So, are you done then?

I came across this Blog Blast while reading a post on Playgroups are no Place for Children and had to join in. The folks at The Parent Bloggers Network want to know what those annoying pregnancy and new mom related questions are that get up our noses. There are so many - I could be here all day listing them, and no doubt they will be the questions that got up everyone else's nose too! You'd think that once mothers have had a child that they would stop with the offending queries, but sadly I found the very people asking these stupid questions, are people who should know better - recently pregnant women and moms!

I have to narrow this down to the single most annoying question, so I'll skip past all the 'you're due when? Are you having twins? Where'd she get the red hair? Are you going to have an epidural? Are you going to have him circumcised? (how is this anyone's business???), and arrive at the one question that bothers me the most - and I use the present tense, because people still ask me this, all. the. time!

'So, are you done then?'

Are you done having kids? Wow, a boy and a girl - how great! Are you finished now that you've got one of each?

HUH?

Why do people do this? Why are people so concerned about the size of my family, about my reproductive choices? Even the nurse at my first OB appointment with my second pregnancy asked me was I going to have my tubes tied? Whaaaa?

Maybe I'm too reserved and old fashioned to think that this is nobody else's business? Really, it bugs the life out of me. Maybe it's because I'm Catholic and have grown up with the understanding that it's not really us that make that decision, and that we're not meant to take extreme measures to prevent another life coming into our family? Why do people, strangers a lot of the time, think that I'm going to discuss whether or not we have more kids with them, much less discuss any 'procedures' we may or may not have done to prevent more kids! I had barely considered whether we'd be likely to have more kids myself or even discussed it with my husband when my son was a newborn, the time when these questions increased in frequency. All I ever wanted to say was 'Buzz the heck off and mind your own business'.

Really - the range of people who have asked me this question go from friends, the grocery store check out lady, the man that sprays the house for bugs once a year, to the elderly neighbour who can barely speak English but managed in a few brief words accompanied by a lot of gesticulating towards her abdomen to ask if I'd had an operation to stop more babies?

ARGHHH!!!!

Or... maybe the reason this question bothers me so, so much is that I have yet to reconcile in myself that we are not likely to have any more kids? Maybe that question hits close to a raw nerve in me? One that knows I'm keen to have more than two children but that issues like my age, finances, patience (and lack thereof at times and feeling utterly incompetent as a mother to the two I have) and a reluctant husband mean that in all likelihood, we probably are done.

I want to scream at people to stop being nosy. To stop peering into what is a sensitive issue for me, to define for themselves where that line of interfering in other people's decisions is, and stay well on the other side of it! In reality, all I do is shrug and say 'Oh who knows?' 'Never say never', 'Maybe some day we'll have another', and all that other 'wishy-washy' stuff.

If you have questions that bothered you - join in the Blog Blast and tell us about it, and like me,

Don’t you wish you could have just handed them this?