To Three or Not To Three…That is The Question

Oh yes, having another child is officially on the table.  And it may be hard to imagine but I am not writing this from an inpatient mental health facility.  These words are coming straight out of my own terrified mouth.

My husband is one of five.   I am one of two.  I knew a long time ago that more than two kids was a probability because of how important it was to my husband.  But I also knew I would have the last say given that my body would be used as the vehicle by which to reach this goal and I would always have the last word on this issue, thank you very much.

We did what a lot of people tend to do more and more these days.  We dated for almost a decade before we decided to get married.  We were in our early to mid thirties when we got married and then had our first child a couple years later. 

The first sign that we weren’t 100% in control of this little plan of ours was when we found out during our first pregnancy that our baby would be born with a life threatening heart defect.  With this news we had to face the fact that our first born might not make it and that there was the potential that we would have to rise from the rubble and consider getting pregnant all over again after such a devastating loss.  Not knowing for sure how things were going to turn out and thinking into the future of the possibility of having to try and get pregnant again after the loss of a child – literally made my head spin.  I remember feeling sick to my stomach and wondering if I would even ever be able to consider getting pregnant again should our lives take a terrible turn for the worse like that.

There was one conversation I will never ever forget because I literally couldn’t believe it was actually happening to me.  The social workers at the Advanced Fetal Care Center advised us to at least think through the decisions we would have to make should we lose our child.  That we needed to be at least a little bit prepared for the worst possible outcome should it happen. 

I sat across the kitchen table from my husband at eight months pregnant and we forced ourselves through one of THE most awful conversations we have ever had to have with one another.  As difficult as it was, we knew we had to do it and we hoped on hope that we would never have to face the loss and then burial of our baby.  I remember looking into my husband’s face and thinking I never would have dreamed a conversation like this when I was exchanging vows with the person I loved on my wedding day. 

I know now, after this conversation and the months and years that have followed, that without a shadow of a doubt (no matter how much I complain about marriage) we could and would make it through anything.   We would always make things work between us – no matter how hard it got.  In a way, this experience has taken the place of the vows we exchanged on our wedding day and where there was once a commitment of love and hope is now a bond so strong I wouldn’t even attempt to find the words to accurately describe it or give it the justice it deserves.  And as hard as the past few years have been at times, I would never trade the bond I have with my husband for anything.

After our daughter was born and we had to get her and ourselves through two open heart surgeries before she was even eight months old, our family planning discussion – for obvious reasons – fell completely off the table.  We were terrified just to make it through her first year of life and we sure as hell couldn’t consider getting pregnant again with everything we had going on.  Our lives were so stressful and so chaotic those first eight months that we simply just didn’t talk about when or if we’d have another child.  We were also told that in families like ours there is an increased chance (although a very small increase) of having another heart baby.  The thought of going through something like this TWICE – well let’s just say we couldn’t even fathom something like that.

We did however talk to the doctors and social workers from the hospital about how other families like ours handle the family planning question after the birth of a heart baby.  They told us that some couples decided not to have subsequent children, that there were many couples who felt the experience was too frightening to risk having to go through again or that their lives were already so challenging with their heart baby that they really couldn’t take on another pregnancy or another child.  Others, they said, waited a long time before deciding to have a second – waiting for five, six, seven years, until it felt to them that their heart heart baby was far enough away from the risky open hearts before trying for a second.   But there were also people who got pregnant right away and just buckled down and didn’t let the heart baby experience impact their original plan to have other children.

Getting a few stories from the hospital about other families like ours was about as far as we got in our discussion about having another child when…..we found out we were pregnant.  Shock of a lifetime considering neither of us even remembers conceiving our son (no word of a lie).  Looking back, I’m thinking what happened was this:

We finally had exhaled after our daughters second open heart, we started to relax a little bit and felt we had made it to the other side of the toughest part of that first year – we were still standing and when we originally got the diagnosis – we really didn’t know if we’d be standing towards the end of that first year.  We literally had been living day-by-day, sometimes hour-by-hour, and somehow, by the grace of god, literally – we had made it through the two open hearts and she was still with us.  It was an incredible feeling.  We desperately wanted to feel “normal” again, so we went out, we had a few drinks, we let our hair down, and well….we made another baby. 

I remember getting the positive pregnancy test when my daughter was only nine months old and I’m not going to lie – I think I cried for 45 minutes straight.  I was so completely blown away that we were going to have another baby without having “planned” for it.  Especially after what had just transpired during our first pregnancy not to mention the open hearts.  What if something goes wrong again?  How are we going to manage two children AND another open heart surgery.  As scared as I was – I finally understood the true meaning of a “blessing.”   The surprise of my second pregnancy was a blessing because I didn’t even have the opportunity to talk myself out of ever getting pregnant again.  I didn’t even get a chance to worry and fret and make myself sick with trying to figure out when I’d be ready to try again, or stress about my daughter or the health of this second baby.  It just happened.  And now I have an amazing, healthy, son – who literally just jumped on board when I wasn’t looking so I couldn’t change my mind or stop him from catching a ride down to planet earth.  And I am so, so, so grateful for that because I know in my heart I would have over thought all of it and I would have had a really hard time letting my guard down enough to allow myself to move on after what happened to my daughter.

But it was not easy.  Having my son come so soon after the birth of my daughter and her two surgeries…. I would be lying if I didn’t admit that the first 3-6 months of his life were extremely challenging.  I mean if you think about it – we had never actually taken a newborn home with us before.  We had never had a healthy child before where they just hand the baby to you and say here, sign this, and you can be on your way, Good luck!  And it wasn’t just him.  We had another kid too, and she wasn’t even two yet.  It was pretty terrifying.  And no matter how much baby amnesia you get after giving birth – I can still to this day recall just how hard it was to have a newborn and a 1 ½ year old.  It was hard.  Damn hard.   Our marriage was in the shitter, I was so overwhelmed, exhausted, physically compromised after two pregnancies in two years (there is a reason, ladies, why they tell you to wait at least a year before getting pregnant again :)….it was super super hard. 

When you are in it?  You feel like you are drowning.  There were days when I was so exhausted and so over matched – I would give my husband that look (a look you can only give someone after having been with them a decade and then having two kids back-to-back) and say, “What the hell was the point of having a family if we are both going to end up remarried!”  I was so tired and so fed up with our marriage being buried under this tremendous amount of responsibility, ridiculous amount of hard work and constant emotional stress day-in-and-day-out.  It really started to feel like it was never going to end.  

But just like everything in life, once you come up for air, and after that six month marker with some much needed sleep under my belt – you think – wow, we made it.  But it’s not until you are on the other side of it that you realize just how far you’ve come and the enormity of everything you have accomplished.  We’re alive.  Everybody survived.  We made it through.  Some days sure as hell weren’t pretty, and having my son effected our entire extended family because of all the help we needed, but we got through it, in one piece, and now when I look at my two kids playing together I think – wow, this is really something else.  THIS makes more sense to me than anything else ever has in my entire lifetime.

Well jesus, you put it that way and it sounds like we’ve got a pretty good gig going here at the ranch, no?  Why add to the chaos with another child?  Why do it all over again, compound the stress we already have with another pregnancy, another birth, another newborn, another toddler.  Another kid in college for Christ sake!  While there are many, many, many reasons we have both mulled over to NOT have another child – there are a few in the category of wanting another child that we just can’t seem to shake. 

It’s hard knowing that with my son at almost a year and half and my daughter moving closer and close to three everyday – that if we didn’t try to get pregnant with another child we could easily start digging our way out of this phase in our lives.  We could get through Haven’s last surgery and we could parent one-on-one with each child – for the rest of their lives.  Hell, we could even start to try and finally find more time for our marriage and each other.  What?

There’s a third child out there that belongs in our family and we know it.  We’ve tried to talk our way out of trying for a third but all things on the NO list just don’t outweigh all the things we know we’d long for (for the rest of our lives) on the YES list.  But we also know this is the tougher, harder, more challenging, potentially less responsible road to take.  We want to do right by our marriage, our daughter, our son, and the financial stresses any growing family faces.  We don’t want to half ass having a family, putting so much stress on all the supports holding up our family foundation that we fuck the whole point of it up and do a crappy job of it. 

It’s not worth it in the end if we aren’t happy, that the kids aren’t happy, that we are too overburdened and can’t give each of our children the individualized attention they need let alone the attention our marriage would need along the way.  We don’t want a bunch of kids and a marriage that we can’t enjoy, or that we aren’t able to manage in such a way that we aren’t instilling, love, confidence, and peace of mind for every member of our family.  If we are going to try for this – we need to be committed to not just doing it.  But doing it well.

We also had to admit to each other that our daughter’s heart condition and unknown life expectancy is playing a major role in this discussion.  We hate admitting that fact, but it’s true.  We have every belief in the world that she’s going to live and thrive and have a wonderful life.  She may not live into her 60s, 70s, 80s – but hell – maybe she will.  And in the way, way, way back of our heads we have the tiniest, darkest, little fear tucked away that for all we know, at any point we could lose her – just because of her anatomy. 

Having another child will never take that fear away.  We will always live with that fear and have been living with that fear since October 23, 2009 when we got our diagnosis.  We will carry it with us to our graves.  And while we don’t spend a lot of time letting this fear run our lives and while we try to do everything we can to make sure our daughter lives a happy, healthy life -- free from as little disruption or set backs as is humanly possible – we understand that we, even as her parents, will never have the last word on our daughter’s mortality.   We have had to understand to our core that we have no control over this.   It’s not in our control and it never will be.

When we look at our son we want nothing to ever happen to him.   And on top of that, we don’t want him to ever have to lose Haven.  We don’t want him to live with any kind of a burden because of her heart condition.  We never want him to feel different from her.  Even after Brian and I are long gone and six feet under, we never want him to ever feel alone.  We wish we could promise him, too that he and Haven will always have each other and that no matter what happens to mum and dad – you will always have each other should either of you need someone.   And god willing their story will be just that and they will have each other for a long, long, time.

As the parents, we feel cheated by the unknowns of Haven’s heart condition but there is nothing more concerning to me than thinking about Ronan being cheated by Haven’s heart condition.  And weather they are the closest of siblings or they can’t stand each other – it breaks my heart that I can’t protect either one of them from this complicated heart stuff.  It’s the only thing in the world I want to do as a parent – I just want to protect them from any possible chance of Haven’s heart condition hurting them in anyway or making them lose the thing they love the most.  But I will never be able to entirely protect them.  I have to accept that this is the road for all of us, hold on tight to each of their hands, and just keep walking.

So, all of this is to say – that while so much of the past few years of getting our little family off the ground has been filled with a turn of events, surprises, and ups and downs we could never have imagined -- we are hoping we have enough solid ground to stand on as a family after all we’ve been through – to answer this question for ourselves about a third and final pregnancy, a third and final child in our family, and to move forward with trying.

Knowing in our hearts that we vetted the idea as best we could, we thought it through over and over again, and this time we walked into it with our eyes wide open willing to face all the challenges we know come with it – so that in fifty years, we will be looking back upon our lives and with full confidence and full hearts we can say we have exactly the family we dreamed of and can honestly tell ourselves that we did it well.