Baby Number 3, 7 Years Later: Pregnancy, Work and Starting Over

Two children felt normal. Everyone around us had two. Two children, two parents. Deciding to have our baby number 3 felt strangely unsettling. Bernie and Makena, our two eldest were getting older and more independent. We were having some free time to ourselves once again. Makena is seven which means we had already gotten rid of diapers, strollers, naps  and all baby stuff.

Life had moved on.

And then in 2024 we decided, its time to have one more.

Starting again as our friends called it, except that it wasn’t really starting again.

Wow Why Another One?

This was the first thing that surprised me. Not the question really but the inherent need to explain it. Almost to justify our decision.

When you have the first child, its celebrated, even understandable. The second one, this one is sort of expected. You know the first needs a sibling.

But number 3?

It almost sounded irresponsible, especially for self aware, career parents like us. We both have careers and we live far away from our families with no grandmother around the corner to pick up or drop off our offspring to. So naturally, when we found out that I was pregnant with number 3, I began to feel something I hadn’t anticipated or experienced with my first 2. I felt as though I had to prove that this was all going to be okay. That we could manage three. That my career would be fine. That the older children would be fine. That we weren’t being irresponsible.

That we knew exactly what we were signing up for.

I found myself mentally preparing for answers for a decision that didn’t actually require anyone’s approval.

Seven Years Is Long Enough to Forget

Or is it? After two rounds it can’t be that hard. The body remembers. Right? WRONG.

My body forgot it all. My brain decided to filter to only the cute kicks, the ultrasound the new born sweet smell and completely play amnesia with things like severe pelvic pain.

The pelvic pain is the kind of pain that will change the geography of your everyday life. Nothing helps too.

You stop thinking, I’ll just go upstairs and get the kids.

You start thinking, Do I really need it?

Standing hurts.

Walking hurts.

Turning over in bed hurts.

Something falling on the floor becomes an object you stare at while calculating whether retrieving it is worth what your pelvis will have to say about it.

And unlike my earlier pregnancies, there was very little opportunity to simply surrender to being pregnant. Because I had a full-time job. And two children. And a really low iron count.

Pregnancy Didn’t Care About My 9 a.m Meeting

This was my biggest challenge. I could come from a 2 hour night sleep straight to a high level meeting.

The 7 year gap was not just about the kids age gap. In these seven years, my career had also progressed and grown substantially. Now I had responsibilities and people that depended on me. A demanding full-time corporate job that didn’t care about my struggling body.

So I became so good at moving between worlds.

I remember one time after chairing a session for 45 minutes, I found myself wondering how I was going to stand without showing how much it hurt.

I also had two other kids that depended on me to be present and show up.

To do school things with them.

Make dinner.

Listen to them read.

Drive them to gymnastics and swimming.

Do mindfulness for bedtime.

Make their hair.

Fight racist kids on their behalf.

Most of the time I desperately needed someone to take care of mew while simultaneously being responsible for everyone else.

It wasn’t all bad

Having older kids made it more beautiful. They understood when I couldn’t be the superhero. And on those days we lay in bed and listened to the baby kicks together.

We imagined how the baby would look like. Asked and answered questions about how the baby came to be. They understood that our family was growing.

I didn’t want their experience of this pregnancy to simply be:

Mama can’t because of the baby. That really mattered to me.

We Had No Village Waiting Outside To Help

This reality hit harder around the birth and delivery of the baby. Organising the logistics of who was going to watch over Bernie and Makena and especially if it happened in the night.

There was no obvious person to call and say:

“It’s happening. Can you come over?”

When you already have children, planning for birth isn’t just about getting yourself to hospital but having to work out what happens to everyone else.

What if labour starts at 2 a.m.?

Who stays with the children?

Who takes them to school?

What if we need to be at the hospital longer than expected?

What if Plan A isn’t available?

What is Plan B?

And Plan C?

I remember realizing that my birth plan wasn’t really a birth plan anymore. It was an operations plan.

With our first child, there was nothing else to think about except the baby. It was as if the world had stopped.

With number 3 the world moved on. We got home at 6 in the morning to make the lunch boxes.

The Baby Didn’t Take Us Backwards

Most questions were about why we had decided to go back to that life again. The baby life, the sleepless night and dirty diapers, nap schedules and just arranging life around a human being among other things.

We didn’t and still don’t see it that way. Our baby was not taking us back but forward. He wasn’t arriving to the family that received Bernie or Makena. He was arriving in this family.

A family where he was really wanted by all of us.

He was coming to parents who knew more, worried differently and had considerably less energy for pretending they had everything figured out.

A family without grandparents around the corner.

A family that would have to plan harder and ask for help differently.

A family of four learning how to become five.

Moving on

Our baby is now here and is so loved. I have loved evolving into the new mom life again. This time with so much grace and gentleness. Or like I tell my friends kupeleka life na mutaratara. 

I feel more grounded. Seven years after Makena, I wasn’t that woman who had been pregnant before.

And that turned out to be the point. I wasn’t repeating an old chapter.

We were writing a completely new one.

And this time, there were five of us in the story.