It only takes one time.

How our third child came to be.

We are driving a few hours away for a quick family trip to the indoor water slide park/resort before P starts his new job. The kids are finally asleep in the backseat after nearly an hour of whining and fighting. We relish in the silence.

“Oh, here’s a quiz on Facebook — what kind of parent are you?” I exclaim. I open the quiz and begin reading the questions aloud while P drives. A few minutes later it’s complete and his result pops up — “the cool laidback parent.” He is satisfied with this. I reload the quiz and answer the questions for myself. My result pops up — “the overwhelmed parent.” We both laugh at the truth in this as my type A personality does make parenting challenging at times.

“Good thing we aren’t having any more kids!” I say while glancing out the window and staring into the hypnotic blur of evergreen trees along the highway. I feel my chest tighten as I know that there is a slight chance I could be pregnant.

A few weeks prior, my IUD fell out while I was in the shower. It had been placed 6 weeks after giving birth to our second child who was only 15 months younger than our first. “Twins the hard way” someone once said to me about the age gap between the two. They are now 3 and 4 with little personalities and interests of their own. While parenting them is not easy, it isn’t as hard as it was when they were both still babies unable to communicate and had immediate needs.

Over the past 6-8 months we’ve discussed the posibility of having a third. We lay out the pros, the cons, but never come to a real decision about it. P is pretty happy with just two. I sometimes still feel a tugging in my heart to have three. I analyze it backwards and forwards. Do I want three because we both come from families of three and that feels normal? Do I like the idea of three enough to handle the challenges of three? Do we really want to go back to the baby phase again?

After the IUD fell out we have a serious discussion about our family future. We decide that we will not go for a third. As soon as P starts his new job and the insurance kicks in, he will get a vasectomy. But in the meantime we will use condoms for birth control. Our second time using a condom (after not having used condoms in over 8 years) we have a condom failure. Afterwards there were some expletives spoken and then we calm down and say, “Well, what are the odds?”

During the two day trip at the water slide park I feel a little off. I can’t figure out if it’s because I’m still getting over a nasty cold or if it’s something else. In the back of my mind I kind of know — these little things feel very familiar to the way I felt when I was newly pregnant with my other two. On the drive home I contemplate if I should take a pregnancy test when we get home or if I should wait until the next morning. I decide to test that afternoon. My hands shake a little bit as I unwrap the foil around the plastic stick. I pee on it, then I set it on the bathroom counter and proceed to unpack from our trip. I step back into the bathroom a few minutes later. I can see it right it away, the second line. We are pregnant, and it only took one time.