Flashback from five years ago:
Well, I’m pregnant again. I found out yesterday in the teacher’s lounge. It was during seventh grade lunch, and I was having a perfectly lovely time chatting with my friends and not having to pump breast milk alone in my office. I thought I was done with pumping forever, or until I at least made a conscious decision to put myself through that again for a sought-after baby.
I don’t remember why, but my coworker brought up periods. Periods, I thought. Huh. When was the last time I had a period? Wasn’t I a week late? As I realized this, my whole body got hot, like a wave of heat starting at my head and working its way down into the pit of my stomach. I knew. But maybe not, right? So I sucked it up and went on with my day. I would probably be having my period soon, I thought. Any minute now.
Wrong. Today I made the kids help me clean up the basement playroom, which of course is basically me cleaning up while yelling at the kids. Not all of them, just the older two, because who yells at a one year old? I should note that I wasn’t really yelling, more like barking orders, to keep them in line and let them know that I shouldn’t be doing this cleaning for them — they should be taking responsibility and all that, according to parenting books or blogs or wherever I read that. But the point is that I was out of breath, just picking up some toys and putting them in bins and walking around the basement. I wasn’t really yelling, and I was out of breath from walking? What gives? I work out.
So that’s when I knew for almost certain. I knew that my period still hadn’t come, and I wasn’t feeling any impending cramps, and now I was out of breath. In early pregnancy with my other three, I was always out of breath. And now, with impending unplanned fourth pregnancy, I was jittery and shaking like I’d drank too much coffee.
Now upstairs, I prepared my face for a public outing and plotted my afternoon. I didn’t know for sure if I was pregnant, so I needed to reassure myself that I was not. Or find out I was. Either way, I needed to move past this stage of uncertainty. My plan was to drop my son off at his friend’s birthday party and then pick up a pregnancy test. And once I found out that I wasn’t pregnant, I would definitely get back on the pill.
Three kids was so much work. I had just spent the morning cleaning up a basement that would be destroyed again no later than tomorrow afternoon. My body was just starting to return to normal after having baby #3. We actually have some money again to spend on home improvements and vacations. I am going on a tropical vacation with just my husband in three weeks, alone, to drink and relax and have lots of sex. I vowed to start back on the pill and stop playing chicken with my body as soon as I saw the negative pregnancy symbol later that afternoon.
But as I said, I was so nervous that I was shaking, because I knew that pregnancy was a possibility. With our first child, our only boy, I got pregnant by accident, sort of. I was twenty four years old, and I had been married not quite two years. We wanted a baby at one point in the near future. My gyno said it could take months to get my body back to normal after having been on the pill for several years. So we went off the pill, so that I’d get my body back to its natural state. Two weeks later I got a positive pregnancy test. The next two kids were planned, but each of them were conceived during the first round of “trying.” We really didn’t “try” — we just “did it” and babies came along.
Given how easily I had gotten pregnant three times in a row, you’d think that I would be cautious, using condoms and the pill or an IUD or whatever it is people use to prevent pregnancies. Clearly, that is not my area of expertise.
Given how easily I had gotten pregnant three times in a row, you’d think that I would be cautious, using condoms and the pill or an IUD or whatever it is people use to prevent pregnancies. Clearly, that is not my area of expertise. Condoms had always been uncomfortable to both of us, and I hated the idea of drugging my body again. The pill made my libido practically nonexistent and IUDs creeped me out. I figured that I could just track my cycles, which were fairly regular, and avoid sex or at least avoid having Jack ejaculate inside me during my potentially fertile days.
This plan worked for maybe six months, tops. It could also have been the breastfeeding that prevented me from getting pregnant, but as I said, I clearly don’t know. What I do know is this: here in the Midwest, it gets chilly in October. We had finally put three kids to bed, the youngest of which I was finally done breastfeeding after twenty long months. It was time to party, Mom and Dad style, or perhaps it’s really just Eliza and Jack, as I am not sure this is what most couples do. No one ever really admits to this, but now I have to own up to it to explain the surprise baby that I’ll be giving birth to next summer.
So it was a cold October night, and we had a bottle of cheapish red wine that I could finally enjoy without the worry of giving my toddler alcohol poisoning via breastmilk. We drank half the bottle, which is a lot for us — remember we don’t really party anymore, given the three young children and lack of money for babysitters.
Then we drank the other half of the bottle. Gah.
After stumbling upstairs to check on our three sleeping and therefore at that moment precious children, we went into our bedroom to complete our nighttime routine. At this point in our lives, we were working our way back up to sex three or four nights a week. I distinctly remembered this night, because it was amazing. It was active, movie style sex with lots of positions, deep and fast thrusts, me pinned down to the bed face first with muffled screams of pleasure into the mattress.
When he flipped me around for the grand finale, missionary position — my favorite way to have a clitoral orgasm with the rare treat for him to also come while on top facing me — he chose that moment to inquire whether I was ovulating yet. I grabbed my phone from the nightstand and opened up the period tracker app to find that I wasn’t ovulating until the weekend.
“We should be fine,” I slurred, not noting that it was near midnight on Friday, as if my body adhered to a precise date and time stamp. “You could pull out,” I offered.
He nodded…I think. But it may have been just a sloppy, drunk head bob. But he claims that he meant to pull out, and I trust him. But it felt too good, and we were too drunk, and we ended our ecstasy still together, out of breath, ready for sleep. And we didn’t give it a second thought.
But it felt too good, and we were too drunk, and we ended our ecstasy still together, out of breath, ready for sleep. And we didn’t give it a second thought.
Until today. Today, I pulled up to the dollar store and with my heart beating hard in my chest. I steadied myself as I walked in, went straight to the aisle with tampons and pregnancy tests, and grabbed two $1 tests.
Side note: I learned years ago that these dollar store tests were far superior to the $20 grocery store tests, especially given that I would take them several times a week to check if I was still pregnant, once I was. I like to know the status of my body and I hate uncertainty. They are no less effective than something brand-name costing twenty times as much. Save your money for the baby, breeders!
Back to the checkout line: I wished that I had something else to purchase to mask the embarrassment of looking like an eighteen year old who had been accidentally knocked up. I look about twenty to begin with, short and baby-faced, and my typical cute yet awkward demeanor did me no favors that day. I couldn’t think of a single other thing to buy that would signal to the cashier that I was actually a responsible, thirty-two year old working mother of three…who had been accidentally knocked up. It didn’t matter in the end; cashiers don’t make small talk with nervous women buying two pregnancy tests at a dollar store.
I was home in five minutes, peeing into a red solo cup and using the provided dropper to move a miniscule amount of my watered-down urine onto the test, which promptly lit up two lines. Pregnant.
Another nine months of my body growing and stretching into an unrecognizable ball. At least another year after that of boobs too big for my five foot frame. Nausea and vomiting for months. Fatigue. Hormones. Sleepless nights. An unpaid maternity leave. More work and less time for myself, Jack, and the three kids I already had. Messes to clean and more bills to pay. Chaos. What had I done?!
After taking three deep breaths to calm myself, I burst out of the bathroom and ran upstairs to give Jack the news. I was in tears by the time I got to him, in our master bathroom, as he was naked drying off from a shower.
“I’m pregnant!” was all I managed to choke out.
In response, Jack laughed. “What?! Are you sure?”
I nodded and showed him the test, explaining as best I could as a blubbered and sobbed, slouching down to sit on the cold tile floor against the tub. To his credit, he did not flip out, as I was doing. He smiled, and laughed, and guided me into our cozy white-linened bed where I curled up into him.
He held me while I cried, and while I pointed out everything negative about having a fourth child. The cost. The work. The fighting between siblings. My body. We’d just sold off or donated nearly every baby item we owned. We didn’t have enough bedrooms. We’d just booked a last minute trip to the Carribean; we were going in two weeks. The work of raising not just three young kids, but four.
Jack didn’t falter. He didn’t buy into any of my negativity. He pointed out that, once upon a time, when we were high schoolers who knew nothing about baby and child care, we’d said we wanted a big family. We had briefly considered if we might want a fourth child before getting rid of aforementioned baby gear. Heck, he was proud of his super-sperm and he loved when my body was ripe with pregnancy, and he really loved after pregnancy when my boobs were huge bags of milk.
Heck, he was proud of his super-sperm and he loved when my body was ripe with pregnancy, and he really loved after pregnancy when my boobs were huge bags of milk.
This was actually a turn-on for my husband, but he respectfully cuddled me and gently kissed me until our three out-of-the-womb children joined us in our cloud of pillows and duvet.
Our fate had been decided.
Fast forward five years, to the present:
We now affectionately call her our “Bonus Baby” or “our little lovechild.” She’s a lot of work, that’s no question. All kids are. Four kids is a lot more than three, just like three is a lot more than two, etc. People always think we’re super religious Christian or Mormon when they first hear about our family size. We drive two minivans; it’s the only practical solution. It’s chaos, but there’s also lots of love and fun. We wouldn’t trade it for the world.
But we wasted no time on Jack’s vasectomy.
