to sit down for a minute or more, nothing comes; I blankly stare at the screen. Or, like the other night, write and write and write and then give up with the futility of it all.

Even now, I will be able to count the sentences in this post with one hand but I think I will publish it anyway. Why?
Well,
Why not? It's something to say anyways.