The crazy things sleep deprivation does to you
Last night, I fell asleep thinking about my old friend, Contraception Guilt. I had a nice couple of years free from him while we left ourselves open to conceiving Penelope, and then while I was pregnant. And now, the time has come to work on the child we have for some period of time without shattering my breast milk supply with a pregnancy and without doubling the child care bill, and so on.
I don't feel any more inclined to trust myself to do NFP properly than I did two years ago, and I don't have the time to learn anything more about it than I already know. Today is my six-week postpartum visit, and I'm hoping for the green light! I find myself already looking for loopholes. For example: I'm very, very probably not fertile right now since I'm exclusively breastfeeding. I haven't had my period. So if I have sex with a barrier, it doesn't really matter, because I'm not fertile anyway.
Man, it's been a long time since I worried about this. It feels incredibly childish. This is the me from my past life!
Anyway, I haven't really been worrying about it that much, but someone suggested I pray about it, and I completely forgot to when I was at Mass for the Assumption yesterday. So I drowsily shot off a prayer about it as I fell asleep tonight: what am I supposed to do now?
So of course I had a bizarre nightmare, one of those that you wake up from and still feel the emotions associated. In this case, guilt (natch).
In my dream, I discovered that I was pregnant again, and not just pregnant, but about to give birth! There was a midwife at my house, telling me I was six centimeters dilated. I was panicking: how could I be having another baby, just six weeks after Penelope was born? What was I going to do with two infants? What about my maternity leave? This second baby wouldn't have as much time--and I worried it wouldn't even be old enough to go to daycare by the time I needed to go back to work! Plus, the expense of two children in daycare... I was frantic.
And there was a question of paternity. How could I be pregnant when Lee and I both knew we hadn't had sex since our first baby was born? I certainly hadn't had sex with anyone else, but how could I convince him of that when the evidence was clear? I told him I'd heard that there had been women, in very rare instances, who became pregnant with a second child in a second amniotic sac after they were already pregnant with a first. Maybe I gave birth to Penelope while I was already pregnant with #2.
He wasn't convinced. As I suggested we work on picking out a name, he said, very calmly, "I'm sure we'll have no trouble picking out a name, but I'm not sure how I feel about raising my wife's child who couldn't possibly be mine."
I said, "It couldn't possibly be anyone else's! I've never had sex with anyone else!" But even as I said the words, in my dream, I remembered that in the past six weeks I had had a drunken, one-night half-sex encounter--with my cousin!
Then the guilt really set in. I tried twice to call Blair to ask her what she thought the odds were that this was Lee's child, but she was never home. I met with two of my co-workers to ask what I should do about having two infants, and childcare, and they said I had no choice but to lie about the baby's birth date. Say the two babies were twins. And in the meantime, Lee was looking for advice of his own; I overheard him asking somebody what the chances were that the second baby was his.
I generally spent the rest of the dream feeling horrifically guilty, and it took me a few minutes after waking up with the baby--the real one--to realize that I didn't need to, that none of it was true. I hate dreams like that.
So, what does this dream tell me? One, it says that having another baby would be a complete disaster right now. And two, even unprotected half-sex can generate babies, even within six weeks of giving birth. The very strong implication seems to be, "Don't let this happen."
I don't feel any more inclined to trust myself to do NFP properly than I did two years ago, and I don't have the time to learn anything more about it than I already know. Today is my six-week postpartum visit, and I'm hoping for the green light! I find myself already looking for loopholes. For example: I'm very, very probably not fertile right now since I'm exclusively breastfeeding. I haven't had my period. So if I have sex with a barrier, it doesn't really matter, because I'm not fertile anyway.
Man, it's been a long time since I worried about this. It feels incredibly childish. This is the me from my past life!
Anyway, I haven't really been worrying about it that much, but someone suggested I pray about it, and I completely forgot to when I was at Mass for the Assumption yesterday. So I drowsily shot off a prayer about it as I fell asleep tonight: what am I supposed to do now?
So of course I had a bizarre nightmare, one of those that you wake up from and still feel the emotions associated. In this case, guilt (natch).
In my dream, I discovered that I was pregnant again, and not just pregnant, but about to give birth! There was a midwife at my house, telling me I was six centimeters dilated. I was panicking: how could I be having another baby, just six weeks after Penelope was born? What was I going to do with two infants? What about my maternity leave? This second baby wouldn't have as much time--and I worried it wouldn't even be old enough to go to daycare by the time I needed to go back to work! Plus, the expense of two children in daycare... I was frantic.
And there was a question of paternity. How could I be pregnant when Lee and I both knew we hadn't had sex since our first baby was born? I certainly hadn't had sex with anyone else, but how could I convince him of that when the evidence was clear? I told him I'd heard that there had been women, in very rare instances, who became pregnant with a second child in a second amniotic sac after they were already pregnant with a first. Maybe I gave birth to Penelope while I was already pregnant with #2.
He wasn't convinced. As I suggested we work on picking out a name, he said, very calmly, "I'm sure we'll have no trouble picking out a name, but I'm not sure how I feel about raising my wife's child who couldn't possibly be mine."
I said, "It couldn't possibly be anyone else's! I've never had sex with anyone else!" But even as I said the words, in my dream, I remembered that in the past six weeks I had had a drunken, one-night half-sex encounter--with my cousin!
Then the guilt really set in. I tried twice to call Blair to ask her what she thought the odds were that this was Lee's child, but she was never home. I met with two of my co-workers to ask what I should do about having two infants, and childcare, and they said I had no choice but to lie about the baby's birth date. Say the two babies were twins. And in the meantime, Lee was looking for advice of his own; I overheard him asking somebody what the chances were that the second baby was his.
I generally spent the rest of the dream feeling horrifically guilty, and it took me a few minutes after waking up with the baby--the real one--to realize that I didn't need to, that none of it was true. I hate dreams like that.
So, what does this dream tell me? One, it says that having another baby would be a complete disaster right now. And two, even unprotected half-sex can generate babies, even within six weeks of giving birth. The very strong implication seems to be, "Don't let this happen."