Rebecca Eckler

I’ve had a rash of friends, recently, give birth to their first babies. I didn’t realize how young I was (though, at the time, pregnant at 29 didn’t seem that young!)

Looking at outfits for gifts, I couldn’t believe how small the sizes were. “That cannot be for a newborn,” I said, more than once, to the sales lady. The onesies and dresses looked like they belonged on a toy doll, not an actual baby.

I honestly couldn’t remember my five-year-old daughter ever being so tiny. Here I am, sending Rowan off to full-day day camp and knowing she’s entering Grade One, while my friends are now traumatized from labour and worrying about losing baby weight.

Lack of detailed memories, I think, is why I’ve been debating whether to have another.

My daughter loves babies. I have been thinking that maybe she should have a sibling. (I’ve been thinking big picture. Not the little details of, oh, for example, where to get the sperm!)

Or, I WAS thinking of having a second child, that is, until I went to visit my friend, who actually gave birth three weeks ago. My friend is also my esthetician, and does all my waxing in the basement of her home. (Imagine my dismay when she called to cancel my Brazilian because she had gone into labour! True story.)

Yesterday, in desperate need of a wax, I took my daughter to my friend’s house. She has started to work, around her three-week old’s schedule. (There is no schedule.) She answered the door, after begging me to bring her lunch, in her breastfeeding bra. She looked exhausted.

My usual twenty minute visit turned into two-hours of mayhem. It went something like this:

Me: OW!

Baby: Waaaa!

Friend: I have to breast feed again.

Rowan: Why do you keep saying how cute that baby is?

Me: OW!

Baby: Waaa!

Friend: Ok, I’ll be right back. I think she needs to eat again.

Rowan: Am I cuter?

Me: Ow!

Baby: Waaa!

Friend: She just doesn’t want to sleep. You think she needs to eat again?

Rowan: I’m cuter, right?

Let’s just say I left very frazzled and stressed (though hair-free). In the car ride home, I told my daughter that I had forgotten how much work newborns require and I’m not sure I could do it again.

“Why are you thinking of having another baby?” my daughter asked.

“I thought you might like a brother or sister,” I said.

“What if they try and sell me?” she asked. (This is from a poem in Shel Silverstein’s Where The Sidewalk Ends.)

“I would never allow that!” I told my daughter. “I thought you liked babies.”

“I love babies,” my daughter answered. Then she sighed, “I just don’t want to live with one.”