Do I Want Another Baby or Do I Just Want to Fix Mistakes I Made?

Should I gamble on birth as redemption?

I dreamt I was pregnant last night. The pregnancy dream happens these days, always bringing with it a heady mix of feelings. 

In my waking haze, with part of me still lingering in a dreamstate, I felt a fleeting sadness that my son wouldn’t be the youngest anymore. Then, fully present and awake, resignation fell over me. I wasn’t pregnant despite my deep desire to have another baby. 

“In this economy???” I can hear my husband saying.

My husband doesn’t want another child right now but I do. Or at least I think I do. I also suspect that I might be chasing some idealized vision put in my mind’s eye by The Mighty Algorithm: a euphoric, healing-orgasmic-cosmic-birth followed by a dreamy golden hour and an absolutely peaceful, nourishing and calm postpartum period. The mom lays around in bed for weeks with her newborn blissed out and unbothered while her other kids frolic in fields and her husband brings her bone broth and stews. 

I’ve had two children and have come nowhere close to this spiritual experience. Does it really exist outside of my Insta feed and do I need to bring another human being in this world to find out first hand? And if I do, will it heal the holes in my heart from my first postpartum?