Raw. Ugly. BAM. #InfertilityUncovered

April 27, 20193 Comments

It’s still raw. We are still infertile. Infertility hasn’t suddenly left us. It has left a horrible wound and it hasn’t healed. We have not resolved our infertility. We struggled to conceive Aviana for 2.5 yrs and now she is 2.5 yrs old. We loved, cried, hurt, struggled, laughed, loved some more and lost. We may not be on the ‘infertility roller coaster’ right now as we wait. We don’t really know what we are waiting for, but infertility has STOLEN the freedom from us to build our family in the way we want to.

It’s ugly. We know what that roller coaster is like. We are not naïve newbies to this gig, it’s not any ordinary theme park roller coaster. It’s the roller coaster of your nightmares. It’s fast, it’s slow, it turns you upside down, it spins you around until you scream to let you off, it drowns you, it makes you sick to your stomach, it takes you high, it takes you low and deep underground, it transports you to another world, you are trapped and don’t know if you will ever get off. But we made it off that ride. So why would we want to get back on it knowing what we know today?

It affects our decision making in all things family building. I mean, most couples face the challenging question “Should we grow our family?” fertile or not. But add on the ugly that is infertility and it seriously warps your perspective in answering that question.

For this National Infertility Awareness Week, I want you to know that it still hurts and it will keep hurting, so please don’t forget us. For me it hurts in a different way than before. It can be so easy to forget my infertility….then suddenly BAM, a pregnant woman complains about her pregnancy, or BAM you find yourself staring at cute tiny baby outfits wondering if you will ever get the chance to fill your basket, or BAM someone asks you when you will give your daughter a sibling. BAM, it just comes out of nowhere. And that’s one of the differences of infertility second time around. Sometimes, it just doesn’t phase me, but other times it really does and it surprises me every. single. time.

This is #InfertilityUncovered. This is a side to infertility that can easily forgotten. So if you are out there, with a child already but your family incomplete because of infertility, you are not alone and your feelings matter.

For more information about Resolve’s National Infertility Awareness Week see: www.infertilityawareness.org

Everything happens for a reason or does it?

October 10, 20172 Comments

When I hear the statement ‘everything happens for a reason’ my insides start to gurgle a little, my heart rate begins to rise, I feel a bit sick. I try not to let it spin my head around. Being able to truly believe that everything happens for a reason must be amazing. I used to believe it, I used to believe it because it would help me get through some of the crap in my life. I’d tell myself that this shit has happened to me because it’s going to make me a stronger person, a better person, a more empathetic person, more resilient. I can turn these crappy things that happened to me into life lessons. I would be that great oak tree that gets stronger after it gets struck by lightning.

But then life got really shit when it came to growing our family. Infertility and pregnancy loss. And I questioned it. I met some other incredible women who had been through some shittier shit. I questioned it. I always sought the good out of evil…I still do, but I can’t always see it right now. So I settle with, ‘Everything happens’. Period. Full stop. The end.

But what does a mantra like ‘Everything happens’ do to me? Does it make me bitter? Does it make me a fool for not seeing the good out of the bad?

I don’t talk about religion much here on this blog, but when people say ‘it’s god’s plan’, to me that’s even worse. When I was a kid and I was upset about something I used to close my eyes tight and through my tears ask god why? Why me? And god would reason with me. Actually, I was reasoning with myself, I just pretended it was god talking to me because somehow it made me feel a little better. But telling someone when they are going through struggles ‘it’s god’s plan’ is surely enough to make someone lose their faith, because it is so hard to understand why god would let a baby die…because… it’s his plan. It’s hard to understand why god didn’t bless a family with a baby of their own. It’s hard to understand why our loved ones are taken from us before their time. It’s hard to understand why god would let a terrorist kill people at an airport who are about to go on holiday with their children (innocent children) or who are separated from their loved ones because of work. It’s truly hard to understand what the greater good or plan is. If this was true, surely god is evil? I honestly don’t think that would be the case. For me, I think it is probably better to say that it is god’s plan to be with you, if you let him, when shit is thrown your way.

My current feelings are that time spent thinking about the ‘why’ is time spent wasted. Infertility has taught me how to be in the present. It is therapeutic, it’s survival. Although, it could be argued that by saying ‘everything happens for a reason’ and ‘it’s god’s plan’ would actually HELP with living in the present, but I feel it would be like living in the present with your head in the sad singing lalalalala!!

So for now I’ll try to ignore those few words ‘everything happens for a reason’ and live in the present otherwise it will eat away at me, little by little. I’m glad I’m mentally able to do that right now. I know it won’t always be like that.

Perhaps I’m just parking it for another time when I feel like thinking about the bigger why. Or. Perhaps infertility has actually taught me coping mechanisms for shit thrown my way.

Our one frozen embryo

October 1, 2016October 1, 20169 Comments

Earlier this week at dinner Chris and I were talking and the topic of ‘we haven’t talked about timings for #2 baby yet’ came up. I talked about the minimum suggested time between giving birth and getting pregnant again according to doctors is after 12 months. I am not sure I would want to get pregnant sooner than that anyway! And so I said to Chris,

“well we can get ready for a frozen embryo transfer with our one left in the freezer after a year”.

Chris then said, “But I would like to try and conceive naturally first before doing a transfer”.

I paused, looked at him for a moment and just burst into tears.

I couldn’t explain to him exactly why I was crying, but I had a gazillion emotions running through me at that moment. It was difficult to process, but here are some of the things running around in my head before I could even get a word out between the tears….

A reminder that we were not able to conceive naturally in the first place.
It’s so so so unfair.
But what about our embryo in the freezer? How can we leave that behind?
I would LOVE to conceive naturally and believe that our infertility can be resolved and that pregnancy ‘resets’ my hormones (somehow).
We haven’t got to take home #1 yet, I can’t imagine #2!
Aghhhhhh this stuff is just scary to think about right now.
HORMONES HORMONES RAGING HORMONES can’t stop crying, why can i not stop crying???!!!

So Chris consoled me and asked me to talk to him. Once I gave my nose a good old blow, I started thinking all these things out loud. We had a long talk about it all, our thoughts, opinions and differences. But for me the most important thing I wanted to explore was the fact that we have one embryo in the freezer still. I was unsure what I felt about that, and how we should be involving that into our decision making. It lead to some general questions about the existence of life and ethics. Our journey to conceive and the stages we have faced along the way. We talked about attachment to our embryos and changes over time.

Every month I receive a bill of $60 from my fertility clinic for embryo storage costs. A monthly reminder of what we are lucky to have. This little embryo was frozen from our first IVF cycle and is the only embryo out of our three IVF cycles that made it to the freezer. So our frozen embryo is now over a year old already.

Each of the subsequent IVF cycles after our first I have often questioned the logic of pursing another round of IVF when we have one embryo ready to go. But it was all about an assessment of risk. Risk that we would prepare for a Frozen Embryo Transfer (FET) for our one and only embryo not to survive the thaw and have nothing. So the idea was to get at least another one to the freezer so we could de-risk the chances of preparing for a FET and not having anything to transfer. It was all about numbers. But the longer I think about it and further we got into IVF, our embryo is not just a number. It’s a life we created. Although many argue it’s not really a life as some people consider a life to be. It’s kind of mind boggling, and I wish I could articulate it in words.

So part of my response to Chris was my wrapped up with my convoluted feelings about our frozen embryo. Maybe it’s guilt or maybe I’m thinking why the hell are we paying $60 a month if we don’t plan on using it!

It’s complicated and we have lots of time to decide what to do if we decide to try for #2 baby. But I don’t ever forget about our frozen embryo, it’s existence and it’s strength to survive out of all our others 23 embryos (not including Rocky of course!). May be it’s a future brother or sister for Rocky. May be it will never survive the thaw. But it’s definitely not forgotten about.

Our two little 8 cell embryos – AKA HuckleBERRY and HuckleBERINA (because they look like raspberries)

THAT moment

July 22, 201620 Comments

The Pudding Club Diary @ 16w3d

Chris and I had THAT moment last night. THAT moment when you realise you have the summit in sight, when the pain, tears and anxiety were ALL worth it. And we haven’t even met our little one yet.

As I was getting undressed for bed I pointed out my ‘bump’ and it’s definition. Chris went to put his hands to it. I let him…which is not a usual occurrence because if you are a follower you will know my personal issues with my stomach and understand that I still struggle with this. But I also know I have to let Chris feel the little one too. The day before, I lay in bed before work just staring at my naked tummy for about 20 minutes watching little Rocky squirming around in there. I still haven’t really felt Rocky move, but I definitely have seen him/her moving in the past week or so. That evening as Chris reached out to my tummy – he exclaimed…”I can feel Rocky!!”. We looked at each other, and we were both teary eyed in that moment. It was a moving moment. Silently we knew what this meant. It was real. It wasn’t on some computer screen…it was physically real, in our hands. Our baby is alive and wriggling.

So amazing 🙂

PC Diary: A new home, a new start

July 22, 2016July 22, 201619 Comments

The Pudding Club Diary @ 16w0d

I can’t believe it has been two and a half weeks since my last diary entry. Life has been chaotic as I alluded to in my last PC entry! We bought our house….THREE AND A HALF TIMES over!!! What does that mean? It means that we closed/completed not just once, twice, but three times! We are THAT couple – the one where the realtor/settlement people say to other buyers – well, there was this one time when we did this process three times, so count yourself lucky! None of it was our fault, but mostly put down to an inept realtor on the seller’s side.

The house we had bought was known as a ‘short sale’…which makes things a little different to buying a house normally. A short sale is a house that if sold is unlikely to cover all the debts owed on that house because it is in negative equity, so we had to deal with the bank to negotiate everything. There is little room for negotiating and the house is typically sold ‘as is’. This house had been on the market for almost a year by the time we came to close. It hadn’t been lived in for at least 6 months. It needed some tender loving care to say the least. But that didn’t put us off putting an offer in, even after the inspection came back with a whole bunch of issues:

Active Termites (creepy!)
Leaky roof
Broken toilet that kept self flushing
Rusted up sinks, taps and plugs that all needed replacing
Broken garbage disposal
Broken garage door that wouldn’t open/close
The whole house needed repainting – inside and out – the tenants had not matched the colour of the paint well so it looked like grafitti everywhere!
Outdated kitchen and bathrooms
A garden that had not been cared for and had fallen into disrepair, definitely not housing association approved!
Ants, ants and more ants
A spider/caterpillar graveyard (makes my skin crawl thinking about all the dead bugs there were in this house!!!)

But we could see past the imperfections and loved everything about the house we had been looking for…

A single family home (i.e. a detached house) with garden surrounding the house, back garden south facing
Beautiful hardwood floors (OK they needed a bit of love)
Three additional bonus reception rooms including a sun room, breakfast-diner and ‘play room’
A fourth bedroom (nursery!)
A double garage
A fireplace
Gas stove
Windows and light everywhere
A double height foyer
A ‘nook’ area over looking the foyer
A community pool, tennis courts, playing field and playground opposite our house.
The smallest house in a quiet, lovely family friendly neighbourhood, not far from any kind of amenity you could want in one place, at the edge of the city to escape into the countryside.

You probably think I am bragging….well I am a little bit! We simply love it. We are two lucky ducks and count our blessings.

We booked a day off work to sign the papers and get the keys to our dream home. After we signed the mountain load of papers, we said goodbye to our realtor and thanked everyone we were given the keys to our new house! Off we went to our new house….it was exciting! Our first home together that was all ours (except the whole mortgage debt thing, but you know what I mean).

Whoop whoop! All grown up now with our very own house!

We got to work right away in making all the home improvements we needed to complete before moving in. The next day we got a phone call from our realtor to say that we technically did not own the house yet and did not fully close because of an issue with the bank. Fortunately, our bank agreed to extend their offer because it was holiday weekend we had until after independence day to close again. Yup – we re-signed all those papers! In the meantime, we carried on fixing the house as we had booked all sorts of workers to get started on the house. We were a little bit unsure what would have happened if the house burned down or was struck by lightening because we didn’t own it, therefore we had no insurance. But, the settlement company or realtor didn’t seem to think it mattered much that we still were in the property.

We laughed and joked about re-signing, oh how we laughed! Afterwards, we celebrated again. Yey!!!! we own the house! Well so we thought….the next day Chris got the phone call saying we STILL didn’t close because the seller’s realtor had sent the documents to the wrong address. Because he messed up he agreed to pay the fee to lock us in to our mortgage interest rate again – a cool $770 – out of his own commission. Which ended up SAVING us $22 a month for thirty years because after BREXIT the mortgage rates went down. So it wasn’t so bad in the end.

This time we just laughed like insane people, because that is all that we could do! We resigned the paper work for a third time almost a week later than the original date. No phone calls….yey! we owned the house! Ummmm well kind of, the next week, we had to go and sign another document because the city had decided to change it’s policy for having actual original copies of a certain piece of paper before we could get the application for the deeds. But anyway….1.5 weeks later, we officially closed and owned the house!

In the mean time, we fixed the majority of the problems (well Chris did the handy work) and we painted 2.5 rooms ourselves before realising it would take us a month to finish the rest of the house and decided to pay a painter to do the rooms we needed to be done before the cats moved in! We also did a lot of packing and unpacking every evening after work. Then there was the unruly garden we needed to address ASAP before getting complaints from the neighbourhood housing association!

We tried to paint as much as we could, but in the end needed the hand of a professional painter!!!

Let’s just say that I am glad we didn’t do this thing when I was in my first trimester! It was exhausting as it was, I would not have been much use several weeks ago. We did not stop for two weeks. We had planned to do all this over a month, but because our rented house is a beach neighbourhood and we were cutting our contract early, the management company wanted us out of our house ASAP so they could re-rent it before the end of the summer. Turned out it was pretty easy to rent out and after a few viewings it was gone.

Finally, we moved into our dream house last weekend!

we said bye bye to our old house by the beach….

…but hello to our new house closer to the countryside!!!

We still have a lot of work to do around the house, and a few empty rooms that need furnishing, but we will get there. My mum is visiting next week so we will get her busy with some decorating and gardening 🙂

The whole move has been pretty stressful for our cats Sushi & Diesel, we have been slowly packing/unpacking for almost 2 months now. Sushi has shown us her distain for this process by frequently puking up hairballs in places like our beds, shoes, front door etc. We know this is her thing that shows she is stressed.

Are you done with this packing thing yet?

Then when they arrived in the new house they hid for two days under the sofa in the corner and barely ate/drank a thing. It was worrisome. But they have now got used to their new environment.

Where are you taking me crazy lady human? Sushi started drooling and panting with fear moments after this photo 😦

It was almost three years ago that when we were looking at houses to rent we considered rooms for a nursery, and even a room for an au pair. But that room we thought would be full of baby stayed empty for our whole tenure. It was kind of sad saying good bye to that empty room , with memories of the number of times I thought that this time would be the time we would have to re-arrange the furniture to fit a nursery in, that never came to fruition…

….but I am excited now to know that whatever happens, the room we have designated in our new house as a nursery WILL be a nursery.

A new home, a new start on a new journey.

So that is my excuse for being absent from my blog. I think it passes as being a valid one??!

Living in the moment

May 28, 201613 Comments

I should be living in the moment, but I am not. I think about the past, I think about the future. First let me say that I am very grateful that we have this chance, that I am finally pregnant. I know there are many women who want to be in my position. I have been where you are. But it is not easy, so bear with me whilst I explain.

The past should stay in the past, but I can’t help but question why we went through everything that we did to make our baby rocky (I wonder why anyone should have to go through that, and for some even more). We still don’t know the cause of our infertility, and this is difficult for me to deal with. Why did it work this time? Out of 25 embryos we made, 1 decided to implant itself in the correct place. 1 survived. 1 made it. But why didn’t the other 24 make it? Just because I am pregnant, doesn’t mean I have closure on my infertility, why my body doesn’t want to do what it is meant to do. I was on the edge of losing hope of any medical resolution. We treated the symptoms, but we didn’t treat the cause. We are still unexplained.

And all of this is in the past…right? But then there is the future on my mind. What if this baby dies inside me? What if this baby is still born? What if all this medical intervention has created a baby that cannot survive, that never had a chance or is severely damaged in some way? What if we go through all this and get to the end with nothing in our arms, nothing to put to bed and kiss every night, but left with a heart of love, broken into a million pieces.

The future is still an infertile one for me. I do not have confidence that we figured out how to resolve our infertility. I believe what has happened was a result of simply try, try again and we got lucky. Luck was on our side? This is really hard to deal with because, I may never be this lucky again.

It is hard at times to live in the present right now. I mostly do, but the past and the future sneak into my mind occasionally. When I catch myself doing this, I remember the things I have learned in yoga and meditation. I bring myself back to the present.

Avoiding the Mirror

January 21, 20168 Comments

I have been avoiding the mirror a lot lately. I look at my face in the mirror, but not my body. I can’t even look down, when I shave my legs I avoid looking at the area between my legs and boobs. It’s the part of my body that feels disgusting to me (apart from feet – feet are pretty disgusting to me too). I don’t necessarily mean that I am disgusted with the way my physical body looks, but I have some strange issues with my stomach in particular. Both in the physical and emotional sense. I am slim build, lucky to have a fast metabolism, I don’t have any eating disorders, I love food and we have a good relationship (except for the sugar, sugar and I are always going at it head to head!!). So this doesn’t have anything to do with me thinking I am fat.

I have Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and this means that I suffer from random stomach pains and I get terrible bouts of diarrhea. Certain food and stress triggers my IBS. My relationship with my stomach has never really been a good one.

The worst issue I have are things touching my stomach – whether that is me, my clothes, the cats or even Chris. There are times in the day where I cannot bear for things to touch my stomach – even my stomach touching the stomach (i.e. when bending over). I hate the way it feels. I have tried to explain it to Chris many times and even to myself, but I just can’t put words to how it makes me feel. Disgusted is probably not really the right word, but it’s pretty close to how I feel. But then there will be occasions when I am absolutely OK with my stomach being touched – I am unpredictable, there is no way of knowing if it is OK or not. It is worse after I have just eaten, but I can often mitigate this by having a hot water bottle on my stomach, this helps for some reason.

The weirdness of not touching my stomach also extends to not looking at my stomach. I don’t know why, but may be I have so much hate for the pain and grief it has caused me over the years.

Add in the bloatedness from the stimulation drugs from this IVF cycle and the problem perpetuates. I hate squeezing my tummy ready for the needles, I hate touching it and I hate looking at it.

What will I be like when I am pregnant? Well from the short period of time I have been pregnant I think this weirdness will still prevail, will it get worse? I hope not! For Chris’s sake at least because I know he will be wanting to feel close to the little one growing inside of me!

Mirror, mirror on the wall…..

I’m not going to leave you

January 11, 201626 Comments

Yes, it’s true, I have said to Chris on several occasions in the past that I worry that he might leave me if I can’t provide us with a baby. It’s quite a ridiculous thing to think about, I know. I haven’t felt like this though for a long time, but I have felt in the past. Perhaps when I was lot less insecure with myself and our relationship. I can genuinely say now that I am not worried that he would leave me because we can’t have a child.

After everything we have been through together, I doubt he wants to run off with someone else to give it a go 🙂 I am just kidding. But what I really mean, is that I have seen with my own eyes and felt in my own heart how far and how much Chris is willing to put into this baby to make it happen – it has strengthened our relationship in ways I can not explain how.

Naturally, Chris gets offended by the very thought that I would believe he might leave me if I couldn’t bear a child. He tell’s me:

“I’m not going to leave you, silly”

And I don’t blame him that he might be quietly offended. I think in some ways it is like I just questioned his love for me. I never meant for it to be interpreted like that, I just never understood why he would want to stay with me when he could find happiness elsewhere. I can see now how much it must have hurt for me to utter these words to him “I’m afraid you might leave me”.

I truly do not feel like that today. I have come a long way since I first worried about this. I know Chris will be there with me, no matter what. I am lucky to have discovered this now, I don’t need to worry. But the funny thing is Chris worries that I still worry. It’s worrying, all this unnecessary worrying.

Despite my own past insecurities, there is something that never goes away on this infertility journey; it’s those very tough days when your relationship with your partner is pushed to the extreme limits. Just when you thought it was safe, the cork pops. The feelings explode. You don’t know where they came from. Our resiliency is tested to the max. That happened this weekend.

I know we will bounce back stronger, with a better understanding of each other’s buttons and mind matter. It’s just hard to pull myself back up sometimes and Chris is no different. We normally use each other’s strength to help one or the other back up, but what happens when you both fall down? I don’t want to wait for help from someone else, we need some self rescue.

….do you have any ideas? How can we get ourselves out of this funk? How do you get yourselves out of the blues and into the sunshine, together again?

‘Tis the season…Pt 1.

December 13, 2015December 13, 20156 Comments

‘Tis the season to be jolly. True. But my feelings can’t help but be a bit up-and-down like a see-saw. So I decided to split my post into two. Depending on how you are feeling this season, you may only want to read one or the other. Maybe you feel a little bit like me, so read both!

Pt 1: ‘Tis the season to be jolly

Pt 2: ’tis the season to be not so jolly

Pt 1: ‘Tis the season to be jolly

I don’t know why I love the festive season. Maybe it’s the food, maybe it’s the weather, maybe it’s the gift giving/receiving, maybe it’s the family coming together or maybe it’s just that time when the year is coming to an end where you can draw a line under the past 12 months and feel excited to start afresh with the New Year. Or, in my case, perhaps it’s because it is also my Birthday ;-p

This is the first Christmas we will spend in Virginia. The first Christmas in the US we spent it in Vermont skiing, this is where we decided to make a go of becoming parents. The second Christmas we returned back to the UK and rented a cottage so both our families could stay with us for the holidays. This third Christmas is less exciting in comparison, we are staying put. But this is exciting to me because I can finally buy Chris a gift that is bigger than my suitcase!!!

This past week has been filled with festivities abound. Not just in the physical sense, but the emotional sense too. Here is a summary of the amazingness (or jolly, if you like) that I have experienced so far:

1. Home made mince pies. If you read one of my previous posts you will know that these are not easy to come by in the US. I made Nigella Lawson’s Domestic Goddess Cranberry studded mincemeat pies (recipe here).

Home made Cranberry Studded Mincemeat star topped pies

My goodness, that pastry was so flaky and the mincemeat so juicy I couldn’t believe that I actually made them. I shared them with some of my non-British colleagues at work who were intrigued as to what these ‘mincemeat pies’ were. They didn’t spit it out in front of my face so that had to be a good thing 🙂

2. Decorating my house with a CHRISTMAS TREE!!! The first time in the US! OK so we still didn’t buy a real christmas tree, we wanted to see how our terrorquisitive cat Diesel would deal with one. So we bought a small fake one. He eats anything that has a dangly bit or rubber on it. So far so good…everything remains in one piece and the tree still stands.

It’s starting to look a lot like Christmas!

I also treated myself to one of those German wooden spinning pinwheels. I have wanted one for aaaaages. Every time I go to Germany I go to buy one and realise I don’t have enough room in my bags. Plus they are quite expensive!

I don’t know why I love it so much!!!

When the lady at TJMaxx rung it up, she exclaimed -“$40 for that!!!!”, I pointed out that in Gemany these were usually over $100. Anyway, I love it.

3. My first Resolve support group meeting. Resolve is the US national infertility association and they provide various forms of support for people with infertility. I picked up a flyer from my clinic about this local Resolve monthly meeting about 8 months ago when we were going through our third IUI procedure. I left it in my ‘to do’ pile of paper work and each month thought about going and never got round to it. Finally I got round to it!!! I am so pleased I did. I met some lovely ladies who just get it. It was good to talk, and good to listen to their stories too. I will definitely be going again.

4. The #TTCMugExchange2015. I participated in the Mug Exchange that Chelsea from Starbucks, Peace and Pursuit of a Baby organised. This week I received my mug and a few extra lovely goodies!

I was spoilt with a box of goodies as well as a mug, cosy socks, an Irish Angel of Hope and a travel journal.

The mug I received was so beautiful. Quite honestly, I think it is the best one I have seen 🙂

My exchange partner is a bright and bubbly girl from Northern Ireland, she was originally told she would have to do IVF privately but just found out that the NHS will do IUI, so she is preparing for her first treatment!!! She doesn’t blog, but is on Instagram. As a result I’ve taken to trying out Instagram you can follow me @thegreatpuddingclubhunt if you have an account!

5. Just feeling the love around me. We have received lots of invites for Christmas day so we are not alone; we have received lots of cards sending us well wishes and Christmas pressies that now sit under our tree. And sometimes, it’s the little things that make a difference. At a work gathering our big boss spoke about a whole bunch of work things and then he turned to talking about the holidays. He pointed out that this is the time to look around at our neighbours and check they are doing OK. The holiday season can be difficult for some people, and if we notice someone looking sad, down or simply stressed, take a minute to stop and ask “Are you doing OK?” then listen.

Ignorance is Bliss

November 30, 2015November 30, 201510 Comments

Has anyone ever said something to you along the lines of: “If you knew how much responsibility was involved in parenting you wouldn’t ache so much for a baby?” or worse, “Here, take my children then see if you still want a baby so much.”

People who say this to you most likely care for your well-being. It’s kind of like your bestie asking you just before you walk down the aisle – “are you absolutely sure you want to do this??”.

My Bridesmaids asking me: “Now are you sure you want marry this man?!?”

But what these people do not realise is that their message also comes across that we are ignorant.

If anything, I am more certain of my future responsibilities because I have had much more time to think about them. I am lucky in the sense that I have the time to prepare. Some women may only have 9 months to prepare for their future responsibilities.

I understand that I will never fully appreciate the responsibilities involved in parenting until I become a parent myself. But please, let me dream about it for now.