And then Santa comes down the chimney….Hang on.

DISCLAIMER: You probably shouldn’t let your kids read my posts anyway…but  you definitely shouldn’t let them read this one. I refuse to be the Grinch who stole Christmas.

Ok. So as I was wrapping Christmas presents for our little puff pastry I began to think about what Christmas would be like for her – not so much this year, but in a few years time. This year I’m well aware that the cheaply printed Christmas paper and excessive package protectors (aka bubble wrap) will be the highlight of her day. So I bought her some new womens Mavi jeans. Kidding! Anyway. I started writing on her little present tag and thought, “Maybe this one should be from Santa?”

Can I tell you the cyclonic short circuit this caused in my mind.

I thought, “Well, maybe it could be from Santa…but she doesn’t even know who Santa is (never mind the fact that she doesn’t know that she knows who we are)…and when am I going to tell her?...and WHAT am I going to tell her?”

Bam. There it was. I was conflicted about introducing my little chubby cheeks to the imaginary man with the big sack. When I re-read that sentence I can see why.

I immediately flashed back to my memories as a little kid and my parents telling me the infamous “Santa isn’t real”. I’m fairly sure I cried and I definitely chastised my parents for lying to me all those years. Poor Dad was out mowing the lawns while Mum broke the news to me only to come inside to cop the wrath of an eight year old who had her dreams destroyed.

I can so clearly remember at the time feeling terribly confused through my tiny tears – why would parents do this? Why would they make up such a delightful story that they know they will have to rip away from you right when you need it most? Wasn’t being at school and beginning the first real motions of routine and responsibility enough, without telling us that Santa never existed. And while we’re at it neither did the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny. WHAT???!!!! But what about the letter the Easter Bunny left saying he knew that we’d gone away for the weekend so he left the eggs for us? Dad wrote it?! Are you kidding me?! I told everyone in the street that I had a legit letter from the B-Man himself. More fool I.

Deep breath. The pain will go away one day.

Understandably after that little plunge back into childhood trauma I was even less sure about whether or not I should plant the seeds of this untruthful game. Some of you may ask – but don’t you believe in fairies? Why, yes, I do. I’m certain they flit about in the garden helping the flowers grow. So I’ll tell hubba bubba that, but I won’t then wait until she’s older and then tell her she can’t believe in them anymore.

But what if I didn’t want to tell her about old Mr Claus? Would she then become the mini Grinch running around daycare telling the mini elves that Santa isn’t real? I'm aware that there are many families who don't spin the Santa story, but they don't celebrate Christmas full stop. It's much easier for a little kid confronted with a non-believing munchkin from a Christmas free family to think "Well, you don't even have a Christmas...that's just code for Santa not wanting to give you presents. I see through your story."

I feel trapped. On the one hand if I don’t embark upon the Father Christmas fantasy I might up her chances of being involved in Childcare Fight Club; but if I do allow the charade am I supposed to tell her that an obese man that no-one really knows will wait until we’re all asleep and somehow break into our house, eat our food and if he’s feeling festive and we’ve behaved ourselves, he’ll leave us a present? It seems a little weird.

I’m fairly sure that bubbikin’s cousins will grow up listening out for the old “Ho, Ho Ho!” and we spend our Christmas days with them. Maybe we just have to raise her to be a little spy baby that lives a double life of Santa belief. She knows the truth, but she also knows your kids can’t handle the truth.

Whilst all this was nutcrackering around in my mind I still had a present unlabelled that needed a tag.

So I wrote on the label...“from Santa”. 

I like to keep my options open.

I figure this year she still doesn’t recognise the words ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’ – Santa aint gonna stick in there. 

End note:
I would really, really love to hear from anyone who has shared my traumatic dilemma and found a solution. I may have bought myself a year people…but time is ticking. 

Round 2?

James and I had an interesting conversation a few weeks ago. It began something like this:

James - "Let's have another baby"

Me - "Are you serious?"

James - "Yeah, I want her to have siblings so they can grow up together."

I was a bit shocked, a bit taken aback. But then I thought, well I guess it's a possibility.

You see I'm from a family of two. My brother is nine and a half years older than me - he a pleasant surprise and me a much more considered arrival further down the track. So I grew up with the belief that once you've had one bub you wait quite a long time before you get back on the baby bandwagon. James is pretty much the exact opposite. He was just shy of his 13-month birthday when his little bro came along.

This really got me thinking - what's the ‘right’ time for us to be trying to have another child?

If I were one of those ‘look at me and I fall pregnant’ girls then it would all just come down to the age gap we wanted our babes to have. But I’m not one of those girls. At least, I haven’t been up to this point. It took us over a year and a half of really ‘earnest’ trying, with a couple of miscarriages thrown in, before our little mini muffin started baking.

Some people will tell you that once you’ve had one your body knows how to do it, so it’ll be heaps easier next time round. Unfortunately it seems this little post pregnancy perk can be pretty easily cancelled out by the fact that LAB (life after birth) equals less sleep, less romantic getaways…and generally less activity that gets the baby there in the first place. Yeah, sex. I was just being coy.

I was talking with a friend of mine the other day speculating what it would be like if we did bring another tiny tot into the world and she gasped and replied, “You can’t. I know this woman who had her first two really close together and she reckons the eldest never quite got over it. Grew up too fast, you know?” Is that the case for all kids born close together, or just this poor little tacker? Then I remembered James and his bro. James swears that his brother is still his best mate to this day because they grew up so close in age. Seems to me that it’s just luck of the draw?

After my second miscarriage I was diagnosed with two autoimmune clotting disorders which makes me part of a cool club called the ‘high risk group’. My obstetrician joked at my 6-week check up, “Right, you’re good to get going again then. We’ll have a sibling for Sunday this time next year.” I laughed it off as a man ensuring the sustainability of his business but, on reflection, I’m just not sure now if there was something more to it? I suppose in a way, if you’re going to put your body through a high risk situation, you’re smarter doing it while you’re young and presumably at your healthiest?

So I thought about it. If I fell pregnant right this second, (which I couldn’t -‘cause James isn’t even in the room) but let’s just say IF I could…that would make me 32 when baby #2 rolls into town. And then I was reminded of that thing that haunts every woman wanting to have a child in her 30’s (or beyond) - The Biological Birthday Cake Police. If they count up the candles on your cake and you’ve got 35 or more, then you get a big asterisk put next to your name in their Biological Birthday Cake Police Notepad. Talk about gender-age racist. There’s nothing like the fear of the ‘you’re just too old I’m afraid’ speech to put the wind in your sails.

So do the sum of all those factors equal us trying to procreate again?

At the end of the day, I’m incredibly grateful that we have one gorgeous, perfect, amazing child. If that’s all we get, then fine. I’m well aware that only just over a year ago my acceptance was around the possibility of not having a child at all.

For the time being I’m just happy delighting in every moment our little bag of fairy floss smiles, burps or makes some kind of completely unintelligible sound.