"Pregnancy Spacing Affects Outcome"

After reading the above article today, I really got to thinking about child spacing. The article states that the spacing in between biological children has an effect on the risk of premature birth. Pregnancies occuring right away after giving birth, and also pregnancies that happen after 5 years of giving birth have this down side, according to studies that will be published tomorrow in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Of course, these statistics aren't related to the spacing of adopted children, but for myself, I had secure views in the amount of time that I wanted in between my kids. And then I gave birth to my first and totally changed my mind!

I enjoyed the pregnancy with my daughter. I felt a peace and a degree of success while I carried her. I was totally thinking, "I could do this again. I want to do this again. I wonder how soon I could get pregnant again?"

Then I went through labor. Then I went through birthing her. Then bringing her home. And breastfeeding. I found myself then thinking, "Maybe one biological child will be enough". After things got in to a semi-groove, Chris and I decided that Ivy really did need sibling(s). We wanted more kids. We decided to wait until she was two. That was doable in my mind.

As her second birthday came up, I started to really think about trying to do the pregnancy thing again. I panicked! Even looking at photos of myself pregnant made me breathe deep. We decided to start with the adoption process and try to get pregnant about the same time. OK, I think that we were nuts.

We got our referral for Becken in December. Our little tiny two month old boy. Then the panic came back full force. What if I got pregnant, gave birth in the summer/fall. We would then have an almost 3 year old, a 9-10 month old and an newborn. Just the though terrified me. I knew in my heart there was no way I could handle 3 so close together. Thankfully, Chris agreed.

Now we have our 2. Our boy and our girl. Since Bec has been home, Chris says that he is done. Two are enough. I'm giving it time before I bring up having any more. When I'm home and I look at our two, I really don't think that we're done yet. We'll see how things are when Becken turns two!