The greatest contraceptive (Or how to have it all - and children.)

Our two year old has breast radar. As soon as my husband’s hand comes anywhere near mine, or it gets exposed to even one millimetre of daylight, he’s there. Grinning. He feels an ownership, clearly, and my husband’s protestations that “He found them first” go way over his little curly blonde head.

Typically, it’s a late afternoon, and the kids are messing about in one or other of their rooms (or more commonly in our room, hence our bed gets very little mileage these days). We are in the sitting room, watching Discovery Channel on the couch or arguing half-heartedly about whose turn it is to make supper. We suddenly realise we are alone, and have no pressing chores or business. We cuddle. We cover ourselves with a handy blanket, in case of intrusion. All well and good. But the second the boob comes into play, there’s our little ray of sunshine, grinning away and saying happily “My mama, my mama.”

My husband retreats. But now it is war. We get supper ready for them and seat them nicely at the little table. We run for the bed. We get under the covers. We listen closely but hear only happy eating noises. We fumble under the blanket like a couple of teenagers, and then we hear, “sleep mama” and a small creature has crawled into bed with us, pulled the blanket up to his chin, closed his eyes and started fake snoring.

Round three, and we are in the kitchen now, doing the dishes. Ok fine, loading the dishwasher, but who’s counting. I lean over, which is like a red rag to a bull, and my husband is behind me, his arms around me, and we think cool, a quickie in the kitchen: yeah, this is what it’s supposed to be like. The stampede, “Ice cream Pwees mama. My ice cream.”

We dole out the ice cream and sit mutinously in the lounge with the kids, trying not to catch each other’s eye.

Ok, fine, the only solution, obviously: get them to sleep. We claim it is bedtime as early as possible, and thankfully neither of them has mastered telling the time yet. We separate the load, and I get the two-year-old. He plays games, closing his eyes and going motionless, then crying with misery if I so much as breathe in the wrong direction. My husband gets the six-year-old, reading endless stories in a multitude of voices and with gestures. We try not to think about sex.

Finally, they’re both asleep. We’re both knackered. We lie in bed, and snuggle, but we don’t really mean it. I doze off, then finally we’re getting into the swing of things, it looks like we’re onto a winner and then… “waaaaaaaaaah!”

This child clearly does not want siblings.