Handful. Stopping At Two.
By Elizabeth Bilus
Beth is the mom of two boys, Sam and Robby.  She also writes the blog Total Mom Haircut at www.totalmomhaircut.com
 

There are two things that I have heard constantly since having my second child.

The first:

“Wow, looks like you have your hands full!” 

Everywhere I go someone says this to me.  Everywhere.  It began as soon as I was pregnant and started showing, only the verb tense was different.  

“Looks like you’re gonna have your hands full,” the woman across from me at the gas station would say, horrified, staring back and forth between my massive, protruding stomach and my two-year-old, Sam, peering out the window from the back seat of the car.  In response I would just smile, nod, and think, Mmmm, yes. Thank you for pointing that out so ominously.  I really appreciate that.  Thanks.

This mommy equivalent of a cat-call has infiltrated my daily life now that I am the mother of two.  A passerby exclaims it as I push Robby, the baby, in a stroller down the sidewalk with one hand and use the other to hold Sam’s arm in order to keep him out of the street.

“Heh!  You sure do have your hands full.”  

Yeah, thanks.  Very helpful.  Now can you move over a tad so that I can squeeze on by you with my huge stroller and multiple offspring? 

Or a neighbor stands there gaping as I am desperately trying to get the three of us up the stairs to our building while carrying Robby, who is screaming and hungry and while Sam is refusing to walk and insisting that I carry him as well.  

“Wow! Looks like you REALLY have your hands full!”  

Yes!  Yes, I do!  Now can you wipe that ridiculous smirk off your face and stop rubbernecking like my family climbing the stairs is some sort of fatal car crash that you’re passing by?  Did you just shake your head at the situation?  Did you just chuckle to yourself as you kept on walking?  Thanks.  I REALLY do appreciate that.  I sure do hope I made your day a little brighter, “Jackass.”  Oh, did I just say that last part out loud?

In reality I just grin and bear the constant commentary because yes, my hands are fairly full right now, so I suppose these people simply are making an observation . . . repeatedly.  If people want to look at me and think to themselves about how they wouldn’t want to be in my shoes, then they can go right ahead.  Glad to be of service. 

But the second thing that people say that I just cannot get used to is this one:

“So, are you done?” 

Whenever I get my haircut the stylist asks me if I plan to have any more kids.  Now granted, I don’t get in there for a cut very often, but she has asked me every single time.  I don’t know if it’s because she can’t remember that she has asked me this before or if she just wants to see if I’ll change my answer.  In fact, she started asking me before Robby was even born.  And she’s not the only one.  I hear it often from neighbors, check-out clerks, our mail carrier, and any person standing next to me in a line.  I’m waiting for the people two lines over to start calling out, “Hey, are you done having sex or what?”  They might as well.

To perfect strangers I just say I don’t know, or I laugh awkwardly.  The woman who cuts my hair gets a slightly longer but equally vague response.  I am sitting in her chair, and I am forced to converse with her for thirty minutes, after all.  So I always say something like, “Well, I don’t really know.  I figure at some point I’ll either feel like my family is complete, or I’ll feel like someone is missing, and then we’ll go from there.”

That was the first thing that came to mind when I was put under pressure, but I couldn’t imagine that it was the truth.  I never believed that at some magical moment I would just know that we were all here.

But then, the other day at the zoo, I felt it.  I was walking with the baby, and Sam and my husband were walking about twenty feet up ahead.  I was smiling down at Robby, nestled warm in the sling, and I looked up because Sam was calling back to tell me something about the giraffes – “Look!  Fwee of dem.  Fwee big Giyaffes!” – and suddenly, amazingly, we were complete.  We were our family, and we were at the zoo together on a cold Saturday afternoon, looking at the three giraffes.  It felt right, and I just knew. 

According to my husband, I also felt that we were “done” when Sam was a baby.  I don’t recall that exactly.  I don’t remember having a sense of ‘completeness’ when it came to our familial unit.  I just remember being exhausted and having no time or energy to even entertain the idea of more children, so at the time I swore I never would get pregnant again.  Perhaps I’m going through that again, but I don’t quite think so.  Perhaps I won’t know for a long time.  Perhaps I will know, and then I won’t know.  Or perhaps I’ll be quite certain, and then I’ll be wrong.

But if I were to go get myself a haircut right now (and believe me, I need one), and she asked me again, I’d probably say yes.

Yes, I think I am done.  My hands are full.