The Chaos Factor

I woke up in pain on Thursday morning. My lower abdomen was aching, as if I were having contractions…as if I were in labor. I bolted up in bed. I’m having a baby! I screamed.

I reached down and patted my stomach. No baby. Just a big layer of fat.

Reality finally arrived. My girlfriend Renata was giving birth at this very moment. She was in labor and I was feeling her psychic pain. Around 8:19 am, the exact time of delivery, the pain stopped. I felt nothing.

That’s until I went to Mission Hospital the next day and held her little bundle of baby boy joy. I had forgotten how delicious newborns are. My womb began to throb. And throb and throb and throb.

I came home with a gleam in my eye. “He is the most beautiful baby boy I have ever seen,” I declared to my husband. I threw myself into his lap and laid a big smooch on his cheek.

“Oh no,” he replied, “There’s nothing more dangerous than a woman who has just held a newborn baby.”

Now what the heck is that supposed to mean? Was he insinuating that we, or let’s get more neurotic here, that I am not ready for a third child? I am sure the fact that I have gone on laundry strike, started buying corn dogs for dinner and enrolled our youngest in five days of pre-school have absolutely nothing to do with it.

Or maybe it has everything to do with it. Now I have started working, using a few brain cells and having a moment or two to myself. It is at this point mothers erase all memories of sleepless nights and trips to the ER and begin to obsess on the beauty of the newborn.

This was too big of a decision for my feeble mind. I decided an official poll was in order. First stop, Renata’s house. While holding beautiful instigator baby Nicholas, I asked her, “Do you think I should have a third child?”

She laughed-not a good sign. “I think it might send you to the funny farm.” While I wanted to protest, the words didn’t come. Having two girls 13 months apart had been a bit rough on the old psyche. I put her down as a ‘no.’

Lisa, already a mother of three girls, cracked open a bottle of chardonnay and poured us each a glass. After a few sips, she leaned forward and whispered to me, “Don’t do it.” Then quickly retracted her statement with feelings of guilt. “Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t change a thing. I love my kids.”

That was two ‘no’s. The future of Chris/tine Jr. was looking bleak. I gave Samantha a call. She recently had a hot summer’s night filled with passion that had lead to her pregnancy with baby #2. I was thinking she would be the one to give my poll a much-needed ‘yes.’

“I’m not the right person to ask,” she started, “I’m having a rough pregnancy.” That was probably because the morning after her night o’ passion, her home got hit by a big pile of landslide dirt. She obviously has more on her mind than whether her half-brained girlfriend should have another baby.

I called Annie, the truth slayer. All she said was, ‘Wow.’ I put her down as ‘maybe.’

3 ‘no’s and 1 ‘maybe.’ The poll was not turning out quite as I had expected. I decided to turn to another numerical source-my father, the mathematician. I asked him if there happened to be a formula that can determine if parents are ready for another child.

He told me about a colleague of his who had constructed a theory that attempted to quantify the chaos of kids. For every pair of children present in a household, there is a chaos factor of one. For example, I have two kids so I have one pair (kid A and kid B= AB) and a chaos factor of one. But if you have three kids, you have three possible pairs (AB, BC, & AC) that make for a chaos factor of three. If you have four kids, your chaos factor goes up to six.

I felt so darned proud of myself I could understand some math at 4:30 in the afternoon.

“So what do you think, Dad, can I handle a chaos factor of three?”

My Dad laughed. For some reason, everyone finds this subject hilarious.

“You are up to your eyeballs in chaos,” he replied, “But if you want to give me more grandchildren, I am thrilled to have them.”

I put down his final answer as a ‘yes.’


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