baby #2

First of all - No, this is NOT an announcement

That being said, we often get asked about our plans for baby #2

"when is Sienna going to have a brother or a sister?"

 Apparently its the question that comes up after the excitement of your first baby's arrival dies down a bit. I get it, people are curious by nature and babies are an exciting part of life.

So I wanted to share my thoughts on this subject.

Dan & I talk about it a lot, most often when we're on our daily walk or when we see a cute little family of 4 when we're out and about. We are very like-minded when it comes to raising children, discipline, ect but the question of when to have another is always the tricky subject for us.

You see Danny is ready- now now now! of course he is...he doesn't have to be pregnant, get fat, give birth, have his boobs fall off of pain, get up 30x a night. Me- not quite. I feel like I just started to feel like myself again, I stopped pumping, I'm loosing the last of my babyweight and I'm feeling good! But then I see a little itty bitty baby and I'm ready to sign myself up for all of the above again.

Ideal age gap - is there such thing? to me it seems like having them close in age is super hard when they're young but easier when they're older because they can play and entertain each other. My Midwife suggested 18 month gap,since the topic happened to come up at my 6 week postpartum appointment and I'm glad I asked, because she had a valid point. After having a c-section its best to give your body time to heal fully so that seemed like a logical gap to me. Getting pregnant when your 1st is under a year old seems crazy to me, because looking at Sienna, at this age shes still so dependent on me for everything...I just wouldn't even see it as fair to make her have to share me right now.

Sienna - I really want to enjoy her, every second of her. She's still a baby even if shes almost a toddler! Having another right now would take away some of my attention and time with her, and I'm just not ready to give that up yet.

Age - Dan & I will be 26 exactly a month from today, we're not getting any younger and we both want to be young, active parents that can psychically keep up with our kids. We all know kids have a lot of energy :) but its important to us, to be active and energetic with right along with them!

Fear - I have such a fear of something going wrong or having a miscarriage, I was SOO paranoid in the beginning of my pregnancy with Sienna and I think it stemed from my sisters two miscarriages, Seeing her go through that was rough. One of them was when I was about a month pregnant which meant our kids would have been a month apart.

Money - Before we had Sienna we analyzed this to the moon and back, it seemed like the responsible thing to do before bringing a child into the world. We wondered if we had 'enough' saved up and to be perfectly honest, you never feel like you have enough but what I learned is that having a baby actually doesn't cost that much and it just depends on what matters to you, for us the BIGGEST thing was not to ever have to put her in daycare so we make it work on one income. We just make sacrifices in some areas ( I don't buy clothes/shoes/bags as often as I used to) and those things lost significance to me now that not getting them as often doesn't even phase me. Can we financially take on another? absolutely.

Gender- Its assumed that we want a boy next. To be perfectly honest - I REALLLLY did want a boy for a while and hoped the next one would be a mini Danny, but then I think about how sweet it would be for Sienna to grow up with a little sister. So whatever we are blessed with, we'll be over the moon...just as long as its healthy!

My own little list of requirements

1. Sienna needs to be potty trained - I'm not changing 2 sets of diapers
2. She needs to sleep through the night - I'm not getting up for 2 kids
3. We need to take a nice vacation, just the three of us and enjoy being a family of three before we are four.
4. I need to be back to my pre pregnancy weight, which I'm really working on now - I don't want to have to loose 2 pregnancy's worth of weight
5. I would like Sienna to be over 2 years old


all things aside,
 whenever it happens we'll be ecstatic