Sad Fact

I think I am finally coming to grips with my own personal inconvenient truth: that Scooter (who will be 5 years old on April 8th) was my last baby.

I had always planned to have more (at least three in total, possibly five). But not having the first until I was 36 years old sort of automatically limited everything, eh? And with Mark's health scares in 2006, you start to wonder if maybe it's good you don't have more than two (in case you had to take care of them alone). But still it makes me sad to accept that I am the mother of only two (and guilty at the same time, because how many childless women out there would be overjoyed to be a mother at all!?).

I guess what I regret most is that I didn't know all along that she was my last. If I'd known, I might have held her a bit tighter and longer, or inhaled her sweet smell a little more deeply, or cherished every midnight nursing right up 'til the last one. As it is, I find myself wishing that I had paid more attention to the various "lasts" as they happened. Having two children 19 months apart was harder than I expected and those early years are one big blur of sleep deprivation, laundry marathons, and all the other crazy aspects of life with two babies. I wish I'd stopped more often to take a deep breath and focus, to remember every day that far too soon, I would have no babies at all.