Future plans

Today Mark and I were in church and a 12(ish) year old girl sang during the offertory.  I was fighting back tears the whole time, but not because of her singing.  I honestly don’t remember what she sang actually.  But the entire time she was up there, I couldn’t stop thinking about how my little Abbie will be her age before I know it, and I’m not ready for her to grow up.

I’ve been bitten by the “baby bug” again, in a big way.  The other day I held a friends two week old baby.  He was TINY!  8lbs 3 oz to be exact.  I don’t even remember when Abbie was that small.  (Mainly because she was never that small – she was born 9lbs 9.2oz… But that’s besides the point.)  She’s growing up way too quickly.  I do remember when she was newborn, I kept wondering what she’d be like when she could crawl, and then what she’d be like when she could walk, and then what she’d be like when she could talk.  Now I find myself not wanting to think about her future and just wanting her to stay little forever.  She’s so much fun right now!  She’s starting to pretend and she loves to play and she laughs all the time.  I don’t want her to get big.

I find myself thinking a lot about when a good time would be to have baby #2.  We had originally thought that we’d start trying for #2 when Mark got back from his deployment so our kids would be about 3 years apart, but the more I think about it, the more I’m not sure that’s a good idea.  A large number of people getting back from a deployment at the same time equals quite a few people getting pregnant, and this base only has room for 3 people in labor at one time.  If you’re the 4th, you get to give birth in an Italian hospital, which I do not want to do at all.  Plus we really want to take advantage of our time in Italy and travel as much as possible.  Abbie is enough work by herself when we travel.  Adding me being pregnant or a newborn to the traveling mix doesn’t sound like much fun.  I’m also feeling like I’ve finally got this parenting thing figured out.  I want to be able to spend lots of time with Abbie without having to split it between her and a newborn.

But the other side of me is longing for another baby.  And I’m very aware of my clicking biological clock.  I’m nervous about waiting until I’m 33 to even start trying for another baby, and even if we managed to get pregnant right away this time around (which didn’t at all happen last time), I’d probably be 34 before we had another one.  Right now I’m thinking 3 kids would be great, but I don’t want to have kids in my late 30’s.  That seems kind of risky to me and a four year age gap seems to be a bit much.  It’s hard to make future plans like this in general, but it’s even harder when you have deployments, overseas moves, foreign healthcare and TDY’s to take into consideration.

To add another twist to the mix, Mark and I would love to adopt a child (or two) eventually.  I guess another option would be for us to adopt our 3rd child, but my thinking on that is if you have 2 biological children, it would make sense to adopt two children too.  We would love to adopt an Asian baby, and I think it would be neat to adopt twins if possible, but I haven’t even started researching (or saving our money) for that yet.

    

Just lots on my mind about future kids lately and I thought I’d share.  Anyone have any thoughts, opinions or suggestions?