“Why would you want to find out? It’s such a cool surprise,” one mom said.

“I highly recommend not finding out the gender,” another said as we stood around a table at a moms’ meeting, eating cookies and chatting.

“I found out with my first but I don’t think I want to with my next one.”

Then, out of nowhere, I burst “I found out with both mine, and I’ll find out next time, too. I can’t stand not knowing.” And I kept on eating my cookie.

My friends stopped. “’Next time’?”

“Yeah, you’re pretty bipolar about this whole third child thing,” another said.

“I meant, like, IF I have another,” I stumbled. Oops.

There’s no point in losing sleep over wondering about the wisdom of creating someone else, a whole new person to ruin my sleep cycle and throw tantrums in public and absolutely break my heart when she says (or he, I suppose) “Mama my favorite.” But, I do anyhow. Is anyone demanding an answer here? No. But I’m a planner. This is what I do.

And my friend’s not wrong – my reactions to a third child range from vomiting a little bit when the idea’s broached to spitting out “next time” like I’m talking about brushing my teeth. But it’s the full nights’ sleep that’s speaking now – not my brain.

Lucy’s sleeping 12 hours a night. That’s about four times longer than the last six months of her life, which means I am about four times happier than I was about four weeks ago. Can we do this? Oh yeah, with eight hours of sleep. You can pre-order babies that way, right?

Anyhow, depending on the day, too, Dave and I will trade our estimates or threats on a third child.

“If you do dishes, I’ll never bring up a third child again.” That works every time, especially when the baby on my hip is angrily hungry.

But then we’ll walk in the room and Abby’ll be playing quietly on the floor with Lucy, and I’ll stop and hide behind a corner so I don’t interrupt (which would send Abby flying to the door “HERE, Mama! You play with cow! You play with the giraffe! Mama! Make giraffe talk!”, and that whole game is so old I vow to melt the cow and giraffe before Lucy’s old enough to play with them). “Here, baby sister, you cute!” Abby said, and pet Lucy’s head like a dog’s.

“Dave, come on. Don’t you want to do that again? Look at that!” And he’ll nod and shrug like he’s already lost.

Then one of them will whine (the older) or spit up (the younger), and we’ll both shrug like it’s already settled: no. Well. It’s fun to talk about, anyhow, and I have that wild card whenever I don’t want to do dishes. So, there’s that.