Excellent reasons ...

for me not to keep on breeding. I have been thinking about this for a little while now. Because I am being hassled about having more children (or not) from many sides at the moment. Despite the fact that Little Boy Blue is but only 3 months old, never mind that bit. And as much as I would love to keep having more, for us, it is not practical, feasible, or indeed medically very safe for me any more.

I love pregnancy. I mean love it. I am one of those chicks you hate if you hate pregnancy. I glow. My skin is clear, my hair is shiny and bouncy, I don't put on a scrap of extra weight and my belly is round and glorious. It gets stretch marks that look like I've been taken to with a blunt knife, but that's the only downside. I don't swell, have never had GD, hypertension or any of the seemingly endless weird things that can happen to a woman in gestation. Simply, pregnancy agrees with me and I bloody love it. My self esteem has never been so high than during those few trimesters that I no longer feel the need to suck in my gut.

But enough is enough.

I am pondering all this particularly more today when I saw a news story that involved the famous American Duggar family are expecting child number twenty. Yes, 20. It's worth a look at that link just to get a giggle out of all the names. My faves - Jinger (that would be Ginger to the rest of us), Jessa (sorry, was that Tessa?what?) and the twins Jedidiah and Jeremiah. As if all having 'J' names wasn't bad enough, then go and have rhyming twins with the same middle names! Crikey, we had enough trouble naming 3 girls without adding in a common initial and then seeing if we could get them to rhyme.


There are silly reasons I like to trot out as to why not. Especially to people on the periphery. 

Exhibit A



I CANNOT do more than 3 special cake requests per year.
Just can't.



Exhibit B



Hand made thank you cards. Around 80 of them for each kid.
No more thanks, this lot has taken me 2 of the kid's 3 months of life and whilst the construction has finished,
the writing/addressing/posting is only a quarter of the way through....



Exhibit C,

and possibly the most compelling



This is what 2 kids in modern cloth does to my clothes airer once every 2 to 3 days.

 The washing is a big thing for me. Not doing it, not even hanging it, but getting it sorted and put away is an endless thankless invisible task that I loathe. Add to that another refluxy vomitty child that doubles not only his washing but my own personal washing too (I change clothes once or twice a day - or not if I can sponge it off and ignore the smell, oh the glamour) then I am washing two or more loads just about every day. Thank heavens for summer and line drying now. But even then, the sorting and away-putting still needs to be done.
 
Three younguns was always our hope and dream, and we've achieved it. We even had the boy people seemed to think was our aim. So why the obsession as to whether or not we should populate the earth any further? I liken it to the curiosity that comes with 'when are you getting engaged/married/pregnant/having more?" questions women are plagued with all our adult lives. It never ends.

We are so very lucky, so damned blessed to have had three healthy children after losing our first little blossom that it would feel a bit like tempting fate to try again. Why should I be so lucky once again? If God were to see fit to bless us otherwise (aka, we have a little oopsie!) then I would embrace and deal with that if it arose, the surgical complications it would mean for me and all. But other than that, we are happy, content and feel very much 'done'. Why can't everyone else feel that way for us too?