On Having a Third

Deciding how many children to have can be one of the most emotional choices a mother needs to make

This is the first in a series of submission from The Momoir Project, all of which focus on finding the right number of children for each respective writer's family.

I’m making pancakes with my kids. My 3-year old son is dumping the flour into the blender, a dusting of white covers the counter, his arms and his face. His pajamas are too small for him, the tattered cuffs stop short an inch up his arm.

My just six-year old daughter declares, “Mommy, I want another baby. I want the family to have another baby.” She says it innocently, with a smile, believing her statement to be on the same level as “Mommy, I want the Playmobil Animal Clinic for my birthday."

Within seconds, my eyes are welling with tears. This is not the first time she has asked this – she has been doing so on and off for the past year or so. A few of her kindergarten friends have added small babies into their families, including, about a week ago, on Mother’s Day, her best friend welcomed a new baby brother. It’s on her mind, this baby business, and she assumes logically that it would be reasonable to appeal to me, the mother, to grant her request to gain a new sibling.

“Yeeahh, a baby. Wouldn’t that be cooool?” my son says, licking his powdered fingers.

The last many times my daughter has asked this I have managed to deflect, with a shrug, a smile, sometimes an “I don’t think so, honey,” and move on to the next thing. But, this time I don’t want to answer that way. I don’t want to pretend an answer. On my resolve days, the days when I resolve not to think about it, not to despair about it, not to imagine the ‘what if’ scenarios where things magically turn around, I tell myself, as a responsible parent, I should not involve my kids in this issue. It is not their struggle, and they have many wants and desires that I say ‘no’ to every day. “Mama, can I have another cookie?”, “Mama, can I have a race car and drive really fast?”, “Mama, can I never brush my hair again?” I can say ‘no’ to these things. But this time, the “No, sweetie,” and a smile, just won’t come.

And I hear myself saying, “You need to ask Daddy about that.”

She counters, “But why, Mommy, why don’t you want another one?”

With tears now progressing down my cheeks, I try to erase the bitterness from my voice. “I do want one, honey, very much. I would very much like to have another baby. But Daddy doesn’t, so you should ask him.”

I’m falling into the slippery morrass of parental divide, playing one off the other, not presenting a united front. But I can’t help it. How can I not speak it, even to my 3 and 6 year olds?

Blinking away my tears, I am valiantly trying to finish adding the ingredients to the blender for the pancakes. My son is waiting patiently until he can turn it on, the whirring and whizzing the real reason why he likes pancakes.“Why do we need to ask Daddy?” he smiles. “You make the babies inside of you.” He gestures largely with his floured hands, quite pleased with his understanding of human reproduction.

“Why, indeed,” I silently scream, not at my son, but at my chosen partner in life, who is sleeping in upstairs, on this Sunday May morning.

“Because Daddy and I both need to agree.” A trite phrase which I use daily to my kids to help them resolve their disputes, whether it’s about Lego, or who gets to sit beside Mommy at dinner, or about whose turn it is with the black marker.

“Why doesn’t Daddy want another baby?” my daughter asks.

“I don’t know. You need to ask him.” I say, barely able to speak over the lump in my throat, looking downward so she can’t see my eyes. I know she won’t ask him, though. She saves these questions for me. Perhaps she feels as I know, that the answer will be ‘no”.

“Why are you talking like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like that, so quietly, like you do when you’re about to cry.”

“Time to turn on the blender.” I say, and my son pushes the puree button, the sound distracting both of them.

I take a deep breath, and wipe my eyes, hoping that my dear mate has heard this upstairs, and that miraculously, maybe just maybe, it gives him pause, and tomorrow, or maybe next week, he’ll tell me he has changed his mind, and he’ll do it for me. But I know I’m dreaming; he probably hasn’t heard, or, if he has, his resolute ‘no’ remains unchanged. And it makes me cry all over again. Not huge sobs, but these silent relentless tears.

I didn’t know this would be such an issue until it became one. I didn’t know how much I wanted another until my son was closing in on 3 years. My spouse and I had never really discussed it, the certainty or not certainty of 3, though he claims we did. I remember saying after our son was born, still in the delivery room, “I am never going through this again,” and he believed me. I curse those words made in the aftermath of pushing and pure physical pain. I remember talking about two or three kids, and on that we happily agreed. He heard two, and I heard the possibility of three, which gave me the freedom to choose.

The first time I realized how differently we felt was at a parent preschool gathering, when our kids were 1 and 3, and I heard my spouse exclaim, “Congratulations. Better you than us! We’re done, we’re soooo done,” in response to another parent’s announcement of their 3rd pregnancy. The ‘we’ felt like a knife. That ‘we’ was ‘me,' and it so did not represent me. I told him that night that I didn’t agree with his statement and asked him never to include ‘me’ in his proclamations when it didn’t represent how I felt. I think he was surprised, shocked. He thought we agreed on this issue, and I suppose, until that moment, I wasn’t aware how strongly we didn’t.

But still, at the time, it wasn’t that I definitely wanted a third, I just hadn’t decided that I definitely didn’t, and his certainty maddened me, because I felt the decision had yet to be made. But then a year passed, and then another and I started noticing three-child families, and many of my acquaintances and mom-friends began to have 3 or talk about having a third, and the feeling started to grow, until at some point, whether overnight or over weeks, I became quite certain, and with a longing and a passion that surprised me, that I wanted another baby. I began to do menstrual math with online ovulation calendars, blocking out my fertile weeks for the next many months, deciding how many months I would be willing to wait, considering the age gap that would be between my youngest and the yet-to-be baby. I was a year and a half away from 40, so I counted backwards determining my last month that I could conceive, that would plant me giving birth before my big 4-0. I began to talk furtively to my friends inquiring about what it was like to have three, and for those who still had two, whether they were considering a third.

Over the weeks, I fumbled about how to approach the conversation with my spouse; I needed to have my reasons in place, express my desire, ask him to consider the possibility. But I was scared of the decisive ‘no’, that it would be harshly final before the conversation even started. Just before Hallowe’en, a fellow mom, who has two kids almost the exact same age as mine, phoned to tell me she was pregnant again. I was hit hard; she had told me that she and her husband were done at two, and she was one of my mental holdouts, a place of support should my desire for a third child not happen.

When I got off the phone, I blurted out to my spouse, “It’s driving me crazy. I so want another baby. We need to talk about this.” My approach was without preamble and without the love and care that I had envisioned this conversation to take. I could feel him on the defensive. We agreed to discuss it on a dinner out the following Saturday night, when my parents would be available for babysitting.

During the evening’s conversation, I outlined all of my reasons and desires for having a third. The bounty of a full family that would grow with us as we grew older. The desire I had to break the symmetry of four and embrace the imbalance of five. The fondness I had for both of my sisters growing up, and how I want to offer those multiple relationships to my own children. The realization that our youngest is no longer a toddler, and my desire and yearning to nurture another. The love I have for breastfeeding and co-sleeping. The feeling that my family is not done yet – that there is another out there. I made as convincing and heartfelt of a argument as I could, and asked him to please consider my request. He listened and expressed genuine feeling for my position. He said he would think about it.

The following week he said ‘no.’ He hadn’t slept well all week, explaining he was terrified of what his answer would do to us - the resentment that would persist because of his choice. But he said he didn’t want another and he could never bring another being into this world that he didn’t want. He felt complete with two children, loved our son being the youngest, didn’t want to upset the balance, and was just beginning to appreciate getting more sleep at night and more time in the day as our children got older. He felt blessed by our two healthy children and didn’t want to tempt fate and have something go wrong with a new baby, a pregnancy or with me. He didn’t want another. And he was very, very sure.

But I couldn’t accept it; I felt that I could still work on him and convince him. I said I would do all the work of raising a third – diaper changes, feedings, consoling. I suggested adopting. I suggested a two-month game of conception chance – if it works then we have one, if it doesn’t, I concede. The fertility equivalent of flip the coin. When he still steadfastly maintained his ‘no,' I exercised fantasies of my own – I’d go to a sperm bank, get pregnant, and move to Saltspring Island and raise my 3 children alone. I’d adopt a young girl from India. I’d have a torrid affair for the sake of getting pregnant. And I cried and I cried and I cried. Every day.

I imagined he would change his mind and present me with this wondrous gift – first as a Christmas present, then as a birthday present. But when both of these events passed with no offering, I believed his “Yes, we can have another baby,” would come as a part of our romantic week getaway to Cancun the end of February. We attempted to regain a sexual connection but the thoughts were too loaded for both of us, and it deteriorated into an soul-wrenching conflict when he stated that if the condom broke and something should happen, that he would like me to get an abortion. And so it became sexual stalemate.

But life goes on. And on this Sunday morning, my children and I are making pancakes for him, with lots of maple syrup. He is not evil or sinister or terrible because he does not want to have another child. He is the wise and gentle father of my two children. He is still the same kind, gracious, intelligent and steadfast human being that I met 15 years ago. I have scoured blogs and websites and self-help books, and have received the thoughts of dear close friends, to find support for my position. They all say, save for a cantakerous few, that there needs to be two yes’s to bring another life into this world. I can’t win this one.

We have work to do to disentangle ourselves from this impasse. The strain is as much a realization of our fundamental difference, a sharp contrast to our early years of romance where we were invincible and connected as one, as it is about the loss of my dream. I hear myself cajoling my relentless, weeping inner core, “Accept it, forgive him, and move on with your life.” And though I grieve for my third child that will never be, that is what I must do.

“Who wants to go get Daddy for breakfast?” I ask.

“I do!”, “No, I do!” My son always an echo of his older sisters’s responses. They hurtle up the stairs, jostling each other as they race to see who will get there first. “Daddy,” they yell, “Pancakes are almost ready. Time to get up!”