The "What If" Post - A Post I Never Posted

This was in my drafts from January 6th, 2010.  For whatever reason, I didn't feel "ready" yet to post it and I guess I never got back around to it.  We were only about 10 months into TTC and a week past our miscarriage.  I think deep down, I already knew we were in for a ride.  My opinion on fostering has evolved a little bit now simply because of our mental/emotional state with wanting children.  It's still something I want to do someday, but I don't know that it's right for us right now.  Anyway, here are my thoughts from almost 2 years ago.

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So, everyone we know either has a kid, is having a kid or just had a kid. We're "behind" so to speak. And I think what's funny about this is that I was never "ready" to have kids before and now that I am, I feel like my time is running out and I'm way past due and the thought of raising a baby now is exhausting. A welcome exhaustion, but still...exhausting!

How can you go from being unready to past ready in the span of a year? ha! Like 30 is suddenly so far gone that my aged womb could never carry one child, much less several. ((Not that I'm asking for several here, for the record)) Anyway, the point is that all of a sudden, we want kids and it's not like you snap your fingers and say, "Ta da! I wanna baby!" and there it is.

You've spent years and years and hundreds or even thousands of dollars preventing what you surely thought was going to happen to you if your significant other so much as looked at you the wrong way, only to find out it's pretty dang hard to get yourself knocked up! It's amazing how all these "accidents" happen to people! We couldn't have been more wrong in our thoughts that getting pregnant was the easiest thing in the world to do! (Well, let me be clear here, some of us couldn't be more wrong, others are blessed with little ones they never asked for or planned for all because they skipped their pills for a month or took some antibiotics!)

Anywho, when it comes to planning a family, there are so many things to THINK about....to weigh out, to measure I suppose you could say. I don't think you can ever be "ready" for a baby but you can quantify a certain readiness that I would be ok with, I think. That's where we are now. And the trying part, while that's not difficult at all, is somewhat like bungee jumping. Not the act itself mind you, but the whole scenario seems to play out like a very exciting and scary outdoor adventure....like bungee jumping.

It's a free-fall into the unknown and then you're pulled back to reality only to fall right back into the unknown again. It's exhilarating and then scary and then exciting and then it's over and you just hang at the end of the rope until your feet touch the ground again. Then you go up and do it all over again.  Month after month.

We've not been "trying" to get pregnant for very long by most standards (10 months or so) but when you've put off trying for so long in order to get all the fun trips and so forth out of the way, it's frustrating to sit where I am almost a year later and still not be pregnant. It's kind of like ticking off one more year we don't have to build a family with. It makes me a little angry with myself for not getting started sooner. Then again, I don't look at the time we spent enjoying our relationship together as wasted so I won't go that far. But it's still a little frustrating.

By the same token, I hear these stories where people, close friends of ours, have tried for years...sometimes six, seven even ten years and still, no baby for them. It's their only wish in life for themselves. It breaks my heart for them because I can't imagine what they feel month after month. It scares me in a way because I think, "What if that happens to us?" or "What will we do if we keep trying for another year or two and still aren't where we wanted to be?" I know it's not always about what WE want or where WE think we should be in our life, but sometimes the controlling part of my persona rears it's ugly head. What can I say? I worry.

I don't feel that I should even begin to complain because God has already blessed us so much in our life together, it would seem so ungrateful of me to sulk and pout over something I cannot understand or change. It's just one of those situations where I'm helpless and wonder how people try to have a baby for that long without going insane.

I know this is a more personal post, but it was on my mind and so I decided to write about it. I know others are probably dealing with similar situations on a much grander scale, but this is my weight to carry and if it's heavy right now, I need to talk about it. So, I am.

When my husband and I first began talking about marriage and our life together, I told him I had always wanted to foster a child. Mainly because I wanted to take a few kids out of a system that seems so corrupt. I wanted to make a difference for just a few of those kids that can't do anything for themselves but deal with the hand they are dealt. The abuse so many of the children in foster care are subjected to just eats at me all the time. We decided that we'd wait until we had our biological children first.

I wonder if that's such a good idea now. Maybe we should just help others and let what God has planned for us fall into place.