Oh for heavens sake, please remind me that two Inferiorettes is enough!

[motherinferior]

I am very, very bad at pregnancy - hate it from start to finish, not including the SPD. I am also appalling at dealing with small babies. They reduce me to a snivelling wreck on the constant brink of ringing Social Services. I find parenting a constant struggle which is only negotiated by dint of constant whingeing on-line and in person to everyone I know. Now that my younger daughter has turned two - and I indeed have turned 42 - I am finally reclaiming some sense of my life As It Was Known Before.

Please remind me that I don't want another baby and that my current broodiness is just a pre-menopausal blip of insanity!

KR .. are you barking mad .. or very brave .. what a posting on a thread where I would reckon we're mainly late 30's

Because you have the nicest Daisy and Tom, kr. Stop sulking

yes I know but that's what I mean. you all have lovely babes and I'm struggling to get no 2.

clutching and straws...

And a new second-hand-shop in half Monn Lane, Herne Hill, called Merry-go-Round. Brilliant girls stuff, less so boys.

you'd have a lot of shopping to do if it was a boy, MI....oooh, WHHOOOOOSH, was that MI rushing to the ttc threads???

aloha, i have a baby blue pinstripe tweed skirt from the last Kent and Carey sale waiting in dd's closet for this winter. Those metallic shoes sound gorgeous.

Sorry, dwelling on the fabulousness of small clothes is probably not helping MI.....

You don't. Trust me. DS2 is the most beautiful toddler ever created, which is probably just as well and I don't for a second regret him, but three is a lot.

And because of the can of worms she has opened up here I would make a point of not loaning a single one of ds' cast-off rompers and various other Fotherington-Thomas-type garments he had...if she did have a boy that is...

Little clothes do it for me every time...found myself fondling very small rompers wistfully. And those tiny shoes. Sigh.
Little pinstripes!
Oh bugger, I am supposed to be working and moving on Friday. I am least motivated, workaholic person in universe.

Aaah no MI, you know you want to...
Seriously, I love my 3 and felt my family would not be complete at 2, but if you want 2 don?t listen to anyone else!
Actually, if I had had 2 the same (as opposed to the ?pigeon pair? everyone else seemed so pleased about) I might have stopped there, but I really wanted one of them to have a same-sex sibling. Really then I would like 4 but that?s another story!
Now then, in answer to som of these arguments, we don?t have enough bedrooms either (3) but actually it?s fine. We will have to move/extend sometime (soon???) but hey!
I take on board bk?s point about time, that is something that is not endlessly stretchable. I have to make an effort every day to spend some 1-1 time with all my 3 (I work ft as well) - but maybe because I do that we do better than people with fewer children?
TBH I found no 3 fitted in easily but then I never had the problems with pg you had so it?s hard for me to advise on that one....

(marina, you are the voice of reason, and after 3 trouble-free pgs and births, that is the real reason I am not doing it again....)

I was still broody after number three and I thought it would go on forever. However, now I've had number four I can honestly say, for the first time in 8 years, I'm NOT broody. I'm ready to stop now and am letting go of all my baby clothes.

Ah! What a relief!

But I really needed to have number four to feel released. Also, I don't think they mind sharing bedrooms if that's all they know. I always shared a bedroom.

MI, your two dds are absolutely gorgeous and I can completely see why you'd want more - your genes are clearly an excellent match for your dp! Not helping much, am I?

Of course if you did it now, yours would be closer together than mine, which must help.

Ha Ha ks that's what I say too, I say " I have one of those too" particularly yesterday at the beach without my kids.

Me too! the how old is a good opening gambit

dh is getting embarrassed by me these days, the way I swoop on babies. I offered to push one on a swing yesterday (he was really fat and wearing a jumper with a big B on it, which was v cute) and I even have my own baby right there with me. I am a loon.

lol at the combination of fatness and a B on his jumper to get the broody juices flowing, aloha.

I bet, dino. Ikea is far better without the kids in tow, ime.

I think finding useless knick knacks for cheap is objectively good, actually! Hat the crowds and middle of nowhere and soulessness and having to walk through the entire showroom to get to the good bits though. New kitchen sounds exciting!

Oh goodness MI, not you too.
After very firmly making the decison that I was not going to decide on number 3 just now, particularly because I didn't feel the yearning for a new baby that dino had mentioned, I have found myself feeling more and more broody. To the extent that I have actually cancelled my fabric to decorate the second guest room in the most wonderful manhattan hotel style, just in case it becomes another childs room.

The one thing that is still putting me off is the feeling that I have already pushed my luck - talking to you actually reminded me just how scary my pregnancies are, and I don't think I could not blame myself if anything bad happened. I don't buy the "life is finally getting easy" arguement, as it would only be another 2, maximum 3 years until life got easy again, and that's not a lot of time really. Have you talked to DP - waht does he think of your plan to spend his payrise on another Inferiorette?

MI - have you read Sally Magnussons's book Family Life? Just a few quotes...

"Where would we put a fifth child? We did a quick mental tour of the house. 'There's always the bathroom' my husband concluded weakly. 'It's very warm in there. We could fit the carrycot in the bath.'

'...I'd have to stop work again...and no-one would invite us anywhere.....and being pregnant made me sick. And we'd barely had a night's sleep in nine years. And it would mean another two years of nappies. And heavens help us, it might be twins.'

" 'So to summarize' said he, 'we have a list of extremely good reasons considerably longer than your arm for not adding any more children to this family, including moving away from this house. Is that a fair summary of the position?' It was. 'So are we going to go for it?' We grinned at each other. Of course we were.

Seriously MI, if you want to go for it, go for it! A friend of mine recently had a pg scare, and it really convinced her that she didn't want another, could you imagine how you would feel if you did get a BFP - happy, sad, scared etc?