Three's The New Two

Soon after having my daughter, I felt like I was a part of a new club.  Friends who’d had children and stayed in touch, albeit peripherally, were now more present.  I was one of them!  And there would be comments of how many I planned to have and when would I start working on number 2? 

For the first time in my life (unfortunately it’s worn off!), I was calm.  I put my little dumpling in a sling and bopped around, blissfully.  I took her to swimming classes in a warm pool where I imagined her back in my womb, and I think she did too.   I must have kissed her a million times in her first month alone.  There was a completeness, a contentment, a groundedness to our life.    Her perfection was intoxicating.   When the subject of more children came up, I just didn’t feel a need.  If need is even the right word.  One is simple and lovely and whole.  I could do this and do it well.

Without getting into the physical details and symptoms, I discovered I was pregnant again and was nearly in my second trimester, and my daughter was just a year old.  It was a complete shock (again, who needs the details)  and unsettling.  Everything had been perfect.   I felt disloyal to my daughter.  It wasn’t rationale but I didn’t want her to think or feel that she wasn’t enough.   I calculated their age difference.  18 months.  Wasn’t that before her sense of self had fully developed?? And all the while my belly grew.

For the first time in my daughter’s life, I felt anxious.  Then I found out I was having a boy.  A boy?  Don’t they say they’re harder? They mature later?  They have endless energy and whirl around in manic spirals, not listening?  They play with their penises!!  I only told my mother my fears because they seemed awful and unloving.  “Your brother was wonderful.  And not hyper at all,” she said.  “In fact, in kindergarten his teacher told me he was the peacemaker in his classroom.”  I might give birth to Gandhi!  It’s in my DNA!  And, like all fears during pregnancy, pregnancy marches on. The baby gets bigger, and the day arrives. 

A strike before midnight on August 12th, 2003, I have my baby boy via c-section.  I recover and sleep much of the day away on August 13th.  On August 14th there is a citywide blackout.  No visitors.  No phone.  No A/C.  No lights.  My son and I lie together in a sweaty bed and get acquainted for 4 days.  On day 5 we leave the hospital and we are solid.  He’s a keeper. 

Our first picture op.  My daughter, sitting on a royal blue chair, holds her brother for the first time.  I burst into tears.  Is she feeling rejection?!  Is she okay?  Has this done untold damage which is too pre-conscious to be detected, but will manifest itself in untold hostility and resentment the rest of their days?  I have to leave the room to collect myself.   

We buy an enormous, truly offensive double stroller, where people have to suck in their stomachs to let us pass.  We have to repurchase everything from bouncy seat to bassinet (I really meant the ‘perfection of one’). And now, I am the proud, but neurotic mother of two.

And then something happens. I keep getting asked the same question.  A question that utterly baffles me.  Am I planning a third?  When will I start working on number three?   One woman says that a family is done when you feel it’s done and she wasn’t done at two.  At three, she’s still not sure.   I am leaving a birthday party with both kids in tow, frazzled and annoyed and a mother of three (with her babysitter) says, “Try doing it with three!”  I call a friend in the hospital to find out how her third c-section went and her husband says, “Great!  The doctor said we can start working on number 4.”

More children mean more siblings for when they are older, more family and more children to visit when one is old and living on cat food.  But do I detect a smugness when the number is announced or is that just exhaustion?   No, we’re holding at two, I’d say.  I was really happy with one.  So, three is great, but two works for us, I’d say.  I’m trying to create two well-adjusted, content human beings.  That’s a big job, I actually said at one point!

And then the chatter?  How many in help do you have?   How many bedrooms do you have? Why leave the city when you can buy-out your neighbor and break-through? How many private schools do your multiple children attend?    How many nannies accompany you on vacation?  Which SUV holds the most children?  How do you get them to agree on a movie in that SUV?  Why you don’t.  Three DVDs. Three pairs of headsets!

If, four’s the new three, and three’s the new two, and two’s the new one--what does that make one? 
As the youngest of three, if my mother made the choice I have made, I wouldn’t have been born.  Even this utterly egocentric idea doesn’t sway me.  I have two arms—one for each.  Two legs to hold two on my lap.  We are two parents.  And it feels perfectly fine.  I’ll just have to enlist my friend’s kids to bring over more cat food when I’m old.