The case for two

Two is nice. I like two. I like the symmetry. (Have I said this before?) I like having one of each and having one each. I like having one for each arm, each knee, each breast (when pressed) and none over. I'm not sure I could fit more.

Two fit in the car. We can (just about) travel with two: I don't see us galivanting off to Ireland every Christmas and Europe every summer with three. The world is made for families of four.

But apart from that, it's a quality-of-care issue. I'm not sure I could provide the quality of care I want to give if we had another. It's not a case of love - I've read enough mommyblogs to know that your heart expands to love all the children you have, and that's just lovely, really, and I don't doubt it. But how could someone not be ignored, if there was yet another baby taking all my brain, my milk, my arms, my very shaky schedule?

And where would I go? At the moment I have just a tiny toehold on the rest of me, the part that will come back when the kids are in school, the part that will have to find a job, that goes out and parties, that seduces my husband in something more thrilling than just a clean pair of pyjamas and a go-along-with-it attitude. Another baby would send me spinning down into the chasm for two more years, and while in many ways I love the chasm - the crevasse of pregnancy, the valley of post-partum chaos, the windswept plains of extended nursing and broken nights - I like seeing the light at the end of the [um, where is this metaphor going?] - alluvial delta? river mouth? The choppy ocean of what-the-hell-do-I-do-now?