I mentioned in my last post that I love the new Eric Church song "Springsteen". The truth is, the song makes me emotional though. I listen to the lyrics and think about when I was 17. I was so young and innocent and falling in love for the first time. I was imagining a real future, not just a "play house" kind of future, but a future where I was married, working, and having children. It's a simple dream really, the kind that you start having at that age when it becomes apparent that your lack of science skills means you probably won't become an astronaut like you thought dreamed you would in second grade. It seems like a real, attainable dream. Hmmm, maybe I should have tried for astronaut. Right now, that's seeming more attainable than having a baby. Anyway, at 17, my life was all ahead of me, and I had a tinge of excitement when I thought about it all. Now, I'm almost in my mid 30's and realize that was half my life ago. Whoa...
One of the things that has been the hardest for me about these miscarriages is that life isn't turning out how I thought it would when I had those visions half my life ago. I kind of thought it would go the way of my parents and that I would maybe get married, wait a year or two, then start a family, probably in my late 20's. That was sort of the timeline I had in my head that stuck with me for a long time. None of that really happened as planned though. I waited longer than I wanted to get married (we were together 4.5 years before we did), then we put off having kids because Greg got furloughed, then we spent the last year and then some TTC and miscarrying twice. In May, we'll have been married for 6 years. I thought for sure I would be DONE having kids at the age I am, or at least have one by now, when I imagined my future life 17. I'm kind of mourning the loss of what I thought my life would be like as much as anything else. Yes, I know I have many of the things I wanted in life, but this specific part of it- the children part, really isn't going how I planned at all.
I'm really having to try and let go of these expectations and dreams that I have had all my life about where I wanted to be and how I wanted things to be at this point in my life and that's hard. It bothers me every. single. day. Frankly, I'm kind of angry about it. I used to say I didn't really have regrets, but I regret that we waited, even if it was for good reason, and honestly, I sometimes resent my husband for making us wait and think we made a huge mistake. I realize I could have gotten pregnant easily and we would have had our own struggles to make that work at a time when we weren't ready financially and things weren't exactly where we wanted them to be with Greg's career. But the new reality I am facing where we might not be able to have a baby or that it could now take us years seems way scarier to me than what we might have gone through had we been able to have a baby when we didn't feel quite ready yet. Even if we'd struggled, at least we would have started the struggle when we were younger. I regret that we waited and now we're experiencing this difficulty when we are both getting older and feel "the clock" ticking.
When people ask me how I'm doing, I often say, "it is what it is" because it really is the truth. At this point, there's not Delorean I can climb into and go back to 2006 and tell my newly married self to hurry up and try to conceive a baby. We didn't do it and now we're having to make decisions based on now.
My friend Jen, who has known me since I was a year old, is visiting (from NH) right now. She's my friend I have deep conversations well into the night with, last night being no exception, since we were up til 1am talking about books, religion, family, and of course my struggles TTC. She talked about things being meant to be, and how someday, if'/when I can have a baby, it will be the child I'm supposed to have and can't imagine life without and maybe for some reason, the timing will end up being better than it would have been had we had one this year. I'm hopeful that that is the case. I just hope it's sooner than later. My heart aches, and I can't still shut the 17 year old voice inside me up that say I should have children by now.
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