How can I share my disappointment?

from Julie

What I struggle with when it comes to waiting is not the 2WW part, but the longer term.

When you make this decision to become a mother, it takes commitment on so many levels. The life you know before being a mother is very different from the one after becoming a mother. When going through one failed attempt after another, whether it's inseminations or adoptions, it is so difficult to gauge how to adjust to the disappointment.

And the people in your life -- friends and family -- don't fully understand this path you are on even when they are supportive of your decision.

For me, knowing if I should tell people I've had yet another IUI or not is tricky. I was elated after the first one and didn't hold back about telling people if they wanted to know my story. Now, it feels like it's just a burden to tell some of my friends because they don't know how to support me. And truthfully, I don't know the answer to that, either. I don't know if a dialogue about it helps or hurts when I could be in a state of bliss or a state of despair after that 2WW.

If only my crystal ball could tell me what the future has in store for me!

The Final Countdown, Medieval Style

from Cathi, the really-really-close-Choice Mom-in-the-making, who had her last day of work today and is awaiting induction in a week if Junior doesn't decide to appear of her own volition first

I woke up this morning, just like any other day. I struggled to awkwardly roll to one side and basically fall out of bed, just like any other day the past three months. And I fielded questions all day about Junior’s imminent arrival, just like I have for the past few weeks.

No, I haven’t gone into labor yet. I would be having a much more difficult time forming coherent sentences if that were the case. Yes, I’m excited, in much the same way as if you were told you were going to be given a $1 million dollar shopping spree and have an appendage cut off. No, I’m pretty sure that the next eight weeks off work will not be like a vacation, what with the copious bleeding and screeching baby and lack of sleep.

I knew I wasn’t going to deliver on my due date, so the letdown isn’t as bad as you might think. Everyone in my family goes late, and none of my recent bodily violations — aka doctor’s appointments — had given me any false hope about Junior being cooperative. I expected no less from a daughter of mine.

That being said, it doesn’t help with the impatience or the discomfort or the irritability. This is the real reason women were confined back in the day – so they wouldn’t annoy the hell out of everyone else. Or have access to labor-inducing devices. Which back then were herbs and, what? Donkey rides? Those lucky wenches, I’d love to be locked in a quiet dark room and fed weak broth and not be tormented by a telephone or laptop or well-meaning friends and family.

I am definitely becoming more open to other perspectives. I am learning to judge less. I have a new awareness and understanding of the lengths some women go to in their attempts to jump-start the labor process, and the mindset lurking behind the spicy foods and long walks. Suddenly all kinds of gels and tocins and inflatable catheters don’t seem like such bad ideas. A simple, scheduled c-section would be an afternoon picnic with watercress sandwiches. Do you think a donkey ride would help with the midnight back labor or the headaches or me just being a raving lunatic?

I know the end is near, in a good way, and likewise a whole new scary and wonderful beginning. It just can’t come fast enough when time is no longer measured in months or weeks or even days. Look, another minute just went by – can I have her now?

Enjoying the present

After a Choice Mom-in-the-making reported that she had finally conceived, she asked the community a series of questions about planning for the delivery. Christine chimed in with congratulations, and the following sage advice applicable to any woman who has been planning and waiting for the day she becomes Mom:

I smiled when I read your post, as it sounded like it could have been written by me four years ago!

I am also a planner, and when I discovered I finally had become pregnant the planning gene whirled into overdrive. The biggest obstacle (and one that delayed me from trying until I was 39) was childcare. As a firefighter, I work 24-hour shifts and I couldn't figure out how I was going to cover that when I returned to work. Now, realize I was lucky enough to be able to take 12 months off after the birth of my daughter, so she would be entering toddlerhood when I actually went back to work. I spent so much time during the pregancy worrying and trying to control these things. Early in my pregnancy I would be calling caregivers, trying to secure childcare 20 months down the road, and then wonder why they brushed me off!

Finally, about three months after my daughter's birth, I realized I was trying so hard to control the future I was missing the moment of the present. I made a conscious choice to let go of the worry and enjoy my daughter. Sure enough, about four months later a co-worker called me to tell me of a wonderful stay-at-home mom who expressed an interest in taking on my childcare challenge. She was the mother to four daughters, three of whom were almost grown and one who was seven at the time. It was the most perfect solution I could have ever hoped for, and one I would never have found on my own. What started as a childcare arrangement has grown into a family friendship, and I have watched my daughter benefit from both her immediate family and this wonderful extended family. My only sadness is that with school looming in the near future and the upcoming birth of #2, we are going to have to find another arrangement that is closer to our own home (I work in a different city than where I live).

I guess the moral of my situation is this: while it's great to plan, don't forget to take some time to be in the moment and enjoy the glory of this wonderful developing baby inside you. Things will get taken care of in the timeline they need to be, but you will never get this time back. You have plenty of time to address all of the questions and concerns you have, but you can only bask in the glow of the newly pregnant once.