Baby Addict!

I have a problem. I may need a twelve step program. I'm a baby addict. There, I said it! My youngest turned three in March, she's sleeping in her own room, in her own bed (most of the night). She recently weaned. She's working on potty training. This year she started preschool at our local co-op preschool in the 2's class. She's an independent little miss. And she's not a baby any more. I read this post the other day and it made me want to cry! It summed up exactly how I feel. Particularly the bit about "rewind the tape with each newborn, to relive that particular kind of falling in love." Yes, that is IT exactly, that is why I feel the way I do right now that my youngest has hit this milestone and there are no more babies coming. Let's face it, you fall in love with your partner and it's great, it's fabulous, it's frightening because it's all consuming. But it only happens the one time. I know, I know, there was an elderly couple in the paper and they've been married for a hundred years and they fall more in love with each other every single day and they screw every single day... and yadda yadda yadda. Well, yeah, I don't buy it. You only get the great big rush once, it last for awhile, it's awesome but then the hormones die down and the dust settles and you have to actually put work into the relationship and talk and make compromises and stuff and sometimes it's just enough already and you just want to get some sleep... But with a baby... a sweet baby. You get to fall in love again! AND remain monogamous! How cool is that? AND it gets better... you both get to fall in love at the same time! There's even a name for it, it's called a "babymoon". And it's awesome, at least it is until your hormones go all wacky and you get anxious and depressed. That sucks but that only happened the one time and it didn't last, thankfully! Ahhhhh, babies. I loved giving birth. I really did. I loved the surprise of finding out the sex and gazing into their little faces that I'd been trying to picture in my head for months. I had a client once when I worked in social work. She had had over 10 children and most of them had been taken away from her by the state because of neglect. Her I.Q. was borderline, meaning she was not so smart. Nice, but didn't make the greatest decisions. I looked at the ages of her children once and figure out that when they hit about three, that's when she got pregnant again. She was a baby addict but she didn't know how to stop. I'm thankful that I've named and recognized my problem and I shall seek out other ways of getting my baby fix. I've said it before and I mean it. If I had started having my own earlier I would rock the surrogate mom thing. Although falling in love and handing them over would be difficult, so I would have to be allowed to be around, to be Aunt Kassi. But those days are over. I started too late. I'd get slapped with that high risk label now. Bummer. I'll just have to watch my birth videos and look at the photos of those newborns and kiss and squeeze the delicious big kids they've turned into and wait until I get to be a grandma!