How do you like your eggs in the morning….?

OK – it’s a really crappy joke.  I heard it years ago, but for some strange reason, it still makes me laugh!  Here goes….

Q:  How do you like your eggs in the morning?

A:  Unfertilised!

Yes, I know it’s puerile.  But there’s a point to it.   A point that has been bothering me recently.

As I stand here today, I am very clear in my mind that I have the number of kids I have always wanted.  And I don’t want any more.

But if I am fortunate to meet someone in the future who doesn’t have kids, someone I really fall in love with and want to spend the rest of my foreseeable life with, what will I do if they want children?

Grrrr.  That’s a really tough question.   And strangely, a question several female friends have asked me recently.

Despite the fact that I’m late for everything (I don’t mean to be, I just am!), I am a very organised person.  I like to plan and arrange details in advance.  And this is how my kids came to be.  Planned and organised.  I wanted two, I got two.  Done.

But I have to confess, although I really hate having to admit this point, there is just a teeny tiny bit of me that “maybe”, “possibly”, “at a pinch”, could consider doing it again.

The facts are, I’m not a spring chicken any more. I found pregnancy hard, because I was quite unwell with it.  I don’t have family who can help. But what has really put me off, is the way my ex-husband behaved towards me after our second child was born. 

To begin with, it was a very traumatic birth.  The following day, he came to collect me from hospital, but there was a problem and we were made to stay a bit longer.  He was cross with me for “wasting his time” coming to the hospital, as we could no longer go home. 

A week later, I was throwing away dead flowers, which had been sent to us by kind friends.  I commented, in a gentle way (as opposed to my ‘irritated, pissed off wife’ way), that it would have been nice to have received flowers from him.  His response was snappy and aggressive.

“You’ve had loads of flowers.  You don’t need any more.”

I wasn’t asking for the crown jewels.  Just a bunch of flowers…!

This upset me enough, but in the ensuing days, I spoke to him about how traumatised I felt by our second child’s birth.  His response was aggressive:

“I don’t want to hear about it.  How do you think it felt for ME having to watch, unable to do anything, whilst you went through that.  It was far worse for me.”

I swore to myself that day that I would never, under any circumstances, have another child with him.

At that point in time, I never imagined myself being divorced from him.  So I had effectively sworn never to have another child at all. 

Maybe that’s the real issue:  I fear being treated the way I was before.  But maybe, just maybe, if I am fortunate enough to meet someone I want to be with for the rest of my life, I could, “maybe”, “possibly”, “at a pinch”, change my mind.