June 20th, 2008.

That's V-Day around here. Not Valentines, kids.

Although you won't hear this on Sesame Street, V is also for vasectomy.

Not mine, obviously. I may wear the pants around here, but I do not sport the twig and berries. After three 10 pound babies, one bout of pre-eclampsia, two bouts of ICP, a hemorrhage, a blood transfusion, and two cesareans, Geekster has understandably offered up his special parts to make sure we don't have any more babies. I've done my duty and it is now his turn to rise to the occasion (I could make a dirty joke here but I'm going to refrain because I'm a very mature thirty-one-year-old woman).

I know what you're thinking: Didn't you want a baby not so long ago, Maven? Weren't you considering it?

Yes, I was. However, I was also being selfish and irrational, which are personality traits I'm boss at.

I eventually put my thoughtful-rational cap on and spent an hour with my therapist. Then I decided that it might be best to stick with three. It just took a little reminding at how scary being pregnant can be in Mavenworld. We escaped with a live mom and three live children who are healthy - well, unless you count the two who are hearing impaired and the one who might be left-handed (isn't that a special need? I, like, might have to buy him special scissors and he could end up playing the guitar upside down!)

Also, with two gremlin hospitalizations inside of a year, I don't think my heart could handle more children. Surgeries, oxygen masks, metal pins in the leg making them all cyborg-y... Too much for me.

Maybe I'll exchange a fourth baby for a toned little hot body. By "toned" I mean a better breast-to-stomach ratio and by "little" I mean probably a 14 or a 12 if I'm eating a lot of lettuce and by "hot" I mean sweaty because I'll be working out a lot.

Toned. Little. Hot. Different.

Different is right. All I've known is having babies. Just as one is getting independent my body decides it wants to ovulate again and we make a new little crumb snatcher. For nearly my entire adult life I've been dealing in diapers. And I'm somewhat proud and somewhat exhausted in the realization that I've been pregnant and/or nursing since March of 2002. I'm a machine, people. A machine who needs to go eat a bean salad with her soon-to-be-snipped husband.

But you know what was the real clincher for me? He doesn't want more children and he's absolutely sure. He was done after the first one and yet he decided to take the long journey down infertility lane to make baby #2 because I wanted that baby oh so badly. We went through at least one miscarriage (one confirmed and several suspected) before Gutsy came along. Then Geekster was absolutely done after the second one... and yet went along with my idea to try for a third until I decided that I was done (and was already pregnant by that point with Spawnling. Hah!)

And you know what? He deserves to have a say as well. It's been all Maven all the time. Don't I owe him some choices? He's a great daddy and I love him and I kind of miss spending time with him and knowing him and having more than superficial two minute conversations with him all the while being interrupted a half-dozen times.

There's more to adult life than babies. Like hanging out with the love of my life and losing some weight and watching my boys grow up.

The light has come on.

I'm ready.

Bring on the snip.