On Baby Fever and Baby #2?

Way back in the day when I was pregnant with Charlie, I remember reading on some kind of motherhood/pregnancy-related message board a thread about this phantom feeling of leaving the house feeling you were forgetting someone. Or the feeling that someone was missing from your family. At the time, I thought nothing of it, because let's face it, I'm pretty sure the majority of people who post on message boards be cray. And then in the last week or so, suddenly, I got it.

I have a 7 month old baby, and somehow, my baby fever is off the charts. Maybe it's precisely because Charlie is the age that he is. I'm far enough out of the overwhelming eat-sleep-poop newborn phase, but not even close yet to the Terrible Twos/toddler tantrum phase. Charlie is at the super fun age where he's smiley, laughy, all-around fun, but not 100% mobile yet. And it's kind of the best. Which makes me want like 13 more clones of him because he is honestly the best baby in the world. Easy, sweet, cuddly. There's nothing not to love about him (not that I'm biased or anything).

So it could be all of those things. Or maybe this weird feeling I have is the little voice inside whispering, "Kaity, it's time to give Charlie a sibling." I always thought my kids would be more spaced out. My sister and I have 3.5 years between the two of us and we have been besties pretty much from Day One (or at least once I got over my no-longer-an-only-child grief). I just assumed this was the ideal age gap since it worked so well for us, except that my Mom didn't really plan it that way. And it wasn't until recently that she admitted, she actually had wanted us to be closer together in age. This kind of blew my mind and got me obsessively thinking about the ideal age gap. I began Googling and researching parenting sites like a mad woman looking for the one-size-fits-all answer to my question: What is the perfect age gap between siblings?

Perhaps not so surprisingly, the resounding answer was: there is none! Any age gap has its pros and cons and lately I have been toying with the idea of trying to give Charlie a sibling sooner rather than later. I know that nothing in life is a guarantee, and if we were only able to have Charlie, I would still be blessed beyond measure. But there is this odd part of me that feels like our family is not yet complete. It's almost spooky!

So yeah, that's where my head has been lately. You're welcome for that stream of consciousness.

And for my dear, dear friends and family, you can calm down. It is physically impossible for me to be pregnant right now. So long as I keep breastfeeding Charlie, there will be no more Stuckert babies any time soon.

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So what has your experience been? Do you like the age gap in your family?