"How many kids do you want?"

Last week as I was telling people that we had 3 totsicles, I had a couple people ask me how many kids that we wanted. I found that so odd. I mean, yes before DH and I got married and when we decided to start trying to have kids, we'd discussed this. Originally we wanted three but then changed our mind to two...having them 4-5 years apart and the first before we were 30. Cue IF to enter our world and that plan was thrown out the window. At that point, we just wanted one child...if we could even have that. Forget having two and the timing of when we'd have them.

I'm not saying that the people who asked me this were out of line but like I said it was just odd to me. IF robs us of so much. I mean some things are obvious, it robs us of our finances, our intimacy, getting prego the 'ole fashioned-way without planning or thinking but it also robs us of a lot of the small things that I don't think everyone realizes.

In our case at least, we no longer have the choice of deciding how many kids we want...our finances will decide that for us (as in we have to front $15 grand to decide to TRY for a child and still be able to support him/her). We won't get to surprise anyone with news that we're pregnant. This is partially our fault because we were so up-front and honest with everyone that I know everyone knows when we'll be testing. The one thing that it's robbed me of, that I hate, is that I no longer dream. I never think further than the next test or procedure or blood draw. If the test comes back positive, I haven't even looked up to see when my due date would be, thought about childcare or names or nurseries...all things I already had planned out when we first started trying.

So how many kids do we want? We would feel truly blessed with one child to raise to the best of our ability but we'd be happy with however many God wanted to grant us with.