Third Baby

On multiple children and multiple truths.

Back in March, I sought guidance from a new therapist because my husband I weren’t aligned on whether or not to have a third baby, a subject that was causing pain and resentment in our marriage. I wanted another baby. Not imminently—not if he wasn’t ready—but I wanted him to promise me we would try to have a third in the next couple of years.

But he couldn’t. Where I’m emotionally-driven, my husband Rob is pragmatic and rational. So much of the stress in our lives was directly rooted in the difficulties of parenting two young children. We were constantly exhausted, sapped by the demands of our day-to-day lives. Why on earth did I want to add a third kid to the mix?

The want was hard to articulate. Was I being greedy? Impractical? But desiring another child didn’t feel like splurging on a fancy bag or buying a pair of jeans I didn’t really need. I simply felt, in my soul, that I wasn’t finished having children. For every complaint about pregnancy and the challenges and sleep-deprivation that come with having a newborn, I couldn’t fathom not doing it all again.

But my husband was not on the same page, and in spite of my awareness that his feelings were valid, it was an agonizing pill to swallow. I understood where he was coming from, of course—it’s true that having little kids is stressful and demanding, regardless of the precious moments. Rob and I agree that life often feels like constant whiplash on a rollercoaster, that there’s hardly ever a break from the turbulent ride. We both work full-time; we’re both hands-on parents. I wouldn’t trade this dynamic, but it’s led to countless instances when I feel like I’m half-assing my two roles, where I’m legitimately lost in the balance of being a writer and a mother—creeping to the end of a draft with scary-low brainpower, air-frying Dino nuggets for the fifth night in a row while my children beg for candy.

“The kids need to eat vegetables!” Rob vents aloud.

“I know. I know! It’s so bad.” I nod in agreement. What is wrong with us? What is it we can’t get right?

On such nights, I lie in bed and envision a world where I’m not on deadline for another book, where I have the time and energy to chop zucchini and carrots and bake them into homemade muffins, sneak the kids veggies that way.

Back before I started seeing my new therapist, I had days where I’d tell myself I was delusional, crazy for even thinking of another baby. And yet, I wanted one. Irrationally and wholly. I pictured five of us at the dinner table, some years down the road, and my heart soared at the rightness of it. A dream I didn’t know how to throw away.

My first few sessions of therapy were painful yet clarifying. Near the end of March, I arrived at the revelation that we needed to table the third kid conversation, at least for a while. Rob was relieved. We pledged to focus on being present, on tackling what lay in front of us. My fifth novel was contractually overdue; I’d just received tough feedback on the book and was at the beginning stages of a massive revision I hadn’t anticipated.

There was also the issue of our home, which was too small for the four of us—a high-class problem, as my grandfather would have called it, but still one we’d been eager to address. We’d begun to look into the legitimate possibility of adding onto our existing house—a fourth bedroom, a mudroom, and a true playroom (our existing playroom had previously been our dining room until the space was swallowed up by toys—the dining table and chairs currently live in a storage unit). Expanding our square footage would be a dream, but a renovation would require moving out of our house and living elsewhere for six months, maybe a year.

All signs pointed to the glaring reality that it wasn’t the right time to be thinking about a third child, the issue of my husband’s reluctance aside. And yet, my innermost struggle remained: the not knowing when—or if—Rob’s mind would change. But we had two healthy kids—I had loads to be grateful for—and through therapy I committed to standing in this place of uncertainty, to seeking peace where I was and with what I did not yet know.

Multiple things can be true at once, my therapist explained. You want another baby, and it isn’t the right time in your life or marriage to move forward with that conversation, and you’re accepting of this, and you’re sad. All of these truths coexist.

In April, I went into New York for my brother’s birthday dinner and was hit with the strange, borderline absurd sense that I might be pregnant. I didn’t feel sick or symptomatic, and I hadn’t even missed a period, but it was a bone-deep feeling I couldn’t shake, even though Rob and I had absolutely, decidedly not been trying. I ordered a margarita at the restaurant and wondered—ridiculously—if it would be my last drink for a while.

The next morning, I woke up at six and drove to Walgreens in the rain, my family still slumbering at home. I bought a pregnancy test and took it in our bathroom while Rob made breakfast for the kids downstairs. Two pink lines appeared. One of them very faint, but a line nonetheless.

My heart pounded wildly; the irony of the moment was disorienting. I felt a flutter of joy at same time I stood on the verge of true panic. This was not the plan; this was not supposed to have happened, not now. I thought of my sister, who, a week prior, had called me on FaceTime to share the news of her own pregnancy—her first baby, very much planned. I thought of my therapist, of the hard-earned productivity of our sessions, the way she was helping my marriage navigate an eventual decision that my body had—apparently—usurped. I thought of my fifth book, the poor mess of it, the uphill battle of revisions ahead. And, of course, I thought of Rob.

Marriage is not easy; life is unpredictable. Excitement and fear are there in the same room. When my therapist asks me what I love about Rob, it’s easy to answer. His loyalty. His capability. His lack of a temper (in our relationship, I am the hothead). He is a wonderful father and a steady hand. He tethers me to something solid but not restrictive, the way I always hoped love and partnership could feel.

When I told him about the positive pregnancy test, he was shocked, but calm.

“Okay,” he said, processing. “Wow. Okay.”

“I didn’t trick you or anything,” I emphasized, half-kidding. “If that’s what you’re thinking.” Because it’s true. Because this baby wasn’t meant to exist, at the same time this baby was—is—meant to be ours. Irony of ironies.

I believe in fate as much as I believe in science. Conception is an enigma, an ultimate injustice. I don’t deserve the luck I’ve had in that department, and I dislike sharing that this pregnancy was an accident—it feels like an insensitive fact to offer up, especially after witnessing what so many people in my life have gone through to get their babies.

And yet, I find myself gravitating towards honesty, propelled by the visceral need to share the complicated reality that this third pregnancy was wanted but unplanned, that it feels both destined and stressful, that there are times I feel lonely in my happiness, or undeserving. Rob’s experience, I know, is something equally nuanced, and it’s this delicate tumble of emotions that pulls me to write it down. To make sense of the fact that multiple things can be true at once. That they are.

“Where will the baby sleep?”

My mom asks this when she’s over, and I point to one corner of our bedroom, next to a chair piled with clothes waiting to be put away. “There?”

Rob and I have decided to push the renovation back so we can be living at home when the baby comes in December, a plan that fills me with relief.

My mom smiles, then reminds me that—as the youngest of six children—she slept in a space temporarily partitioned off by plywood in one of her sibling’s rooms for the first several months of her life.

“Your family is going to be okay,” she tells me, like she knows I need to hear it.

“I know.” The gratitude is too much; it swells in my chest. “We already are.”