I get it, Michelle Duggar. I get why you're addicted to having babies and I don't think it has as much to do with what Jesus is commanding, as it does with what your clock is commanding. My daughter recently turned one year. She's a beast. She's a walking, garbling, feasting ball of fire and she's no longer an infant, which has my hormones in an uproar. I've spent countless hours awake with her, anticipating the infant to toddler changeover. I've heard tell that at zero hour, the converted toddler automatically goes into 12 hour sleep mode, eats whatever you put in front of it and becomes more easily amused by itself, though Q.0 has yet to deliver those kind of sophisticated results.
I was in the process of swapping 6-9 month outfits for 12-18 when this immense hollowness just, sort of, carved itself into the pit of my stomach. The thought hit me that Quinn was, very possibly, my last baby and that realization turned bagging up her things into this surreal grieving process, that I wasn't prepared to experience. Despite my need for more than 4 hours of sleep a night, my excitement that my breasts were once again my own and the knowledge that Evan would be going to school soon, giving me back some of my life, I convinced both myself and Chris that I could, indeed,deal with the rigors of pre and post pregnancy, one more time. Chris called me a "crazy bitch" and assured me that if I didn't sign off on the vasectomy, he'd wind up in an alley in Chinatown, allowing an unlicensed veterinarian to "neuter" him. 
He's right. The fact of the matter is I don't really believe I want another child. What I want, is to know that I could have another one and at almost 35, it will only become less likely...unless I want to get pregnant again in the next couple of years; which I do not. It's unnerving to see and feel myself getting older, but it's even more unnerving to know that my "babies" are getting older and that soon I won't even have babies. I'll have kindergartners, then middle school-ers, then teenagers, then young adults, then...I'm killing time waiting to die. My children's development and my own fertility have suddenly become the ultimate measurements of time. I hear the phrases, "It goes by so quickly," and "I wish I could keep him/her a baby forever," uttered all the time by parents and grandparents alike. I assure you the need for a halting of time has nothing to do with age of the child.
After I tried to convince Chris we should spend another year being awake almost 24 hours a day, I gave some thought to what I could really, emotionally afford and the cost of miscalculating my expectations. How much more patience and tolerance can I spare before I become the "minivan in the lake" mom? How many more years of bodily sacrifice do I want to endure? (I'm just starting to get the "house" back in order.) How much longer can my husband and I exist as nothing more than two bodies, bumping around the same space but never, actually coming into contact? (We're just starting to get that "house" back in order, as well.) When you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, why put the car in reverse? There is a small part of me that wants to have another baby for a legitimate reason; I love children. But, my sister-in-law Amy said it best, "Know your limitations." If I thought I could handle it, I'm sure I'd have a Duggar dozen, but I have the common sense to accept that two children can sometimes be two children too many. Also, I have the sanity to understand that whether or not I aid in the continuation of the species I'm going to continue to age; only, unlike Michelle Duggar, my uterus won't have to be dragged behind me on a Radioflyer.
