Mother's Wisdom in The Day To Day Ramblings

I'm having a hard time with Prosebox. It's hard for me to come on here and see the pages and pages (and pages) of unread entries and then I learned recently that once you get to 10 pages, anything older than that just...falls away. Gone forever unless you go back individually through your bookmarks and read backwards. And I miss people being organized by name rather than by dates of entries because some people write every day and some write every three weeks and the less frequent writers get lost in the jumble of the more frequent ones. Or maybe I'm just looking for a scapegoat for why I'm not here very much. Could be either one.

I'm still over here struggling with how to live a life based around normal things, not just baby-related/infertility/TTC things, and not doing the best job. I am doing better than I was during most of the past year but I'm still not really centered & zen about everything all the time. I still obsess and overanalyze and am hyperaware of my body all the time. I'm still feeling stings of jealousy as people get pregnant around me and have their kids, sometimes even second kids all while I'm still...waiting. I'm over writing the same damn entries all the time so instead...I say nothing. Even I don't want to hear myself blathering and with a pretty stable, calm and steady life otherwise, there isn't much else to report.

I did have a bit of a breakdown with my mom last night and just let it all out. Every single ugly feeling and what a catharsis that was. She's my closest friend who is not currently also TTC or currently pregnant so I can be brutally honest with her about where my head is and not worry that I will offend her or push her away. Even she, however, has run out of ways to tell me to relax or calm down or 'let things happen as they will'. She pointblank told me last night that my anxiety is running my life and being told it so bluntly by her took me back a bit. She's right.

So we game planned some new ways of looking at things. While I have made significant progress with living in the now and appreciating the life I have in the present, I still get hung up planning out our possible life and our 'if we're pregnant this month' life and our 'if we're not pregnant, then next month life would be like this' sorta thing. She offered up perhaps it's time to start to think about what if I never get pregnant. Not that that's where I'm at medically but perhaps that would take some of the strain off of every single month feeling like a complete failure when I see a big fat negative on the pregnancy test or get my period. Instead of an 'all or nothing' approach where not being pregnant is another sign I'm broken, perhaps instead I envision a life where we're okay not having kids or we pursue other avenues and then, in the meantime, if I do get pregnant, what a happy surprise. Letting that pressure go of every month determining my worth as a woman be 100% tied to my ability to reproduce would do wonders for my psyche. So perhaps I will start to loosen the reigns on that mindset.

She also brought up how I already have one big stressor out of my life. She has commented more than once about how great Rob has been through all of this and she's absolutely right. He has never pressured me on it, never made me feel less than wonderful and beautiful and deserving of good things. He has not once made me feel bad or broken or like a failure, despite months of 'failed attempts', he has not ever made it seem like my fault. And speaking as someone with sister who was nearly pushed to the breaking point by a husband who all but said "Either we get pregnant or we get a divorce", I am completely and totally thankful for a husband who is nothing like that. I take that side of him for granted though and it was a welcome and happy reminder when my mom pointed out, yet again, what a keeper he is. And he is a keeper. My keeper. :)

Lastly, she reminded me of how healthy my body is otherwise. She commented on how much and how far I can run, how well I play volleyball, how smart I am and how my body does not struggle with chronic disease or chronic pain or really any chronic conditions at all. That I'm at my physical prime at 29 years old and that while these years of trying to get pregnant and struggling have been incredibly hard, for the first 28 years my body never failed me and for the next 60 it may very well not fail me again either. She said fertility is just one aspect of my body and that overall, big picture, all things considered I got a pretty good one. Again, what a precious reminder. I needed that. I needed those words and the love they were said with right then, in that moment, as I sobbed and threw a pity party and felt miserable.

So we hugged and I thanked her and I always follow up our chats like that with an email saying, again, how thankful I am she is my mama and that she is so wise and wonderful and caring. I have an incredibly thick skull and it is so hard for logic and reason to get through some days because I want so badly to simply be allowed to be miserable about something that justifiably sucks. But she listened to me, let me bellow and wail and sob, and then she simply stated three little facts and it was like the sun came out of the clouds.

Those mothers...they really do know best. :)