Baby Baby

Those who've been around me for longer than five minutes know that I. Really. Don't. Want. Anymore. Kids. Period. Fact. End. Finito..... you get the picture. I rant and rave about how the boys drive me nuts, how I can't wait until such-and-such stage is over with, and in general how I want to run away from home some days. The thought of having a newborn to deal with all night long and then the boys all day is enough to make me break into a cold sweat. Imagining once again being chained to the house for at least three naps a day and a super early bedtime makes me practically itchy with claustrophobia. Remembering the horrors of colicky babies and reflux and baby vomit everywhere makes me nearly gag.



So those who ask me "So, are you done having kids?" will get an affirmative, if not slightly rude, response, practically before the words have even left their mouths.



That is the factual, practical, realistic side of me talking. The part that uses my brain.



But friends, there is a phenomenon that I'm sure many of you are familiar with-- Baby Fever. Ah, yes, Baby Fever. An unfortunate affliction that is also known as This-Makes-No-Sense Disease, What-On-Earth-Are-You-Thinking Disorder, and Are-You-Crazy? Sickness.



Before having the boys, I was not exactly maternal material (read: I had never changed a diaper until we came home from the hospital). I think some might have been a bit worried if we'd all make it. But what no one ever knew was I had been afflicted with Baby Fever multiple times before, and I had been bitten good by that bug. I had hardly told a soul the real reason while I always hesitated to hold a newborn that was getting passed around the room.... yes, I didn't have that much experience holding babies and I was awkward, but the reality was I knew I'd react physically to holding that baby. Literally aching from my fingers to my toes, my heart feeling as if it'd burst, the warmth of that little one spreading to me like wildfire until I absolutely could not stand the pain of the child not being mine and I'd have to pass it on.



When I was pregnant with the boys, I lived with Baby Fever on a daily basis. Lying on my left side on bedrest, absolutely all I could think of was getting them here in this world so I could hold them. There's a Chris Rice song with the lyrics "I just want to be with you/Just want this waiting to be over." The song is originally intended to be sung to God, but during that time in my life, that song was my anthem to my boys, on constant replay in my head, over and over.



So really, it should come as no surprise that I am still capable of catching Baby Fever, but it recently snuck up on me and bit me so hard it smarted. In the last ten days or so, I have held no fewer than four babies, three of which were newborns. I'd forgotten the warm weight just lying on my chest, the indescribable baby smell, the helplessness, the teeny little features. It all came rushing back in a flood, and I found myself glassy-eyed and practically dizzy, thinking things that I had no business thinking... stupid, illogical, unpractical things that should have earned me a good beating with the baseball bat of reason.



This Baby Fever, I told my sister later, is downright intoxicating, dangerous even. When I left my friend's house after visiting with her new precious twin girls, I'd just spent nearly a solid hour holding those babies. I didn't know which way was up, I was so screwed up in the head. I would have failed a sobriety test had I been pulled over on the way home.



But home was where I went. Because that's where I'd find the antidote to this insidious ailment:



Two screaming, whiny, snot-nosed, crazy little three-year-old boys.



MY babies.