Virus adds new spin to kid count

How do they do it? How do parents with multiple children survive when the primary caregiver falls ill -- like so ill that they can't swing their legs out of bed, they haven't the energy to pull the sticky piece of adhesive tape off a diaper, they can't open the refrigerator without feeling winded? I've had an especially bad ten days of battling what I now think was two separate viruses, and just as I was emerging from my sickie cocoon earlier this week, Ben came down with his own fever and sore throat.

I can't tell you the number of times I've thought about my post glorifying the Cheaper by the Dozen family's fight against whooping cough over the past week and half and wanted to de-post it stat (but, let's be honest, I was too exhausted and achy to figure out the technology of it, much less use my fingers to do anything besides take my temperature for the 14 millionth time or help roll my pregnant body over to sleeping position option #2 (the final option) on my other side).

Now, really, this isn't going to be a post of complaints. I'm better now and thankful for that. And I think my sickness has given my rosy colored glasses an even less flowery tint than before when it comes to my own family's potential kid count, which could certainly influence the direction of this blog. I don't know what I would have done if I'd had more than one child, a husband who couldn't take time off work, and a nanny who didn't come twice a week. I sound spoiled rotten just writing it. For a bad situation, I was in a good situation. I wonder if I'm really cut out for caring for a brood of kids. I'm having doubts, that's for sure.

What I really wanted to post about last week was not a daily dose of my health statistics. In the NYTimes magazine the week following Virginia Heffernan's media post on big family television programs, there was a front page feature article on how kid count (aka birthrate in this case) is falling in Europe -- and how this is something to be concerned about, perhaps not just across the pond, but on the homefront as well (despite the fact our healthy "replacement rate" for children in the US remains a steady 2.1).

There were many fascinating insights in the article, which was titled No Babies? Declining Population in Europe. The problem is, it's now been well over a week since I read and digested the article (and a rough week at that), so I'm no longer prepared to pull the related gems from the piece and discuss them here. My goal, however, is to reread the story this evening and pontificate on the journalistic findings in my post tomorrow (that is, if Ben decides he is going to nap again -- the other disturbing thing that happened this week is that my son went on a nap strike, leaving his mother little time to blog (horrors!), or to do much of anything, save reconsider what a reasonable kid count is for our little family).

More soon.