Why do you want this so bad anyway???

Current status

• Cycle Day: 33
• Fertility Treatments: None
• Pregnancy Tests: 2, both 👎🏼 
• Emotional Status: Ambivalence

Lately, I’ve been asking myself WHY a lot. Why do I want this so bad? Why is it not happening for me? Why can’t I seem to feel better about the waiting, and the trying!? Why why why!! That feeling of unknown helplessness is really hard to shake.

And I may have stumbled upon at least part of the answer the other day in the shower. While flushing away the day, and contemplating the meaning of it all…. the following thought popped into my brain. It went something like this:

“You’ve been telling yourself not to give up, and to see this through. At all costs…. but, why is it so important to have kids after all?” …. I paused for a moment…. and answered myself with the following:

I think of my childhood sometimes. My mom was a teen mom, before MTV  made it a reality show- it was our reality. She did the very best she could – and miraculously I grew up into a real live functioning adult woman. I love her so much, appreciate everything she did and sacrificed to keep me and to raise me. There was however, a lot that I missed out on as a kid and even then I was at least somewhat aware of it.  There was no father in the picture, so just on a very basic level there were things I yearned for that were just not within reach.

So, fast forward to today, I seem to have an invisible list in my head of all the things I ever wanted as a child and I’m in a position to give all of those things to my own children—now! I think there’s a part of me that feels like if I could do that, then any lingering feelings about my own childhood would be resolved.

Whoa??? Hmmmm….. could it be that simple??? Does everyone that decides to have kids already know and feel this way? I feel like I’m late to the party having just come to this realization… better late than never I suppose. 

Now, I’m aware that the concept is flawed…. I think everyone has bits of their childhood they wish they could change, erase, supplement or alter, but those are the things that makeus who we are! Accepting your own journey is important. For me, I need to accept that if we never have kids I’ve still managed to give my adult self a pretty awesome life !!

So, in the end this thought process did manage to ease the tension a bit on my own shoulders. I’m trying to give myself a break, and some room to just be. 

(And Mom, if you’re reading this… thank you for my childhood, no one’s is perfect, but I know how hard you worked to give me the one I had. Hopefully some day, we can spoil the hell out of your grandkids and make their lives way better than our own!)