And baby makes four

You may have noticed my byline has changed slightly over the past few weeks to “…mother of three (soon to be four).” I threw that in there to see who was pay­ing atten­tion and many of you have com­mented on it. Here’s the scoop: we had a won­der­ful Christ­mas sur­prise in Decem­ber when my hus­band John and I found out we were expect­ing our fourth child. With an 18 year-old, a 14-year-old and an 8-year-old, we are def­i­nitely look­ing at start­ing over.

While it took a while for me to wrap my head around this sur­prise, I felt an over­whelm­ing sense of peace and bless­ing in the fact that we would be wel­com­ing a new mem­ber to our fam­ily. No mat­ter that at age 44, we will be 62 when this lit­tle one grad­u­ates from high school! It’s all good and will either keep us young or per­pet­u­ally tired for the next 20 years. I pre­fer to think this gift will keep us youth­ful and enjoy­ing the roller coaster ride of life for years to come. I told John to fas­ten his seat belt!

To answer all those ques­tions I’ve got­ten over the last few months in a nut­shell: Yes, we know what causes that (obvi­ously); yes, the kids are all from the same hus­band (you’d be sur­prised what peo­ple ask); no, I am not hav­ing twins (okay, I may look like I am, but remem­ber this is my fourth child—don’t com­pare my belly size to your younger cousin Sue who has youth­ful stom­ach mus­cles); and no we don’t know what we’re hav­ing. We are going with the whole sur­prise theme, since that has worked thus far.

A lot has changed since hav­ing our youngest 8 years ago and the choices of dia­pers, bot­tles, cloth­ing and var­i­ous sundry acces­sories is all a bit over­whelm­ing. There wasn’t much choice back in the ‘90s with my older kids. I am glad to have some more nat­ural and organic prod­ucts available—now to decide what is really nec­es­sary and what isn’t. As I finally make some deci­sions, I’ll share my find­ings with you and promise not to bore you with too many baby columns.

I am keep­ing a jour­nal and work­ing on a rather amus­ing mem­oir of hav­ing a baby over 40 with older kids — espe­cially record­ing the funny sit­u­a­tions and things peo­ple say. It keeps me laugh­ing and mar­veling. Just the other day, I stopped in Babies R Us to pick up some organic cot­ton crib sheets that were on sale and then headed over to Cord Cam­era to pick up my sons senior pic­tures. All in a day’s errands, but it sure felt strange! My girl­friend told me we weren’t sup­posed to replace our kids when they went off to col­lege. Really? I didn’t get the memo.

Tues­day Trip­pier lives in Delaware, is a writer and mother of three (soon to be four) with a spe­cial inter­est in green living.