Today is my birthday, I am 33. Sigh, I never thought I would be 33 and still no kids. I mean thankfully it's only partly due to the fact that my body isn't working and therefore cannot currently get pregnant. I have a lot of respect for women who have been trying for years with no success, I don't know how they stay sane. Mostly we just got a late start in life. I almost got engaged when I was 22, but that obviously didn't work out. But that's how I pictured my life going....get married and start having babies in my early 20s. But I didn't even meet my husband until I was 28, got married when we were 31 and waited six months to start TTC.
I have regrets, but really looking back there was nothing we could have done. I don't think getting engaged after 2.5 years is out of the norm....we had talked about getting married in 2009 but we ended up buying a house instead and frankly for a mortgage payment that is less than the rent we were paying, I cannot bring myself to regret that. Plus I love our house. I do sort of wish we could have started TTC right after we got married, Ryan even wanted to try just a few times and if it happaned it happened. My cycles were still regular then so part of me wants to kick myself for not trying, but....had I gotten pregnant in that time I would have been in the third tri and/or delivered before I finished grad school. That last four months was very stressful, there were a few days when I ended a study session by crying and heaving my books across the room. I don't think I could have handled that being sick/exhausted/just not feeling well or trying to care for a newborn. That sounds like absolute hell. So I need to just be content with the fact that these are the cards we were dealt and I made the best decisions I could. Clearly holding off on TTC till I was further along in school was the right decision and everything will work out. I don't know if I said this before in here, but my SIL posted a quote on her FB that said everything will be ok in the end, if it's not ok, it's not the end. I really like that saying.
But yeah, I still can't help the age thing freaking me out a little. By the time I have a kid, we're looking at probably 36 or 37 for number two. I know I know, women are having babies much later now and medical advancements make it possible to have them later in life. But for me, I am not very comfortable with that. I don't want to be going on 50 when my kid turns 10. Plus despite medical advances, there are still some very real, scary risks associated with advanced maternal age. But lately I have become more and more accepting of the possibility of only having one child. I've always wanted two, my brother and I are very close and I can't imagine not having him around. But....it's not like being an only child is the worst thing in the world. My brother and I had some pretty horrific fights as kids, sibling rivalry can be very unpleasant. Plus I am rather anxious of the idea of coming home to two screaming kids, the house is a mess...basically utter chaos. My best friend just had her second and while I know she loves her boys more than anything, I can see the pure exhaustion and stress on her face. Trying to keep up with a toddler and take care of a new baby is really zapping her, and she has relatively easy kids...I can't imagine trying to do it with more, um, difficult children.
I guess the thing I am most scared of if we only have one child is them being lonely. No sibling for them to play with outside of friends, no one to have their back and understand them like no one else, and something I think of a lot since my mom died, someone to be there with you when your parents are gone. The idea of losing my dad someday before he turns 101 scares the hell out of me, but I cannot even imagine going through that without my brother. But then again, I am basing this all off of my own sibling relationship....my brother is an amazing brother, from the day I was born he has always been protective of me. Even when he is a pain in the ass, he's always had my back and I couldn't have asked for a better brother. He said when I was a baby, even though he was only 4 he would come into my room at night and stare at me and wouldn't leave until he saw that I was breathing :) But not everyone has this kind of relationship with their siblings.....many people co-exist with their siblings at best, but at worst they hate them. So yeah, I guess just having one kid isn't the end of the world....because right now I would give anything just to have one, and after that whatever will be will be.
Plus it's not like our kid would have no one. While most are quite a bit older, he/she will have 6 cousins that live pretty close by and I am still holding out hope that my brother will get married again and have kids that could be very close in age, since my brother and I are so close, its possible that our kids could be just as close as siblings. And of course I am hoping me and my best friend's kids will be friends. Ok, enough birthday blues talk, I actually had a great birthday so I don't want to bum myself out.
Something I have been so confused about lately is one of my good friends, or someone who used to be a good friend. She and I met at work, at the time I smoked so we would go out twice a day for a smoke break at work, and she and I became very close. She was there to listen to all my husband rants and she knew all about our struggles getting pregnant....she was even one of my bridesmaids. When I got pregnant in December, I was hesitant to tell her because it was so early and I was cramping so bad, but if the worst happaned I would of course tell her, so I decided to bask in my good news for the short time I had it. When I told her she immediately started crying and said "I'm going to be an auntie"? The next day I lost it so I texted her with the news because I couldn't bare to go back to work and see her all happy and have to tell her in person.
She seemed genuinely sorry for me when she replied to my text. The next day I kind of laid low at work, didn't really talk to people too much so when she didn't call to go out for a smoke (I had quit when we started TTC but still went out with her to chat) I didn't bother calling her either. I guess I was kind of in a blur because one day I realized hey, it's been like over a week since she called to go smoke. It wasn't really terribly unusual to not go out one day, but I don't think we had ever skipped two days or more of going on break together. The last couple times she and I had gone out for break before my miscarriage one of her friends/co-workers from her department came with us. I think she had quit but had recently started back up again. She's nice and all, but it was kind of awkward that I couldn't talk to my friend about stuff we would normally talk about with this other lady there. So here I am, emotions still raw from the miscarriage, my friend had not called to go on break nor had she called/text/facebooked to see how I was doing past that intital response to the bad news, and I knew she was now going out on break with this other lady. I guess all of that combined I felt replaced.
I felt like she wasn't being concerned about me and she just replaced me with her other friend. Yes I could have called her to go on break, but since she was the only smoker now we kind of went when she wanted to and I was feeling a little angry and hurt over her lack of compassion I guess. I didn't expect her to fall all over herself with pity for me....I acknowledge that what I went through was horrible and I was and still am very sad about it, but I also don't think what I went through was as bad as say, a third trimester lost or God forbid even later. So it's not like I think the entire world had to stop to pity me. BUT, after having a miscarriage I would have thought that a friend would check in at least once to see how I am doing, just to say hi, thinking of ya.....or just about anything in general. So when she didn't I was very hurt.
I let things go for about 6 weeks, then finally decided well, maybe she is struggling with what to say. I know sometimes when something bad happens people don't know what to say or they are afraid of saying the wrong thing, so they say nothing at all and bury their head in the sand. So I decided to swallow my hurt feelings and text her (ok so I never said I am good with confrontation) and asked her if everything is ok, that I haven't seen her in forever. I thought maybe that would get the ball rolling and we could be friends again....she texted back, said everything was great, just a little busy. We text back and forth a few times and then that was it....it didn't really change anything. I rarely see her at work unless we mean to since we work in different departments/different floors. So for the last 4 months we've had very little interaction....I emailed her when a mutual friend had her baby, she sent me a valentines ecard, she came down to our floor for a potluck and yelled and waved from across the room....stuff like that. So we've had friendly interactions, but compared to our relationship prior to six months ago, it's very weird. It's like we're both walking on egg shells, we're not fighting, we're friendly, but we're not friends like we were.
I'm kind of ashamed to say that the other day I saw her pull into the parking lot just ahead of me and in order to not run into her walking into the building, I hid out in my car until I saw her walk in. How sad is that? The very next day I noticed she was behind me for the second half of my drive to work. I was like shit, we're gonna get there at the exact same time again, what am I going to do, hide out in my car again, but thankfully she stopped at a gas station on the way. Tonight she "liked" a bunch of my graduation pics on facebook, congratulated me and wished me a happy birthday. So I mean, clearly she's not mad at me, we didn't get in a fight, things are just soooo awkward.
I've thought many times about just calling her up and say hey, wanna go out for a break? But I don't know what to do, I'm still a little hurt and angry, but I don't know if I have a right to be. I kind of feel like it was a case of mis-communication/mis-understanding on both of our parts, neither one of us is right or wrong but I don't know how to fix it. I mean, looking back I clearly could have called her back when this all first started. Maybe she thought she was giving me space when I didn't want space.
The thing that I hate the most about this is if she were a guy I'd march right up to her and say what the fuck is your problem, and we'd hash it out right then and there. I don't know how to communicate with other women...I've always been really shitty at confronting women. A guy? No problem, this would have been squashed a week into it, but with a woman friend I tip toe around and hide from her in my car. It's ridiculous. I miss her, I get sad when I look at wedding pictures because I am not sure if we'll ever have that relationship back again and when and if I get pregnant again I need her there. I guess I feel like I need either all or nothing....I need to either avoid the entire thing, or I need to spill everything and tell her how hurt I felt and I felt as though she kind of abandon me when I needed her. But both options frighten me because avoiding it all means I lose my friend, but confronting her and telling her how I feel means I have to make myself vulnerable by admitting how hurt I was and that feels very uncomfortable too.
Gah, I feel like I can't adequately express how I am feeling about this. I don't know, maybe it's just the fact that I am not ready to deal with it, and in time I will be. Hopefully that's sooner rather than later.
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