My period was late this month.

(Oh, sorry, did I forget the TMI warning? Oh well.)

Well, I think it was. Truth is, I haven’t been paying terribly close attention. I make a general mental note of when it shows up, and roughly when I expect it to show up again, and then don’t give it tons of thought.

Then my PMS symptoms showed up, a bit earlier than I expected them to, but OK. And then… nothing. Nothing happened. And my PMS symptoms are alarmingly similar to my early-pregnancy symptoms.  For two weeks, I freaked right the hell out. I tried to pretend like I wasn’t. I tried to act like it was just a mild curiosity, but really no big deal at all.  But I was straight-up freaking out.

I’d say about 95% of me wanted to curl up and hide at the idea of adding another kid to our family.  Most days, I feel like I more-or-less have my act together, but it’s an incredibly delicate balance. The “barely controlled” part can fall off of the “chaos” at any moment, and frequently does. To paraphrase something M said to me, the water is high enough that I already feel like I could use a snorkel. The idea of piling more on… just gives me heart palpitations.

Sure, there was the 5% of me that knows I’ll just deal with whatever is thrown my way. That if there was an “oops,” we’d love that part of our family just as much as the rest.  That I’d get over it and get excited.

But when I finally dared to pee on a stick and it was resoundingly negative? Oh, I almost fainted from relief.  And two days later, when that dang period finally showed up, I thanked my lucky stars.  There was no ambiguity, this was very very good news.

Yes, this anxiety is very much of my own creation, since I’m the one who has vowed never to take hormonal birth control again. I took it with great success for the better part of a decade. But having tried both an IUD and the pill post-babies, I now find the hormones turn me into a crazy person with serious anger issues, so no more.  There are… ahem… other preventative measures in play, but I know perfectly well that almost nothing has a 100% success rate. So I’m perpetually a little nervous. I’m working getting M in for the service disconnect (his words!), but he is somewhat understandably dragging his feet on that whole “putting your junk under the knife” thing.

Regardless, having mentally lived with the idea of a fourth kid for a terrifying week or two has pretty much removed the last shred of doubt from my mind. NO NO NO. Not that I was seriously considering it. I mean, really, the first time we rolled the dice, we had spontaneous fraternal twins. The second, we got the Magical Mystery Patient.  Yeah, I’d say we’re done taking our chances.

I adore all of my kids to pieces, I am grateful for them. I really do love being their mom, even if it is often exhausting and stressful.  I wouldn’t trade them for anything, they are amazing.  But yeah. We’re done. Shop’s closed.

Snip snip, honey. Snip snip.