We can't have another baby.

"We're not going to have any more babies, are we?" I asked Kurt, last night.

He shook his head.

"It's too dangerous, isn't it?" I said.

"There are other things, too," he said.

It is hard to believe there are other things.  There is something wrong in my body, something that might make it risky to have another baby.

The thing is, the risk was there with my first two babies, I just didn't know about it.  I can't help but feel like everything would be okay, again.  There is about a 5% change something could go wrong.  That chance is so small, and it is SO HUGE when thinking about having another baby.  There is only a slightly elevated risk that I won't live until I'm old.  (That slight risk takes over everything when I can't sleep. It is bigger than the sky.)

"Being pregnant is awful, anyway," I said.  "And I'd have to have another c-section, and that would suck."

He nodded.

"I'd get tremors and fevers and cold sweats," I said.  "I'd go crazy for a little bit after giving birth.  Not to mention that there would be months of sleeplessness, of feedings in the middle of the night.  There are lots of reasons not to have another baby, not just the big one."

"It's not even that big," he said.

"We don't even have enough room," I reminded him.  "The girls would have to share a room."

None of these things take away my longing to hold a newborn against my breast.  I said so.  I said to my husband, "It's hard for me to reconcile the fact that I'll never hold a newborn.  I mean, really get to hold one.  To hold it like it's mine."

"You'll have grand kids, someday," he said.

Maybe I will.  (As long as the slightly elevated risk doesn't turn into something less slight.)

We've been talking about what it would mean to have another baby.  There's no denying it would mean another person to love.  It would mean a multiplication of all the beauty in the world.  It would mean that my heart would break again and grow, grow, grow.  It would mean all of those other things, too.  It would mean long nights and one more person to cry, when things got tough.  It would mean that life would matter, a whole person more.  It would mean that my motherhood would be a whole person bigger.

It's hard to reconcile.

It's even harder to reconcile that 5%.

We simply can't have another baby.

My heart isn't broken over it.
After all, it was only an idea.

one week old scouty

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