Monthly theme post: Baby obsession

It's time for a PAIL monthly theme post!  This month's theme is baby obsession...

Here's some questions that were posed, and I figured I'd start with answering them and we'll see how this goes.

• Since traveling the ALI journey have you found yourself “obsessing” over all things babies?

 YES.  I was a bit obsessed beforehand, but not all that much.  I would really say that I was interested a great deal before the loss and then infertility part of family-building.  After, obsessed. It's ridiculous.  It could probably trend toward an addiction, really.  I am that overly involved in all things baby.  It started with a carseat, then a stroller, and now we've moved along to prenatal development and a name.  Maybe we've picked a name so who knows what is next?

• Do you find yourself researching all things child-related, from toys, to food choices, to child-raising methodologies?

YES.  I wish I could stop. I am continuing to generally avoid child-raising methodologies because I really don't like the "by the book" approach to children.  Historically I've felt that "by the book" was irritating as all get-out and that it disabled parents because they were all book, no attention to the child in front of them.  BUT I really liked NurtureShock and I'm badgering the spouse to read it too, so... whatever that means.

• What choices have you made, or not made, as a result of your ALI journey?

I have to battle my nerves more to let the kid go and be a kid.  I have this urge to control as much as I possibly can, so I struggle with that much more now than I did before.  Choices not made, yeah, more of those.  Like: I want 4 kids, the spouse is dead set on no more than three (and thinks three is pushing things a bit far).  After the almost 3 years to get to child 2, this discussion has died completely.  We are living in the now and forget additional children, we just really want the second one!  Housing: we are not at all thinking about buying a house right now or any time soon because we know we'll have medical bills to pay off and any savings we manage will disappear there.  We are no longer really even discussing a house and if we ought to buy, we're just focused totally on family building.  I suppose that if we get to plan no-more-bio-kids (this is post-6 medicated cycles, that we have figured out and it's our limit, no fancy IUI or IVF we decided - so far at least), we'd need a house then .  Considering that is too much though. We'll wait.

• Do you obsess over your child’s health, development, socialization, etc?

No. I mean, I try to make sure she meets a variety of people and spends time in a variety of settings, but I've let this one go (victory! yay!).  I know she's meeting milestones (since she sees her doctor and that's been the report so far) and that's enough for me. I figure this is the result of growing up with so many adults so deeply involved in my development being textbook-perfect, that the only way to rebel is to totally ignore any such development trajectory for the kid.

• Do you obsess over adding to your family?

Only all the time.  I wonder if this will change/go away when Little Monster gets here or if it will ramp up.  I wonder if I/we will care about spacing child 2 and 3 or if we'll wait a bare minimum of time after child 2 to try for 3 because we have no idea how long that will take/if it will happen via adoption. I worry that (aside from having exclusively iPod photos take of hir) Little Monster will feel extremely middle child if we are in a hurry for kid 3 and somehow magically successful, or that the kid will be unhappy that there's yet another baby taking away from her awesomeness.  Growing up I knew a family that had 3 children, with an 8 year gap between 1 and 2, and between 2 and 3.  How weird would that be, to have 16 years between first and last child but only one in the middle?  AND WHAT IF THAT'S ME AS THE PARENT?  What if we wind up with a 10 year old, 5 year old, and baby?  Or what if we have a 6 year old, 1 year old, and baby?  Eeeeep!  Or what if we do a medicated cycle and wind up with multiples?  How would we fit more than 5 people in this house?  I hate moving! Yipes!

See? Obsessing.

On the bloggy front, I started reading pregnancy/baby blogs when we decided we were ready for kid 2, then I stopped for a few months after loss 1, then got even more obsessed after that break, then stopped reading again when we got to loss 2 (I was SO MAD), and then after loss 3, I shifted what blogs I read but I didn't stop for any length of time at all.  I hadn't expected this at all, but I felt supported in the blogosphere in a way that I wasn't IRL (because I was hiding and being anti-social and spent hours crying in my car, hiding even from myself sometimes just how much I hurt).  Between 2 and 3 (so...2011) I started reading various infertility blogs and it was largely like coming home.  It was a good break from strictly baby obsessing to venture into obsessing about baby-making instead...