But she was still hungry

While we were brushing his teeth last night, Charlie happened to catch sight of the cat's stuffed catnip worm, the one he's loved to play fetch with since his earliest kittenhood. Charlie pointed, and through a mouthful of grape-flavored foam, he exclaimed, "Cannapinna eatta fuht."

It took me a moment to figure out what he was saying, and then I got it.

The caterpillar eats fruit.

The very hungry caterpillar, to be precise, who in six days' time ate a great deal of fruit, indeed.

...

As we try for a second child, I feel more than a little greedy.  With all this staggering richness — and I do mean staggering, and lurching, and doing a hilarious flamenco of rage when he doesn't get his way — we dare to ask for more.  When I think of Charlie, I feel an awed humility: Aren't we lucky?  And isn't it grand?  We are, and it is, and that we'd seek to get lucky twice — well, after what it took to get here once, I know how much we're asking.

I've frequently seen infertile women discussing those who want another child.  They're either wistful or bitter, depending.  "I'd be happy," they say — and I said it, too — "with one."  And that's what does it: I am happy with one.  So happy that it's made me foolish, turned me greedy, and given me a nasty case of hubris.  (You just thought that was pink-eye.)

Several months ago, I wrote about the possibility of raising Charlie as an only child.  You all kindly shared your stories.  Kristin wrote something that's nagged at me ever since:

Shouldn't one miracle be enough? I am not at all religious, but I once asked a friend of mine who has one daughter whether she planned to have another child. She said, I feel like that would be saying to God, "This isn't enough." How could you ever look at your child and say that?

Shouldn't one miracle be enough?  Well, no!  If it's really that wondrous, that transformative, that miraculous — and Charlie is, just in what he means to me, not in how he came about — why should one be enough?  If it's that good, why on earth wouldn't we ask for more?  I don't look at Charlie and say I'm not satisfied.  That implies discontent.  No, I'm happy: I look at Charlie and say, "How could I not want another?"

I'm finding it different in every way to come at infertility treatment out of happiness.  So far, this isn't hard.  I'm not waiting to become a mother just once, worrying that it might never happen.  I haven't been blindsided by secondary infertility, shocked by my body's sudden failure after easily conceiving before.  If this doesn't work for us, and if we choose not to adopt, then the very worst thing that happens is that there's only Charlie.

And there's not much wrong with "only" when he picks up the cat's toy, flings it inexpertly down the stairs, and calls, "Mow!  Cat!"  Then turns to me smiling and says, "Cannapinna fall down."  He claps his hands.  "Hewway!"

...

On Saturday, our gluttonous protagonist, the caterpillar, ate through one piece of chocolate cake, one ice cream cone, one pickle, one slice of Swiss cheese, one slice of salami, one lollipop, one piece of cherry pie, one sausage, one cupcake, and one slice of watermelon.  That night, he had a stomach ache!

Coincidentally, yesterday I did the same, if by "one ice cream cone" you mean "half a pint of Ben and Jerry's Half-Baked" and by "one slice of watermelon" you mean "the entirety of a one-pound box of Cheez-Its."  I am happy to say I felt fine.

Today is cycle day 29, and I am feeling the most premenstrual I have in years.  I feel bloated, oily, and tense.  I feel like my uterine lining is going to shoot out of my body in a single gory clump any minute now.  Once that forceful ejection has begun, I'll have an ultrasound on cycle day 2; if all is well, I'll start gonadotropins on cycle day 3.  And we'll just see how my needle-punched stomach feels then.