Ready for Baby?!?

It’s no secret that I want to be a Mom. In fact my entire life I can’t think of ONE thing I wanted to be more than a Mom, not one. I married my high school sweet heart, I got my degree, we moved away, adopted a fur baby, bought a house, adopted another fur baby, I went back to school, quit school because it was making us broke and went back to work full time. And you know what? In the middle of all that, what my heart wanted never changed. My heart still aches every time yet another friend announces they’re expecting, my news feed and grocery store visits are filled with Mommies to Be and infants galore (thank you, multi-branch military town!) and here I sit with those extra bedrooms that have yet to be filled with toys and laughter, my ovaries kick it into high gear when I see or smell a baby…you may laugh, but it’s a thing I promise.

We’ve been saying, oh when XYZ happens then we can start a family. For a long time it was when we had a place of our own, well when I finish school, well when my husband has a steady income, well we don’t have insurance and having babies is expensive, well when I have a career that I’ve settled into and can bring home so I don’t have to miss so much of our kids’ lives, when I can find someone I trust to keep the kids, when pigs fly, when the moon falls out of the sky, when we can take a trip to the moon, when we can teleport to California rather than fly…okay well maybe not that extreme, but you get the picture. I was depressed, and frustrated and it showed in our marriage and the way we handled things.

Some of those things were logical, some of them made sense at the time and some of them seem completely irrational to me now.

Why?

Well because to be honest, those were great milestones and goals to have but we didn’t have a real plan to reach them, any of them. As much as I pride myself on being a planner, we in no way made a plan to achieve those goals….so really we in no way were truly working to create the life for the family we wanted.

What’s different today?

Today, we not only KNOW what we want (in very fine detail, might I add) we also have a PLAN of action and a TIMELINE in which we want to complete it all. The trials of being beyond paycheck to paycheck, of being sick all the time, of the heartbreaking news we didn’t want to hear, and of sticking it out through all the pain has us coming out on the other side with determination to change our fate and the kind of marriage you see in short bursts with an overlay of music on movie screens. I’d like to think that the hard times made me better, made us better, and has made us more appreciative of all that we have and all that we receive.

It has us making lists, setting goals and putting our plan into action.

So rather than a “someday, maybe, when” mentality we have a 2 year baby plan (that we’re both privy to) that allows us to enjoy our time together, finish our home renovations piece by piece and build the life that works best for us. To the best of our abilities, we’re planning for baby….with a Total Money Makeover, a renovation checklist and a “Before Baby” bucket list.

So what should we add to our list? What things do you wish you had done before you had kids? Or at least something you miss the most so we know to savor it while we can?

We’ve been quiet about our pain for too long, and I for one am tired of suffering in silence.

So it’s time I started asking questions, talking to more than just my journal and making a little noise, after all that’s what the end game is anyways right? A noisy house full of love, laughter and tears.