One is the Awesomest Number
Why I don't want a second child.
by Jeanne Sager
April 21, 2008
I laugh when they tell me she needs a brother because she needs someone to love. I love my little brother — now. But the memories of him sitting on my head to pass gas are not sweet. Having a brother built character — only time built love.
There's only one reason to have a second child that ever made me flinch: the fear that some day something will happen to Jillian, something I can't control.
That possibility started whispering in my ear on the drive home from the hospital, Jonathan stomping on the brakes every time a car approached in the opposite lane. He felt it too — our baby's frailty and our inability to protect her from future hurt and pain and the big, bad world.
The fear thumps in my heart on late nights when I pace her dark bedroom while she wails in my arms, while Jonathan measures out Tylenol in an eyedropper. It burns a trail up my throat when I sit down to write about a teenager lost in an automobile accident, when I cover a funeral for the newspaper.
For three years, the fear told me, "No, you cannot settle for one child." It told me not to make any drastic decisions. It told me to keep open the door to bearing more children.
"Please, just wait," I told him when he wanted a vasectomy.
"You just never know," I told Jonathan, who had his mind made up the moment Jillian entered the world that he was done. "Please, just wait," I told him when he said he wanted to get a vasectomy.
I heard the quaver in my voice that used to be part of everyday married life when we were trying for baby number one. Jonathan would look at me with his own brand of fear in his eyes. I could almost hear him asking, "Who are you, and what have you done with my wife?"
He was right. I didn't recognize myself in the puddle on the floor.
And then one month I thought I might be pregnant again. And as I sat there waiting for the line or lines to appear, I realized I was hoping I wasn't.
One line. Not pregnant. We were safe. Yes, that was my first thought: I was safe.
"I'm done," I told Jonathan and gave him the thirtieth birthday present he'd asked for: a vasectomy.
Now the fear is quiet when Jillian laughs. It's not there when we snuggle on the couch, Goodnight Moon splayed out on my lap, those curls resting against my chin. When she balances one foot on each of my thighs, wraps her arms around my neck and pats my back, I hear only her breath and the little hum she makes when she's content.
And I think, Okay, no more. I have the one I always wanted.
Article photo: Anne Cruz
©2008 Jeanne Sager and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Jeanne Sager is a freelance writer and photographer living in upstate New York with her husband and daughter, Jillian. She maintains a blog of her award-winning columns at jeannesager.blogspot.com. |
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