We should be Five...

One day when C was just three years old, he announced "We need another baby!" He had never mentioned anything like this before, so I was baffled by this statement. "What do you mean?" I asked him. And he said with total certainty, "We should be five. Our family should have five." "Five kids?!?" I asked him, in disbelief. "No, Mommy. Just five people. Not five babies." he said.

I had an instant flashback to the delivery room immediately after O was born. As O was snuggling on my chest, I informed Hubby, "We are soooo doing this again!" Clearly, the idea of having a family of five was not out of the question for me. But at the time of C's announcement, O was just a year old and still not sleeping through the night, so adding another child to the mix was the last thing on my mind. I chuckled and told C, "Well that might never happen, but we'll see what life brings us."

Ordinarily, I forget the funny things the boys say quite quickly, but C had said "we should be five" with such conviction that it stuck in my head. And over the next year and a half, he kept talking about it. Always out of the blue, and always at the most unusual times, but he never wavered. It didn't matter to him whether he had a little brother or a little sister, he just knew that our family needed one more person in it. And as O transitioned from a baby into an independent boy, the idea of another baby that had been in my head since the delivery room, began to sprout. Like a long dormant bulb, what had been hidden away began to slowly bloom.

Earlier this month, for two blissful weeks, I knew our third child was on the way. Until suddenly, it wasn't. Multiple OB visits and tests confirmed that this wasn't our time. For now, and perhaps for always, we will be just four. And it's such a great foursome that I feel guilty even wanting more.

But I can't help feeling that C is right. We should be five.

I hope someday I can tell him that we will be.