I'm MAD

All my life I have had an issue accepting that things I create are dynamic and amazing. The baby Shawn and I will make will be undeniably these things and many more. What's more, the presence of our child will be unrefutable, even to those who may disapprove.
The things I make I feel others accept with a note of "ohhh that's nice, let's put that on the fridge." I realize this has more to do with me than anyone else, but the thought of this projected onto our future baby has been slapped up into my face today. And I AM MAD ABOUT IT.
Sure, Omaha Fashion Week was a bust--this year. And the job was, too--for now. But these things will be around when I'm ready to blast faces off with fashion and art. And I'm not ready for that.
I am so ready for our baby however, that my insides ache.

I said I realized lots of things over the weekend yesterday, and one of them I realized Sunday morning before I was even awake, a full day before the doctor would even call: I was making busywork for myself by applying to OFW and that job position instead of going after the baby I really wanted. I was trying to distract myself from the pain of it not possibly working out, to fill up the space in time the future might not allow a baby to fill.

And then I decided even if I wasn't healthy enough quite yet, that we would still try before undergoing another surgery or treatment that might leave me infertile. I surrendered Sunday. Then Monday I was cleared as healthy anyway, which I think means it's time.
So today at work when I shared this with the person who used to be my supervisor, it shocked me to hear him say "Sometimes we just tell ourselves something to make it okay."

Yes, it is SO simple to decide to have a baby that when I don't get a job I want to just throw the towel in and strap on the mommy pants!
Yes, I have been going to Dr. HappyFunTime (AKA the gyno) for the last 8 months to get healthy just for fun!
Yes, I know I've been talking about finally deciding to have a baby for only 6 months, but now that any opportunity I tried for this month has turned me down, I will tell myself it's okay by getting knocked up!

So I'm mad.
Earth, prepare for one real-talking, take-no-shit, matter-of-fact Offbeat Mama.

You Can't Always Get What You Want...

I realized a great many things this weekend, and then this morning as I began to incorporate them into myself, I received a phone call from the Doctor. It has only been 3 days since my appointment. But, yes.

My yes has come.

Yes, I am healthy enough to have a baby now.

I have no more cysts, no more precancerous cells and no more CIN1. I can have a baby!

I had immense faith that I would heal, but I didn't know if it would be "on time..." On my time is what I should say. I hardly ever get what I want when I want it. I either require growth, time, or both when they are one and the same. As soon as I want something I start to work towards it only for me to be set back waiting, waiting, waiting. This time is different, at this stage anyway.

I was running out of my Pill and I had no prescription. The doctor had me on some different than my old kind to see if it would help the cyst shrink before surgery. Now they are gone, and I have gotten this call.

Meant to be? Maybe. Feels that way...

Is it bad that I'm now way more excited about the Offbeat Mama meetup that I can be one?

Is it bad I can't stop happycrying? If it is, I don't care. I can't help that one!

Word

KRAMER: Do you ever yearn?
GEORGE: Yearn? Do I yearn?
KRAMER: I yearn.
GEORGE: You yearn.
KRAMER: Oh, yes. Yes, I yearn. Often, I...I sit...and yearn. Have you yearned?
GEORGE: Well, not recently. I craved. I crave all the time, constant craving...but I haven't yearned.
KRAMER (in disgust): Look at you.

Future Baby Post at H. and S.

It's too soon for any kind of baby-related announcement BUT...

We're talking about it.
I kind of touched on the plans for it in my How-and-When post from a couple weeks ago but I just want to talk about it MOAAARRR! I'm getting baby-crazy and I'll be the first to admit that... however I am excited to go on vacation, paint the kitchen, pay off the debt and all the other things that will happen before trying for a baby.

When we're talking about the baby, Shawn and I have come up with some really snazzy ideas:

• Prepare freezer meals in the months before the baby is born so that we don't have to cook to eat a good nutritious meal while we are sleep-deprived and covered in dry spit-up.
• Make the smaller "office" room into the nursery... bye HiLLjO office... :o/
• Make a baby hammock like this one.
• Save up to buy things like this pack of cloth diapers so we don't have to buy them EVER again.
• Get a laundry tub-sink for the laundry room to soak cloth diapers after use.
• Use the aqua I was insanely in love with as a trim color for the main wall color in the baby room.

If you want to see my latest nursery brainstorm I posted it at H. and S. along with the other posts about our home and how we live, decorate and EAT! If you want to see my daily baby thoughts be sure to check out my BABY board on Pinterest!

How and When in the Now

I strive to live in the moment.

My partner is a great inspiration to me on this; he does a great job of it. Shawn rarely loses sight of what is True and he never takes the rising sun for granted. It's amazing and if it's corny, so be it but this is something I am trying to learn from him.

I am a planner.
I need to have all my bearings gathered with at least an outline of things to come. The reality of the plans can change and the outline never amended thereafter, but I have to start with an idea. Relating this to having babies, it seems to me that at least a little bit of preliminary planning is as somatic a response as involuntary as picking up something you dropped.

Maybe it's just my conditioned mind...

Does manifesting plans cause an inherent need for them? Does not creating any kind of plan and just "letting it all happen" make it easier to have a child? Are there certain things you should plan to a T, and then others to just let fall by the wayside?

Over the last 4 years Shawn and I have discussed babies like there was no question they'd be around in our futures. At first we used individualized phrases like "When I have a kid..." and then as time went by the conversations have woven in on themselves with the words "our babies." After our wedding some life situations like health issues and a death came up, our priorities shifted, and the planned window of time for having "our babies" moved up. Now we were thinking we would try to conceive in the late Fall of 2012. And now it has, at last, become a real fleshy possibility.

This shadow of possibility scares me like nothing before. It scares me so much that from time to time (until a few days after Christmas) I was doing polarized flip-flops on whether I wanted to have kids at all. Finally in the last few days of December I exploded. After putting my hyper pug in her crate before she broke something, every one of my thoughts and feelings about mommyhood from the last 6 months compounded and rose up in my throat. The tears burned so as to tell me that this baby thing was not for me. I couldn't even calm down Peach (pug), how could I ever squelch a whailing baby? I would epitomise inadequacy in the mothering world. I had fully decided for the last time that I did NOT want children and I had to tell Shawn when he got home.
I told him with finality that this is who I am, and if he wanted children I'm laying out the situation on the table. He was really upset. We cried. He asked why and I told him everything about how I'd been feeling and the things that had been running through my head. And then he did what he does best by reminding me of what is True: he is my partner. And we are going to make mistakes, everyone makes mistakes. Planning can make you feel better now but no amount of plans can predict every situation, and you're bound to screw up here and there. The best thing we can do is to live now; try to be the kind of people we want to be everyday; and to thus prepare OURSELVES for being the kind of parents we want our children to have. This diminished my fear.

And then he shared his thoughts on how we will conceive, "I just thought we'd just kind of be in the moment and decide right there if it's time to try, and continue accordingly..."

Sounds good, babe. Sounds really good.