Current state of affairs

I suppose I ought to summarize our current yet tentative plan for sibling creation. I always had this vague idea that any children I had would be about 2 years apart. I have a sister who is 2 years older than I am as well as a brother who is a little over 2 years younger. I suspect this might have had something to do with my vague intentions regarding spacing any children I had during my life. Now, of course, I'm looking at this with an entirely new perspective. I'm 30. Five years or so before I'd like to be done having kids. So my age is somewhat of a factor, if by some miracle we decide to have three kids. I would like to go back to work full time (right now I only work a little bit) once any and all kids are in pre-school or kindergarden, and the longer we space them the longer it will be before I go back to work. We sure could use the money. California is a freakishly expensive place to live (I'm not originally from here, as you might guess). Shortly after our daughter was born, we moved to Development Land. Not really a suburb; more of an exurb. We're way out here. It's the only place we could afford a single family home on a street with lots of other little kids. And I'm using the term "afford" rather losely here. Anyway, so there are some good reasons to have another one sooner rather than later.

But what if I land in hospital prison again? My daughter would be two. She won't understand why her mommy had to go away. Lots of the other inmates, er... I mean patients, that I met in the hospital last time had kids at home already and I heard terrible stories about how they felt as their children became increasingly attached to their substitute caregivers. Would it be easier if my daughter were older? I have no idea. The sum total of my experience with children is with my daughter. The older ages mysitfy me. I have no idea what to expect and when. On the plus side, I seem to have lucked out and ended up with a freakishly good-natured and easygoing baby. I'm sure any separation would be much harder on me than on her, especially since my granny-lust-ridden mother has offered to fly down here and live in our house and look after my daughter if anything goes wrong. She loves her two granddaughters to death (my brother has a little girl, too) and would like many, many more! She's been amazingly helpful over the last year and a half.

Anyway, I'm definitely srarting to think about it. My husband is considerably less ready to even turn his thoughts in that direction. That's another post for another day. I have my annual exam/pap coming up in October with the OB/Gyn who delivered my daughter and, incidentally, was the one who confirmed my drastically shortening and funneling cervix last time and was on the phone with a perinatologist within about 20 seconds. But that's also a story for another day. Anyway, my OB (let's just call her Dr. Favorite.) and I discussed "any future children" when my last pregnancy went south and she said when we were ready to think about trying, she'd refer us to a high-risk group to go and discuss the options. I'm assuming we're talking about a cerclage and obsessive monitoring of my cervical length, with bedrest and tocolytics at any sign of trouble. Anyway, I intend to get that referral in motion when I see her next month. Now... How to nonchalantly introduce this plan to my husband? He still suffers from what I term post-pregnancy stress disorder, and rightfully so.

We shall see.