I’m not really in the mood to write something long and serious, but I do seem to want to write something, and this topic is very much on my mind at the moment, so here goes. Firstly, a disclaimer – the reason I don’t want to write something long and serious is that we had a pretty rubbish night chez Earthenhouse last night, courtesy of a mixture of – I think – low-level teething pain and, if I’m honest, a bit of taking the piss on the part of a certain tiny daughter (she actually giggled – GIGGLED – when, at about 3.30, I checked her nappy to make sure she wasn’t sore or wet or anything; as you can probably imagine, while I find her laughter remarkably winning in pretty much any circumstances, this was not quite the reaction I was hoping for), the combination of which led to an awake stint between 1.00-ish and knocking on 4.00. Since I’ve been back to working mornings in my ‘official’ ‘professional’ capacity (tongue so very far in cheek that it’s likely to stick out through my other ear), I have to leave for work before 7.30, and this morning, folks, I was in a fog, and that fog was of the pea-souper variety. Anyway, all of which is a long-winded way of saying that I am not at my most objective, or coherent, or, um, insert other words which imply general clever-clog status.

So.

Here’s the thing.

When Quercus and I have talked about babies, and children, and families, and clans, we have always seen ourselves with more than one child. Indeed, during conversations of a particularly daring nature, the number three may even have been uttered. We both come from small families: although Quercus has a genuinely ENORMOUS extended family, courtesy of Roman Catholic Irish ancestry which means he has ten uncles on one side alone, he was an only child, his father having died very unexpectedly when Quercus was only two, so it was, mostly, him, his mum, and his grandma. He had reasonable relationships with some of the extended family, but he didn’t see them daily or anything like that. I, on the other hand, am not an only child – I have an elder brother, known here as the Gothic Folly, but he is eleven years my senior, and as he left home when I was six, my childhood was much more that of an only child than anything else. Added to that, and despite having a bigamous great-grandmother on my father’s side, I have a tiny, teensy extended family – most of them carked it at suspiciously young ages, and the ones that didn’t were either repugnant (most of my father’s family), sadistic masochists (most of my mother’s family), or just utterly tedious (any others not covered by the first categories). So, it was me, the aged parent, and my delicious mother, with occasional cameos by the Gothic Folly.

The upshot of all this tininess is that both of us would like the tiny daughter to have siblings. We’d like that chaos which surrounds families with more than one child (and some with only one, of course!), and we’d like to see troops of small blonde people trotting about the place destroying each other and whatnot. Having the tiny daughter has, in many ways, only made this desire stronger; I don’t think either of us was quite prepared for the totality of her conquest – we have gone from an attitude to children which is best expressed in terms of ‘children? Yes, by all means, but I couldn’t eat a whole one’, to ‘oooooooh – look! She’s poking me in the eye! She’s so clever!’, accompanied by an interest in pregnant friends which I never would have credited a couple of years ago. Yes, chaps: I am That Person Who Likes Babies And Who Is Interested In Pregnancy, Birth, and Whatnot. Extraordinary, and particularly when you think that my pregnancy, while far from disastrous, was not quite straightforward (SPD from the fourth month which increased in potency to the point where I was finding walking quite a challenge, and a constant battle with blood-pressure monitoring [white coat hypertension, anyone?], and the whole nightmare of finishing my PhD while we started knocking down considerable chunks of our house), and I didn’t get the homebirth I’d wanted (though I did get a quick natural labour, 90% of which happened at home).

Yet here I am, looking at the tiny daughter, and realising that if I were to find myself pregnant again today, she would be just about two by the time that the baby arrived. And we’d always sort of kind of maybe possibly thought that two years was a nice-sounding gap. So, why the hesitation? Well, lots of reasons, I suppose. We’re not where we hoped we’d be with the house; again, the optimistic view we had of the progress it would be possible to make once the tiny daughter was born was a little, er, optimistic, and we find ourselves with a list which includes replastering the entire original house, taking down the ceilings in the process (they all show a regrettable tendency to return to Mother Earth as it is; we will simply be hastening their inevitable descent), reworking all the windows (though we’re getting to the end of that), refitting all the doors, sorting out the shelves and cupboards (which largely means rebuilding them, as they’re all things Quercus made as stop-gaps prior to replastering), building two sheds from scratch, landscaping the garden, and finishing the extension. Ahem. No PhD to finish this time, at least.

Also, though, not much money this time; last time, we’d had the luxury of eighteen months or so where we were both earning reasonable money, working full-time and quietly amassing fortunes beyond our wildest dreams (hey – we don’t get to dream much, OK? That requires deep sleep) with which to buoy ourselves up during the renovations this house demands, and with which to lessen the drop in income that maternity leave would bring. (This bit does make me smug, though – I got through an entire year off without touching my savings at all, and so far, a lot of the work we’ve done has been paid for out of income.) This time, we’re both working part-time, and we’re reasonably broke, frankly; it makes sense because it means we get to look after the witchling between us but it’s not easy, financially. While I don’t expect to be paid to look after my own child, it does irk me rather that, at least in the UK, those who opt to send their children to nurseries or to use other forms of childcare get considerable wodges of cash put their way by a government keen to promote ‘family-friendly working’ provided ‘family-friendly’ = ‘parents who pay for childcare’, despite the fact that our choice means, if you care to look at it this way (which we don’t, really, because it’s too depressing, and because we were and are determined not to make the witchling’s childhood all about money), we pay for childcare by opting to drop our income by half. (By all means feel free to correct me; if you know of some way in which we are actually entitled to the aforementioned wodges of cash, do feel free to tell me about it.)

And then there are the physical worries. This house, even when finished, will still be tiny. It’s a two-bedroom cottage, and the bedrooms are so close that I hear the witchling the instant she moans in her sleep. Now, bear in mind the challenges we’ve faced in getting both the witchling and ourselves enough sleep; if we have another baby of similar disposition, I can’t begin to imagine how we would cope. It’s one thing when your baby can have 100% of your attention, but quite another when you must function at a sufficiently high level as to look after an inquisitive little person two years its senior. I don’t want to short-change the baby we already have, if that makes sense. (In fact, I don’t want to short-change her even if that doesn’t make sense.) (Although this is where it becomes a circular argument, because I also want her to experience having lots of people about; when my mother was dying, one of the things I realised was that having had a sibling to whom I could really talk would have made an enormous difference, I think – the feeling that you’re in it together, that sort of thing.)

Oh, and of course the worries about the pregnancy itself – will I get SPD again? Will it be worse this time? The answer to both of these questions seems likely to be yes, and I imagine that the white-coat hypertension would probably be a problem again. Oh joy. And how does one cope with the exhaustion of both early and late pregnancy while running about with a tiny toddling person? I mean, I know people do, obviously, but lately I have viewed them with a degree of awe, particularly when they manage superior things like stringing together coherent sentences and Herculean feats like, oh, I don’t know, LEAVING THE HOUSE. SPD was no fun. I remember lying in bed many times and just crying because I was so tired (little did I know of the fun that was still to come), and I just couldn’t stop the pain no matter how I positioned myself. I also remember that the stillness, the contentment I felt (despite all this), was just as bloody well, because moving further than the kitchen rapidly became roughly akin to an Olympic hurdle.

Of course, I realise that things would be different. Different baby, for starters, and thus different personality and all that. And of course this time, we do at least know which end, vaguely, one does or does not blow down. Nappies are no longer the origami hell they once were, and we are both fully conversant with the many different forms of wailing which may betoken ‘kindly change my nappy this instant’. We are also equipped with roughly a cubic ton of baby clothes, muslin cloths, nappies and general baby paraphernalia (though most of the latter we’ve never used, ironically). So, that makes it easier, right? That whole second-baby syndrome?

And of course it’s not as though we’re ninety-five. We’re not ancient to be thinking of taking more time over this; I’ll be 31 in November. Yet I always sort of thought that in terms of sleep deprivation and the particular brand of bedlam which goes with the very small person, it was probably best to suck it up in one big dose, rather than a series of smaller, but longer-drawn-out, sips. Particularly if one is thinking of doing this not once but twice more. Surely it’s better to have, say, five years of unspeakable tiredness followed by a gradual – and dependable – progression towards returning to the land of nod, rather than meeting and greeting Morpheus, sitting down for a night-cap with him, stripy cap in hand, only to watch the beggar pick up sticks and leg it, possibly to a depressingly cheerful rendition of ‘We’ll Meet Again’?

Now that I’ve actually experienced that bedlam, the bedlam which accompanies the appearance of a new baby, perhaps predictably I don’t know where I stand on this one, frankly. I don’t get unbroken sleep often; in fact, I’ve had twelve nights of it since about month four of being pregnant. I’m tired nearly all the time, if I’m honest. And sometimes I think the witchling will never sleep all night, reliably. (Though most of the time I can be all zen ‘this too shall pass’-esque.) And when I think about not just extending the time that I feel like this, but in fact worsening the way that I feel as well, possibly, well, it’s not a great outlook. I always knew that Quercus was not great without enough sleep; he has consistently surprised me with the resilience he has shown when I’ve really, really needed him (last night, for example, he took a stint with the tiny daughter from 4-ish, so that I could get a couple of hours in before leaving for work), but generally he too is exhausted, and he functions less well than I seem to in this situation. Also, of course, breastfeeding means that often there isn’t much point in asking him to get up; why bother having both of us up and awake, which only really means that I feel bad asking him to let me sleep the next day? No point in us both gradually approaching sleeping on our feet, so largely it’s me who does the night-time stuff, and I imagine that this would still be the case second time around, because I feel very strongly that breastfeeding is something I’d want to do again (not least because, on a selfish note, I read recently that there is apparently a link between at least two years’ breastfeeding and a reduction in breast cancer rates; with my family history, I can’t afford to ignore this sort of thing, particularly when it supports me in something to which I am already committed).

Of course, this all assumes that we produce another infant of the witchling’s type, and that sleep remains at a bit of a premium. But the thing is, can I assume anything else? Having experienced this, can I just tell myself that it will be different with anything approaching wholehearted belief that This Shall Be So? I think not. For one thing, I feel it would be a bit on the irresponsible side to just go into this while effectively sticking my fingers in my ears and shouting ‘la la la’ at the bits I don’t want to think about. That does not seem like the way forward, no matter how tempting my hormones may make it seem. So, I am left with the questions, and the debating, and the knowledge that Quercus would like to think about another baby this autumn, perhaps, while I am still, put simply, a bit scared by the whole thing. Does fear mean this is not the time? Will the fear go away? Or is it part of who I am now, something which will colour my decision but perhaps ought not to define it?

Well. I think that now qualifies as both long and serious. So, on that note, off to chase a ridiculously fluffy cat out from under the table, where he has succeeded in attaching not one, but two sea-creature finger puppets to his fur. I like to introduce a little light relief, see?

(Oh, and if you’ve got this far, well done, folks.)