43 Days and Counting

I’m already overwhelmed by the holidays. My problem is, I find all this stuff I want to do for the holidays. I’m not talking parties and outrageous shopping and all that. I mean, well, things like: I want to buy a kitchen playset for J unfinished and paint it myself so it’s personalized and cute and just for her. I want to hand-make Christmas decorations for D’s office staff, hospital personnel, my co-workers, my in-laws, and the required ornaments for A’s school’s chicken noodle dinner. I want to take the time to actually enjoy the Zoolights this year. I want to spend a whole weekend at my mom’s house, taking the kids to all the cool holiday stuff there. I’d love to bake about 200 different kinds of cookies (luckily I get out of that one as long as we live in this house where there’s simply no room for a freezer, therefore nowhere to store about 200 different kinds of cookies. Also good because there’s no temptation for me to eat said cookies.)

The regular shopping and gifting and wrapping and running I can handle. No problem. It’s the wanting to do more and feeling like I didn’t do enough to make the holidays a special time come December 26. (I should note that I’ve never once felt that way, especially since we’ve had children...)

Anyway. Thank goodness (I actually typed “foodness” first. Hmmm....wonder where my brain is?!) I don’t have to plan and cook Thanksgiving dinner this year. We’re doing the in-law Thanksgiving this weekend, with my SIL, the family-named “Holiday Martyr,” doing the cooking. Lasagna and salad. A far cry from traditional, but what matters is we’ll all be together before one SIL has gastric bypass, a nephew gets married, and we head full-on into the holidays. We’ll be spending the actual Thanksgiving holiday with my mom. I’ll offer to cook the turkey, but will most certainly be refused.

Did I mention that we’re also full-on into the debate over a third child? Hmm. Don’t quite know how it happened, and I certainly don’t know that I’m truly ready to manage a third pregnancy and another little being in the house. Certainly not in this house. My gut feeling is that the discussions will lead nowhere until we decide it’s really too late to think about having another. Cripes. Unless I wind up pregnant sometime in the next month, D would be 40 when any baby would be born.

It’s weird. I just get myself all used to the idea and decide that I do in fact wish to be pregnant again and have another child, then I read or see something that cuts me to the heart with all those awful feelings about my pregnancy for J. It’s a long entry all unto itself, from my anger at myself and the world over the absolute need and value we all place on having perfect children to my anger over the joy of a pregnancy that was taken away from me for no good reason whatsoever. I really do feel as though I may not be able to handle another pregnancy emotionally. Practically, I feel as though I don’t have it in me anymore to nurse another baby, to do the frequent doctor visits, to do the three-hour wake-up thing, to haul around an infant carrier for several months, and to juggle the needs and schedules of three children and two busy adults. But should my dislike for that first difficult year be enough to keep me from experiencing all the joys that another child would almost certainly bring to our family?

Welcome to my dilemma.