Baby talk

My brain coalesced long enough for me to remember a couple of the topics I had intended to stick into blog posts. And so I have picked the easiest one for tonight. (It's still very hot here, so deep thinking and organized writing requires a greater effort than I'm willing to expend right now.)

My sister, the one we went to visit last month, was the first family member I told about my second miscarriage. (And, if I remember correctly, remains one of only two extended family member's I have ever told.) She is, in fact, one of very few people with whom I will discuss child plans very frankly--outside of the vast internet, apparently. In return she is one of the few people I feel comfortable asking about her own child-spawning plans.

(All of this is a bit amusing to me, particularly since we're not super-close--certainly not like other siblings I know. And we have insanely different approaches when it comes to child-rearing, food, and some priorities. Sometimes it seems odd that we could have grown up in the same household. Compare the third sister with either one of us, and you end up with a similar dissonance.)

So of course we chatted some about our child plans in the time we had together. I had suspected that she was close to trying again; she recently, successfully quit smoking, and I knew that was one of her goals/starting points. She told me that she and her husband have decided that a 4-year gap between children was a good idea. I made note of her daughter's current age (3 years 1 month) and remarked that she was just about to hit that mark.

Turns out she's been waiting for the return of a regular cycle after going off her birth control. And, in fact, they were just about to that point.

We laughed about the different approaches we have to take in this whole baby-making endeavor. I talked about having the one shot per month--but still having a pretty good track record on getting pregnant. She has had good luck getting pregnant as soon as she sets her mind to it (it's in the genes; we are fertile women!), but she does a little math, marks off a few nights on the calendar, and her husband mans up.

We also laughed about the fact that we could end up with kids incredibly close in age, depending on the success each of us meets.

Here's to the hope of new cousins in the new year.