Baby Shop: Closed for Business

I'm supposed to be creating baby shower invitations tonight but every time I sit down at the computer and start to think of cutesy wording to introduce the proud momma-to-be, I gag. I can't believe how far removed I feel from baby showers and all that goes along with it. The adorable diaper towers, the "how big is her belly?" toilet paper game, the forced "ohhs and ahhs" that must accompany each tiny outfit as its passed around the group. Seriously, gag me.

Right after the birth of my second, I was so positive I was over it, I closed up my own personal baby-making shop and burned it to the ground so it would never see the light of day. I wanted to ensure that no small egg would dare ever even try to covertly sneak its way down my fallopian tube towards my fertile uterus in search of the forbidden fruit. Two human beings calling me Mother was enough. I couldn't bear the thought of gaining another fifty pounds again. (My god, I had already put on enough weight to create a whole other person between the two and my stretch marks can prove it!)

No way, no how. No thank you.

My girlfriend, Callie, had a baby some months ago. I've held the baby once or twice, just to see what it would feel like again. I wondered if it would conjure back warm memories of my own two daughters whom I had each breastfed for almost a year. Or perhaps I'd associate that delicious baby smell with the early months of bonding with my girls. But it didn't.

Actually it had quite the opposite effect of been there, done that. It reinforced the fact that I'm so happy I do not have little babies anymore. The other day, a woman ten years my senior told me she would happily adopt a baby to save him or her from the perils of a depraved life in some third-world country. I thought she was stark-raving mad. I can't imagine starting over. Yes, I'd love to save all the starving, homeless children of the world, but I'd rather send my check to "save the children." I couldn't imagine the dirty diapers, the spitting up, the lack of sleep, the sopping wet breast pads, the nipple cream, the butt cream, the nasty diaper pail, did I mention the sleepless nights?

Some women are actually surprised by my somewhat vehement shudder of horror I uncontrollably exude when asked that infamous question of whether I'm going to have more kids. Maybe there's a short circuit in my motherly wiring, but I like having one hand for each kid and not being out numbered. I like having a life again.

Having babies was a joyful period in my life that is thankfully now over. I shut the door on the "Mom is a human pacifier" chapter. I don't want to relieve it nearly as much as I enjoyed reliving the salad days at my 20 year high school reunion. Not to mention the permanent wounds left on the landscape of my body. It's not a pretty sight...I lost the battle and the war with stretch marks and deflated boobs that looked like cold chicken cutlets. Whenever I get out of the shower and dismally see this body reflecting back at me, I thank the marvels of modern medicine that enabled me to ensure any more damage of this kind can never be inflicted again.

Don't get me wrong. I love my kids and am thrilled to be a mom. I just don't miss the first nine months of being pregnant along with the first six months of the newborn stage. I know some are horrified when they hear my diatribe. But for how many other women do I speak their deep-seeded truth? It doesn't make us any less of a woman to concede that one or two, or even no children at all are quite enough for any one of us.

So stop looking at me like I have two heads.