loopylocks

One must be a little loopy to consider going down this road again, no? Due in five months, my eldest will be 12, my middle almost 10 and my youngest 8. Truthfully, we are over the moon. As one of five myself, I can think of nothing more comforting that the idea of another to love.  I was 10 when my fourth sibling was born and 13 when the fifth joined the family.

Four kids in the 21st Century is not exactly the norm. I heard someone recently say that “four is the new two”. Could that really be? As an educated modern woman (or at least I like to think I am), I bought the notion that if you were going to go down the motherhood road, you needed to have the kids all close together (I think the old adage … kill two [three in my case] birds with one stone) so you could get back on track quicker to relaunch a career. So I faithfully followed the blind, only to find the next 10 years to be the most challenging years of my life. Call it post partem, call it sleep deprivation, call it whatever you’d like. What I learned from this technique, if you can call it one, is that having kids in close succession makes life more of a blur than anything.

I remember when my third was born and about 8 months old, I had a moment alone with her and my husband and only then realized it was the first time we had stopped to spend time alone with her. That was never the case with our first, who was the centre of our world until 2 years passed and our son was born. From that moment on, it was a slippery slope. Juggling two in diapers is not easy, just plain smelly. I thought to myself that if I had had the chance to do this all over again, I may not have had my kids so close together.

Now we are about to expand our family with what I like to call: our village baby. This will not just be my baby  (OK, my baby daddy counts too). This will be ‘our’ baby. Already, the kids are so inquisitive. Questions about the baby are never ending…  Can you find out if it is a boy or a girl? Can he/she hear? Can they sleep in my room? Can we go shopping for baby stuff? Can you feel him/her kick yet? I am 18 weeks now and can feel something but just me… the added benefit of having stretched out tummy muscles. In no time at all, we will have to have a nightly floor show to watch the kicks rock my tummy.

In the next week, we will go in for a full anatomy ultrasound which we have promised the kids could miss school to take a first peak at their newest sibling. I am not sure who is more excited, them or me. I can’t wait to see their faces and reactions. For now I am sticking to my guns and keeping the sex of the baby a surprise for everyone, self included. This latest project is sure to be a labour of love.