I was attending C’s 9 month well check recently when the doctor asked me how the family was doing, throwing in the stock “4 boys… I don’t know how you do it” remark.

“I don’t know either,” I laughed, thinking longingly about my iced coffee waiting in the car.

“Do you think you’ll keep going? Or are you done?”

This question should not be vexing to my mental state. It comes up constantly, particularly when you seem to be on a steady once-every-other-year cadence of child production. For me, it’s often “will you keep going till you get a girl?” which irritates me for other reasons. But the fundamental curiosity — when are you going to stop expanding your family? — creates a quiet storm inside my head that rumbles around intermittently for the next few days that follow.

On the one hand, I answer “yes, we’re done.”

We have been in a state of endless accrual of stuff for the past 7 years. We have all the standard seasonal supplies (bikes, clothes, snow gear) to fit a boy at any stage of development up to 7 years old. We have diaper pads, baby baths, bouncers, swings, exersaucers, walkers, bottles, bibs, drying racks, sippies, plasticware, baby gates, drawer locks. With the exception of truly superfluous items or massive toy purges, we have effectively been unable to offload anything since J was born. We have a small boat of an SUV to accommodate our family size and the 4 x car seats, we have 2 boys sharing a room already, and we have a daycare bill that will equate to a significant raise in our monthly income when we get to stop paying it.

We are running a constant time deficit, and while we are more than comfortable letting standards slide with respect to things one might wish but not mandate (walk through the kitchen without coating one’s socks with a thin layer of Wheaties crumbs, for instance), we are already – with just one child in extracurricular activities – finding ourselves dividing children and tasks just to get things done.

For 7 years, we have not had a meal without cutting several people’s food into appropriately sized chunks such that they are not life-threatening choking hazards. We have not sat on our backyard patio without being spatially aware of where the youngest was and begging him to stop wandering into the street in search of the neighborhood playground. We have not left the house without a diaper bag or water bottles or snack packs or sunscreen or spare clothes. The mental management has left me so deeply resource challenged that I find myself making conscious determinations about things like “I need to be okay with a less-than-stellar performance review at work or I am going to burn out,” or “I will have to coast on the momentum of my relationships until I have time to be a good friend again,” or “I can only have fun once per week.”

And here’s the real talk: Dave and I had always talked about “3 with the option of 4,” and now we have 4 healthy, beautiful, boisterous boys. The notion of not pushing one’s luck comes to mind when considering not only another baby, but another pregnancy & VBAC delivery (at least, attempted by way of always delivering before someone would schedule you for an actual C-section) for me. And now, of course, of an age to be considered a geriatric mother!

I’m ready to move onto the next life stage. I’m ready to clear some shelf space, and worry less about a child accidentally putting himself in mortal peril by virtue of trying to eat a Lego, and for Pete’s sake put these 4 able bodied boys to work on some serious yard and home chores. I am busy. I am tired. But I am also so deeply, deeply happy.

So, yes, I say, “we’re done.” But I have yet to have that be a complete sentence. Rather, I am always compelled to offer additional context: “…but it’s still hard to say it out loud.”

There are a few reasons I believe I struggle with knowing I’m done.

The first is, simply, when you’ve created 4 wonderful children, with traits you recognize in yourself or your spouse but also some that are absolutely foreign, and you see them develop and change and become these little people that you are so privileged to know, it’s like you get the first read of the most extensive, exciting, page-turning novel and witness a story unfolding for the first time. How could you not want more of these people? It’s a slippery slope, I know, but to imagine not knowing C because we hadn’t gone for “the option of 4” is now a really sad contemplation. This train of thought falls apart quickly given the cost of pregnancy and birth to the mother (fun fact! The #1 cause of death for women ages 15 – 19 globally is childbirth!), but it still sparks a seed of greed in my brain… more of these lovely little monsters? Yes, please.

Then there’s the notion of “lasts” that would haunt me if I let them. I have become strangely emotional over bizarre “last first” milestones with C. Not just the obvious ones: the last first time he rolled over, or slept straight through the night, or moved from the bassinet into his own nursery… No, I’ve become highly attuned to the lesser known last firsts: the last first gummy smile before he cut a tooth, the last first stinky diaper after I added purees to his formerly exclusive breast milk diet, and the last first time he sat in the actual tub for his bath – and not only didn’t slip at all, but splashed so aggressively that his bath-mate, A, whined for maternal intervention.

Ultimately, and honestly, the root issue may be a result of the human’s frontal lobes being significantly newer than the limbic system. Maybe I am logically on board with being done for all the reasons above, but my animal instincts object & tell me to continue procreating. For better or worse, I do not live one of these unexamined lives that Socrates alluded to, so I am thrust into a state of contemplation when I detect this type of internal conflict.

Two comments that massively comfort me during those mental isolated thunderstorms:

1. Dave said sincerely when I agonized about this one time: “you’ve physically and mentally given a lot of yourself to this for the past many years. It’s enough. It’s okay to turn the page and start the next chapter.”
   
2. My mom told me, after I disclosed our considerations around – ahem – most effectively managing our family plan, and shared that I was concerned about doing anything “permanent” while I was still emotional about things: “then don’t do permanent. Take the temporary fix and come back to cross that bridge later.”

I guess it all comes down to this: motherhood is a paradox – especially in the weeds of the stage with young children. You are constantly busy, but simultaneously bored. You are lonely, but wish everyone would stop touching you so you could just have a moment to yourself. You are intensely terrified that you will make a mistake, but also feel more functional and capable and strong than you ever have in your life. I remember vividly the first day that I brought J home and watched him napping in his bassinet, with some version of clinical insomnia about to set in for me. I thought “what have I done?” and “this is so amazing; we should have done this sooner” in the very same breath.

It makes sense then, I suppose, that deciding that you are done can be equally paradoxical.

All this to say, we are done. But it is still hard to say it out loud.