Why do I want more kids?

Published on by Sophia LeeLeave a comment

Last night I had dinner with two church friends. We are part of the same discipleship group, and we really are a good match: We all are boy moms with a son under 2, we are all working moms, and though we are very different in personality, we share similar values and sensibilities.

One is currently about 34 weeks pregnant, the other is already trying for a second child, and me? David and I aren’t trying, because we can’t–at almost 16 months postpartum, I still haven’t gotten my period back, and there are zero signs of ovulation. When I told my church friends that I was starting to feel anxious, wondering if I am infertile, one friend asked me, “You want more kids?”

“I want two more,” I said definitively, surprising myself. Before I had mentioned having three kids, but that was more like a half-joke. This was the first time I had seriously declared out loud that I want to expand my family. How I’ve changed. What is happening to me?

This is a weird period. It’s that season when everyone in a similar life stage as you are already pregnant with their second, or trying, or determinedly not because they have decided they are good with just one. I see more people in the first group. Just like when I found out I was pregnant and I started seeing pregnant ladies everywhere, I am now seeing women pregnant with their second everywhere– on social media, at church, in friend groups, at grocery stores– and what I feel isn’t jealousy or envy, but rather, waves of longing that roil inside me, a discomforting sensation that strangely feels a lot like nausea.

I tried to explain to David why I feel this way, and I found I didn’t really have the words. The desire is almost primal, as instinctive as wanting water. It comes especially when I’m with Tov, watching him burst out of his baby stage into the toddler stage, like a little chick flapping out of its shell, ready to hop and chirp and skip the moment it’s out into the world. Tov graduated from crawling to walking so suddenly, lifting himself overnight from his knees and hands to stomping around the house, his little feet going boom boom boom and his little hands already almost reaching the kitchen countertop and his energy as loud and rambunctious as his cackles of laughter. Almost overnight, too, two more teeth popped beside his two lower teeth. And just as suddenly, he was saying his first real word: “This! (pointing at the remote control he spies on top of his book shelf) This! This!” When he scrambles away from my arms to grab some other random obsession he spies, I see the back of his head, full of tufty brown hair that sprouted in the last several months.

As I watch Tov grow into a full-fledged boy, no longer a baby, I feel that wave of nausea-like sensation. I miss him. I miss his two-teeth goofy baby grin. I miss his army crawl. I miss his softer, gentler newborn cry. I miss his bald head with the hilarious patch of hair on the front. I miss the person he was two minutes ago. I am constantly missing him, nostalgic for the present even before it slips into the past. No, don’t go yet, I want to say. I haven’t fully enjoyed all of you yet.

It’s strange. I miss the previous Tov, but I love the current Tov more. My love for him keeps growing, yet so does the nostalgia.

Motherhood has radically changed my perspective on children. Psalm 127 describes children as arrows in one’s quiver, a heritage from the Lord, a reward. I never really got what that meant, and it’s still a surprising metaphor to me, likening children to arrows of a warrior, but like the assurance a warrior feels in battle with a fully-loaded quiver, Tov brings me assurance. Motherhood has secured my feet as I walk my life. It has sunken them into the earth with the weight of parental responsibilities, but also toughened them, strengthened them against the thistles and creatures in my path. I am less flighty, less idealistic, less dreamy as I was in my youth, but also more content, more secure, more assured, not because I now have the identity of a mother, but because that’s what happens, I think, when you love and invest in a God-given life that requires sacrifice of sleep, time, self-interest, comfort, and convenience.

I tried to describe that to David during our walk, but very inadequately. “Would you be sad if we couldn’t have any more kids?” I asked.

David made his characteristic “let me rustle my brain for a few seconds to think” noises and then said glibly, “No.” He gestured at Tov, who was looking up at us with wide eyes from his wagon. “I mean, look at him. He’s perfect. I’m content if it’s just Tov.”

Yes, he’s perfect. So wouldn’t one or two more of this perfection be even more wonderful?

“I would like to have a second kid, but I can’t imagine having another kid, just like I couldn’t imagine having Tov before we had him,” David said. He was also getting anxious thinking about the added burdens and stresses of expanding our family. As of now, he was just grateful to have Tov, he said, mentioning friends we know who are struggling with infertility.

I am too. Grateful. Because before we had Tov, I found children annoying and inconvenient. Because after we had Tov, I found he can indeed be annoying and inconvenient, but even when he’s waking me up from a deep sleep, or disrupting my plans, the feeling of wellness and fullness when he reaches for me far supersedes those irritations. Because less than two years ago, I envisioned a future free of all this, planned for it, and then God surprised me with something I never asked for.

But am I content? Why this slow-burbling anxiety that I won’t be able to have another?

I don’t think it’s bad that I desire more children, when the Bible itself declares that “happy is a man whose quiver is full of [children].” As always, the human heart is complex, stitching complications into good and healthy fabric. The desire for more is natural, God-made, healthy, but I’m punching holes into that desire with fear and distrust that essentially questions the character of God: I’m grateful to God for giving me this unexpected gift, but I can’t help wondering…maybe God will intentionally withhold more such gifts to me because I hadn’t wanted them in the first place.

Because sometimes I see God as an exacting judge. “Well,” I imagine Him pronouncing, in his judicial robes, “I’ve given you this measure of happiness, so that you’ve learned your lesson for poo-pooing motherhood, but now I’m sentencing you to the same measure of sadness, so you once again learn your lesson for poo-pooing motherhood. That’s what you get for being selfish, but see, I’m being rather generous, since I could have never given you a child at all.”

Or I imagine him as an ambitious coach. “OK, Sophia,” I imagine him huffing, blowing his whistle, “You’ve run 200 laps. But here are 200 burpees you need to do, because it’s good for you, it’ll make you stronger to experience the pain of infertility, because then you can truly bless them all, the mothers and the childless! For the good of the Kingdom, go go go!”

What a twisted vision of God. All my life, God has shown me boundless grace and compassion and empathy, and has even given me a glimpse of how far and wide and deep his father’s heart is through my own mother’s heart, and yet, at only 16 months postpartum, before even the first real roadblock to fertility, I let the serpent plant a seed of doubt in my heart: Did God really…? Is God really….?

If God really is the all-compassionate, all-loving, all-knowing Father he’s revealed to me, can I not just rest in that? Rest not just in the hope that he will answer the desires of my heart, but rest also in the hope that even if my heart’s desires aren’t fulfilled, he will surprise me yet again with something just as unexpected, just as wonderful, something just as intricately and uniquely designed to pull me down to my knees in worship, exalting him for who he is?

In a way, David is right: We should be content. We should be grateful. But I noticed that I was already trying to precondition my heart to be “content” with Tov by listing all the benefits to having only one child: We can devote all our resources and time to Tov; we don’t have to look for a bigger house; I don’t have to worry about how having more kids will impact my career; my body won’t sag and stretch more from more childbearing (though I’m sure it will from aging). I was reciting this list to myself to in a way brainwash myself into “gratefulness” and “contentedness.” But that’s not genuine contentedness. That’s distracting myself from my discontentedness.

What does it look like to be truly content, even as I allow myself to desire and ask for more?

Keeping score

Published on by Sophia LeeLeave a comment

I am in Nairobi, Kenya, as I write this. It is the last day of my six days here, though if you add up the travel days, I would be away from home for a total of eight days.

It is hard to be away from Tov. I missed him from the moment I stepped into the Uber that took me to the LAX airport. But there are ways to mitigate that ache, thanks to technology. I can watch him sleep at real time through the baby camera; I can FaceTime him; I can rewatch old videos of him on my phone. What’s harder and unmitigable, is the burden these travels put on David and me. It puts a strain on our marriage.

There are a pair of traditional Korean wooden ducks in our home. On our wedding day, I carried these ducks instead of a bouquet of flowers, and when people asked me what they mean, I told them the ducks symbolize commitment, longevity, and loyalty in marriage. If the ducks are facing each other, that means all is well in our marriage. If the ducks are facing opposite away from one another, that means we’ve had a quarrel, and you better pray for us.

Currently, the ducks are neither facing each other nor away from one another. They’re both angled so that they’re wing-to-wing facing the same direction. I placed them that way, because I felt it captured where David and I are in our marriage in this season of our life: We are not at odds, but neither are we quite “together” the same way we used to be before we had a child. We rarely have time where it’s just him and me, with optimal energy and undivided attention to each other. We’ve only been on one date since Tov was born. Our daily evening walks are usually quite stressful when Tov is fussing. We don’t sit together at church anymore, because one of us has to hold Tov so he doesn’t disrupt the service. We are always tired, like an old, outdated iPhone that can never be fully charged. By the time I put Tov down to bed at night, David is zoning out, and I’m either zoning out myself or catching up on work that I’ve missed.

This is co-parenting. We share a son, and we share the responsibilities of keeping him alive and raising him well. All our attention and energy and priorities are directed at him, and less so at each other.

Yes, yes, I know going on regular dates is very important, blah blah. I know of couples with young babies who go on resort vacations and ski trips. Well, we are not that couple. We simply do not have the energy or interest to go on a “vacation” in which we pay thousands of dollars just to do the same thing we do at home, only with more stress. People have kindly offered to babysit Tov, but with his separation anxiety, I feel bad asking anyone to watch him when I know he’ll be screaming for hours, and it would grieve my heart to know that anyone would have to “tolerate” Tov.

The first year of parenting has been rough for David and me in terms of figuring out how to partner together so that the burden of parenthood doesn’t fall disproportionately on one person. That’s probably a modern dilemma, now that typically both wife and husband work. But even so, the vast majority of the time, the burden of parenthood does fall heavier on the woman, if only because of biology. That’s been piling up irritation and resentment inside me– not just towards David, but toward the entire male species. Subconsciously, I’ve been keeping score of all the times I’ve felt like I’ve been taken for granted, unappreciated, stretched, and neglected. And David feels the same when I’m gone on work trips for long stretches of time.

Which brings me here to Nairobi. I could feel David’s fatigue when his text messages to me became increasingly brief and curt. From his position, it probably felt like he was breaking his back solo-parenting while his wife is in some exotic place galavanting with the giraffes. Everything is off at home when I’m gone, and Tov feels it. He doesn’t sleep as well and he gets very needy. It makes parenting extra hard. From my position, I’m just doing my job. I’m not in Kenya to play. I think of David and Tov all the time and don’t even have much interest in going on a safari trip because they’re not here with me. Does he want me to quit my job? And why does it have to be me who sacrifices my career? Why do I have to feel like I have to “make up” to him when I return home, when I myself am tired and jet-lagged?

You see where my brain goes? And do you see where it begins?

I’ll speak for myself only: I keep score. There’s a tally in my brain– you did this much, I did this much. I did this much more, so you should be OK with doing at least this much. You do this much, I’ll repay with this much.

The greatest struggle in a marriage with a young child is this invisible tally. It makes parenthood almost transactional. We often bounce Tov back and forth like a basketball– here, your turn. OK, now it’s my turn. Here, you take him so I can do this, and later I’ll take him so you can do that.

It sounds pretty terrible to write it out like this. I am exposing the biggest issue in our family that we need to solve prayerfully, wisely, lovingly. There is no question both David and I love each other, and we love Tov with all our heart. We both want the best for Tov, and we want him to grow up in a thriving, healthy home. We do it well individually– but we’ve yet to figure out how to do it together as one family unit. We are the pair of ducks looking at the same direction, but not at each other. Our child is off to our side, not in between us.

This is something I’m praying about.

Tov is one

Published on by Sophia LeeLeave a comment

Tov is one. Well, he’s 13 months today. I’ve been wanting to write a post about his first birthday, but for all my good intentions of keeping this blog regularly updated, I’ve failed to do so because of time and energy and priorities…and also, how did time whoosh by so freaking fast?! How is my son already one? How is he no longer a baby, but almost a toddler?!

I often swipe through older pictures on my iPhone, and it’s so strange to look at pictures of when he was a newborn, a six-month-old, a nine-month-old, and not really recognize his face just several months ago. He was a pink tiny alien with scabby forehead and cheeks when he was a newborn, an apple-cheeked, double-chinned little nugget with bald spots when he was six months old, and even at nine months old, his face looked different– more baby, less little boy. And now he’s a 13-month-old busy body opening every cabinet, climbing into every box, banging and slamming spoons and kabochas, and chomping on everything he can find, including the wall.

He is still barely 20 pounds, but he is mini and mighty. His legs don’t have much meat on them, but those bones are thick and strong. He must do at least 300 squats a day, standing up to reach for me or bouncing his butt up and down to some beat only he can hear.

The weeks before and after his first birthday have been rough. He was non-stop sick, and more than two months since he first caught a viral infection, he was still runny-nosed and coughing. A week before his birthday, the poor boy had an eye infection and then a double-ear infection.

Fluids and gunk dribbled down his face constantly, and his face and body were breaking out into inexplicable rashes. He had no appetite and was eating more snot than food. He lost pounds that he didn’t even have. We were in and out of the clinic, checking his heart and lungs and temperature, and returning home with not much useful tips from the doctor other than to “watch him.”

Those days were brutal, but more so for me and David than Tov. Once his ear infection cleared up, the little boy was back to his happy, loud, busy self, exploring every corner and nub in the house until his energy levels dipped because he wasn’t eating enough. The sticky liquid dripping from his nose was more a nuisance than any serious ailment. But for his parents, every hacking cough shaking his little body pinched at our hearts: Oh, the poor, poor boy. The parents’ hearts are more fragile than the child’s body and spirit.

Tov also went through some weird sleep regression or separation anxiety phase around the same time. He started waking up around midnight every night as though he’s had a nightmare. His cries were different from his usual cries when he wakes up– this time, he was screaming as though terrified. He bolted up in his sleep sack, clutching the rails of his crib, sobbing and sobbing until I went in to calm him down. Some nights, all he needed was for me to stroke his head and lull him back to sleep. Other nights, he wouldn’t let me leave for hours. He would jolt up every few minutes to check if I’m still there, feeling around for me, and sobbing again if he couldn’t. Those nights, I had to sleep next to his crib with one hand through the rails.

I remember one particular night in which Tov woke up at midnight again and was in such a state of separation anxiety that he would not let go off my hand. I laid next to him in that awkward side-position with one hand in his death grip. It was pitch-dark in his room, but I could sense his presence, his warmth, his force of life– just a barely 17-pound baby, but man, how he marks his existence, how he’s shaken my world. Even in that moment, with my night disrupted and my body exhausted, his cries– which would have annoyed anyone else– softened my heart, like butter under the afternoon sun. What flowed out of me wasn’t irritation, but tenderness and deep, deep love.

I thought then about Diane Langberg’s book Redeeming Power: Understanding Abuse and Power in the Church. Langberg is a Christian psychologist and an early pioneer talking about trauma and abuse within the Christian world when such issues were either hush-hushed or considered secular, anti-biblical psychology. In that book, she defines what “power” is– how power can be a source of blessing when used the way God intended, how it is inherent to being human, and how every human being, as image-bearers of God, wields some kind of sacred power, however weak and vulnerable one may be. Power, when used right, can be beautiful and transformative.

Tov has power over me. When he cries in the middle of the night, when he coughs like a dying old granny, when his body breaks out into hives, all those things affect me and David as his parents. When he smiles and laughs, our hearts melt; we laugh and smile with him. When he’s sick and hurting, our hearts bleed; we drop everything and inconvenience ourselves to take him to the doctor.

“The power of the vulnerable infant to express her needs exposes the hearts of the more powerful adults,” Langberg wrote. “Over time, their habituated response to the infant shapes not only the personhood of the infant but the hearts of the adults. Our responses to the vulnerable expose who we are.”

I read this book way before I became a mother, but I highlighted that part in the book because the simple truth of this statement moved me. It reminded me of the nature of God’s relationship with us as His children. God is all-powerful, and He is the only one whose power is wholly good and just. And yet, we as mere human beings also have the power to touch God’s heart, to move Him, to grief Him, to gladden Him. That God will willingly and joyfully create such creatures who have the power to influence Him exposes who He is, and what divine power is.

For Tov’s dol (first birthday in Korean), I began preparing weeks ahead. I bought a 25-pound bag of flour and lots and lots of butter. I made multiple batches of three kinds of cookie dough and froze them. I ordered a dozen Amazon packages full of cake-making and party supplies that I’ll probably not use again. I looked up countless recipes looking for the best cake recipe, and tested them out so I can find the best lemon olive oil cake recipe. I watched dozens of YouTube videos on how to make a naked tiered cake.

It wasn’t just me. My parents spent thousands of dollars to fly out for his dol, and so did my father-in-law. My mother made a huge pot of japchae while my father tried in vain to put Tov down for a nap. My mother and I spent took much time trying to arrange flowers I had bought at Trader Joes that didn’t really work well together. The day off, David and my father-in-law hauled boxes and boxes of stuff to the park to set up for the party. David’s uncle and aunt and cousins all helped me assemble everything together while I barked orders and ran around like a stupid chicken all stressed and frazzled because Tov had been crying nonstop and everything was still in boxes when we had 15 minutes until the party starts.

To be honest, I did not have all that much fun. I wasn’t able to hang out with anyone very much because I had to hold Tov most of the time, which also meant I wasn’t able to eat much of the food I had prepared, either. I was cold and tired and over-touched and over-stimulated.

All this backbreaking work, for a one-year-old boy who couldn’t give a crap, who didn’t want to wear his traditional Korean hanbok, who cried and fussed because he missed his nap, and eventually passed out on David’s shoulder.

Oh, the things we suffer through for a child. Oh, the things a child suffers through for us adults.

But there was one redeeming thing to this whole affair: Except for Tov, we all willingly did it. People willingly sacrificed several hours of their Saturday afternoon to drive a far way down to us. Parents and grandparents willingly gave up time and money and energy to gift Tov a special celebration that he’ll not remember, but will hopefully bless him in immeasurable, invisible ways because it is a reflection of our love for him and each other.

Another redeeming factor: For his doljabi, Tov picked a globe! He shall be a globe-trotter! I was thrilled, though David was a bit sad he didn’t even give the baseball a glance. I cannot wait to take Tov around the world and let him see and experience the peoples and cultures I meet as a journalist.

Happy birthday, Tov. Even if you don’t remember the details of your dol, remember this: Even at that age, you had the power to bring together all these people to celebrate and bless you. That power is love. You still have it. You’ll always have it.