Tuesday, October 30, 2007

a big girl

is what Baby Sister is becoming. She just doesn't look or act like a baby anymore. I don't think I'll be changing her blog name anytime soon, though, as there isn't likely to be any more babies around here. At this point she's at the age where people start to say, "time for another one!" (as if they hadn't noticed my eyes trying to look in three directions at once or my unwashed hair graying before their very eyes, but I digress). And indeed, with the boys, I was really thinking about "another one" when they were about this age. We originally intended for Little Brother to be the last baby; J actually wanted to get a vasectomy. I talked him out of it on the grounds that people do not do something irreversibe like that at the age of 24, for Pete's sake, but maybe there was more to it than that. I didn't feel like I was done.


Now, I'm done. I look at pictures of her as a tiny baby, or of the boys as tiny babies, and they're sweet pictures, but I feel no desire to do that again. Although weaning Baby Sister, which we did recently, was hard. Not for her - she was fine with it - but for me. As much as I don't want another one, it's still a little weird to think that I am done nursing my last baby. I guess I still really don't know how I feel about that.

Still, as a big girl, she's a delight. We went to a farm a couple of weeks ago, and she actually realized what she was looking at. She mooed at the cow, clucked at the chickens, laughed her ass off at the pig - not sure why. She's bright and affectionate and silly. But she definitely is not a baby.



Now that I know I'm not going to be having any more children, I have been working on something I have been thinking about for a long time: becoming an egg donor. I talked it over with my family and signed up here. Now I have been matched, and will be starting the whole process soon. I had wanted to do this because I had a small brush with infertility myself, and more through the experience of a family member. That's not really my story to tell, so I won't, save to say that it was at first heartbreaking and then thrilling when their happy ending finally came.

As for my own story, I had no trouble at all getting pregnant with either of the boys. We used to joke, in fact, that all J had to do was look at me the wrong way. When we started trying again, we got pregnant right away, but lost the baby after ten weeks. It completely blindsided me - I just never saw it coming. It took another nine months before we got pregnant again. That year or so is one I would not care to relive, to put it mildly. And I know my experience is nothing compared to what many people go through.
I'm really excited to be able to help a couple become a family. I'll keep you updated on the process as it unfolds.