The Internet is trying to get me pregnant. . .

The internet is trying to get me pregnant!  I have 4 kids.  Thats not a small amount.  I'd like 2 more.  What??  Why?  The answer is simple.  Web FOMO.

I am surrounded by other pregnant ladies glowing and gloating smugly at me over their beautiful bellies surrounded by smoke bombs in the color of their babies gender!

I feel like there are things I missed out on - I never got a whole year's worth of those "baby-at-each-month-pics",  I never had a letter board to mark each stage of my pregnancy, and I only had a professional photographer at my last maternity shoot.  And that's just the part before the baby comes.

Here I am pregnant with Noah.  This is the first fancy maternity dress I ever had.  My Dad bought it for me.  Looking at this picture reminds me of how much I shared that pregnancy with my parents.  They were such an important part of it for me.

These pictures were taken at Disney world while Zoe was on the inside I remember meeting Mary Poppins, it was still all boys in my life but we knew by then that she was a girl.  I cried when I told "Mary Poppins".  Pregnancy hormones anyone?

By the time Holden was getting made on the inside I knew I wanted better pictures to memorialize the brief time where we were as close as breath.

I went and got my hair blow dried and then handed my babysitter my camera.  I just knew I wanted to "remember" better.

I truly had amazing pregnancies.  I am not sure why that is how I describe my experience - I had IUGR and an induction with my first, an umbilical hernia requiring surgery from my second, advanced maternal age, pre-diabetes and tons of monitoring with my 3rd, and my 4th baby I spent the whole pregnancy until his birth preparing for a club foot which he did not have.  But still, I ended up with 4 healthy kids and I truly enjoyed being pregnant, particularly the later ones were I understood the miracle.  So why more?  Am I greedy?  Maybe.

I am aware that the newest AI models see my breeding as the biggest problem facing humanity.  I am also aware that my biology is a driving force in all these feelings.  I don't care.  I want a snuggly, just one more, just one. . . ok two.

Here we are all together celebrating the coming of Watson.  I have to say that the other kids being older and sharing that with them was the absolute best part of it all, hearing their little voices describe him (Mommy his eyes are like diamonds I can't look away) was the most incredible experience of my life. 

Waston was our most planned pregnancy, we waited until ski season was almost over to try that year.  With every other one we never had time to change our mind the next morning!  (first time every time FYI).

I had someone say to me after my fourth was born "oh wow, you must really like kids!"  I replied without thinking too much about it "not really". . .then I tried to fix it with "well, I mean I like my kids". . . What a strange answer for someone with 4 kids!  After that came out of my mouth I put some thought onto it. . . Do I like kids?  That answer changed my life.

Did you know you can have kids and continue to live your life?  Did you know that you can be an awesome Mom without Pinterest?
I didn't. . . I thought that becoming a parent meant that you left everything about yourself in the dust, speeding forward into "motherhood",  a perfect place where I would suddenly smile about muddy footprints and gently whisper "please don't hit" while my toddler pounded me in the kidneys from behind.
It really had not occurred to me that I would continue to have my own dreams, my own feelings and my own path would still exist.  I think that it is this, the understanding that I get to keep myself, I get to be person too, even though I made some other people.
It really hadn't occurred to me that I could be an awesome mom to my own kids without becoming a 24 hour a day preschool teacher.
It really hadn't occurred to me that they would come, be totally encompassing, but that the time would pass, way too quickly.  I was working on this one idea to slow down time, but I have since learned that having more babies does not stop your other babies from growing up.
I still want more babies.  I'm not sure if I want more teenagers though. . .