Happiness….

I often wonder if going through our infertility journey has given us more of a propensity toward happiness than if we didn’t go through this journey.  Maybe it is that I am getting older and more mature or maybe it has been all what I learned over the past few years.  I am not really sure but I am definitely consistently more happier now than when I was younger. 

I used to be the person that would think ‘when I get the perfect job, I will be happy’, ‘when I lose weight, I will be happy’, ‘when I find the perfect man, I will be happy’.  Turns out, I didn’t actually need to find all these things to make me happy, what I needed to do was change what I thought of as ‘happiness’.  I have a good job and the fact that I get to spend time with my bestie when there makes me happy.  I am married to a man who is ‘perfect for me’ and daily I take great pleasure in laughing, crying, comforting and being comforted with this man.  I have lost and gained weight many times and even at my lowest weight, it didn’t change my life so I was happy 24/7 – though I do want to lose weight now, it is to be the healthiest and happiest me that I can be.  

It doesn’t mean to say that there are not times when I am sad, overwhelmed, angry or over it but there is heaps of happiness.  Of course, we are the lucky ones who have been successful in our quest to be parents and both JourneyMan and I are looking forward to a time when we can get down to the business of being the best parents of all time to the best kids in the world – without worrying about hormones and needles and cycles and all of the other many, many complimentary therapies that go hand in hand with our cycles.  It also won’t mean that by being parents these two little boys that we will be happy 24/7 – parenting is hard – it is tiring and testing but at the end of the day, it makes me very happy indeed.

Every night before I go to bed, I go into JBB’s room and tuck him into his doona and give him a kiss.  It is such a small thing but in that moment, every single night, I acknowledge how happy I am to be his mum.  It is my little prayer of gratitude that this little miracle was visited on us.  We are so lucky and we are about to be doubly blessed with another miracle in our lives.  Yes, it is a lot easier to be happier these days.

I wonder if I got pregnant really easily if I would take these beautiful miracles for granted.  I would hope not but I just don’t know – I really have changed over these past 6 years.  It’s funny.  When JBB was first born, my Dad always used to refer to him as our ‘little miracle’ and it kind of annoyed me – mainly I think because I felt it gave the impression that we didn’t really have any part in the creation of this miracle.  I know, I know – I don’t know what the heck I was thinking.  Now, I openly acknowledge that JBB and soon, Boo2’s presence in our lives is absolutely miraculous and that I need to be grateful for this fact. 

I think that was the main thing that I learnt on my last trip to Thailand for the Boo2 cycle with my bestie.  Gratitude.  I had always tried to be grateful for everything that I have but I don’t feel like I really got it down deep in my heart until that trip.  I would often pray to various higher powers asking for what I want but it wasn’t until then that I stopped asking for what I wanted and started being grateful for what I already had.  Gratitude is a powerful thing, so powerful that I have come up with a new equation in my life Gratitude = Happiness.  Also, to find and enjoy happiness wherever you can get it.  For me, it’s as simple as that. 

I have started to build castles in the sky about our future, what will we do with ‘the boys’, where we will take them, what we will teach them, what kind of people that they will turn out to be.  I take care not to plan too much because that is a big lesson that I have learnt, too much planning = expectations = disappointment.  

What I dream the most for my boys is that they will be happy.  I don’t care if they are doctors or brick layers or the Prime Minister or an office worker.  I don’t care if they are gay or straight or whatever – all I want for them is that, like their Mum – who is the luckiest person for being their Mum – they find that they are mostly happy in their lives.