1 Week to Go - The Baby Shower Aftermath….

Back in July, I wrote this post about a friend of mine who was pregnant with her first child at 42 (I said 43 at the time but she is 42) and because she seemed very unexcited about the baby and shut down any excitement that I wanted to give her, I was peeved and confused by the situation.  It was something that I thought she would be ecstatic about but she did not seem so.

Anyway, the baby shower was a couple of weeks ago and I had another good talk to her.  It turns out that at the time she was terribly worried about the baby having down’s syndrome or having something wrong because she is an older mother.  She also just was not enjoying being pregnant, she just wanted to have the baby.  She made the most moving speech about how her life had turned around in the last 12 months, she had met her soul mate, she got pregnant, she got engaged, they moved in together – all in all a pretty busy 12 months.

I feel very bad now that I was slightly angry with her (even though she didn’t know it) because I made an assumption that her lack of excitement was because she wasn’t grateful enough and not because she was worried about the baby.  I mean seriously, I definitely understand the worry of pregnancy, I felt like I didn’t breathe out until I heard JBB cry.  It goes to show you that you really shouldn’t make assumptions about what’s going on with people – I was very wrong and of course, my judgements were about me and not my lovely friend.  

The baby shower made me realise another thing as well.  I like my friends and they really don’t deserve me constantly withdrawing from them all when cycles go bad, or actually even when I am cycling.  They are all very understanding and supportive, I believe I need to give them more credit.  Once this cycle is over, I have vowed to myself that whether it is positive or negative, I will have them all over for lunch or something – it will be fun!!  I will not necessarily tell them what is happening with the cycles (because I find that very hard) but there are plenty of other things to discuss!!  I had such a great time at the baby shower chatting and catching up with everyone, it was so nice – I really miss them.

In other worse news, this cold/flu/pharyngitis/pleurisy type sickness is still kicking my arse, I woke up at 2:30am this morning and didn’t get to sleep until after 4:30am (we get up at 6am) – my muscles were so sore I had to have an Epsom salt bath just to get back to sleep.  I keep thinking I am recovering and then it comes back.  Thankfully I am not too worried about the party now, I am just going to do what I can do and get as much rest as I can before I go.  I know it’s only a week but I feel if I can get some good rest in there before I go, I will be tip top by the time of the transfer – lucky it is 5 days after I get to Thailand – yayers!

The Baby Shower

Well the much dreaded and panicked over baby shower was yesterday and it was a really, really wonderful day. I am SOOOOO glad that I had it and didn't let my neurosis rule my life. My family and friends were so wonderful and generous, I am completely touched.

The lead up week to the shower was pretty full on. We moved back home to our house on Tuesday night and we still have not completely unpacked the house. I have let go of my need to have absolutely everything perfect by the time that I finish work - basically because it is impossible but also because I would be pushed to the limit to do so. The people at work finally realised that I am finishing next Friday and they all went into a panic and have been asking me to help out with heaps of extra stuff. I have realised that my last week is going to be a hectic one and then hopefully I will have 5 weeks of relaxing and pottering around the house getting ready for the arrival of Riley.

Friday was a pretty busy day, I was up early to have my 32 week scan and happily, JBB is going along fantastically. He is growing extremely well - indeed he already weighs 4lbs, 5 oz's - whoo hoo! Everything was great so I am absolutely over the moon! The rest of Friday I spent getting my hair cut and coloured (I feel so much better!) and cooking up a storm with my mum for the baby shower.

On Saturday, we went to the market to get a few last things for the shower, so I was up early and then I headed home, quickly got ready and went over to help my mum with the last preparations. My bestie and older sister also came along to help out getting everything done and then everyone started arriving at 1pm. It was lovely to catch up with everyone and I was really overwhelmed by their generosity.

My mum said to me - how amazing is it that this is your baby shower? - and it was, totally amazing. I couldn't help but think of the many other baby showers that I had been to and cried on the way home, wishing it was me. In my heart, I always knew that I would have a baby shower for me and my forthcoming child - I knew that I wouldn't stop until I was holding my own baby in my arms, regardless of how they would get there - donor eggs, surrogacy, adoption. It was a wonderful day, one of the best days. It means so much to me that I could celebrate the the joy of welcoming JBB into our lives with the people that mean so much to me. I felt a little bit more of myself again and the joy of it is completely overwhelming.

I am lucky and blessed, I absolutely know this. I have read back over some of my past posts and realise that I have been fairly negative about the pregnancy. This is not actually how I feel, I have had worries, yes but there has never been one moment that I have not been amazed and grateful at being able to experience this pregnancy myself - I guess that may have not come across as I have used the blog mainly to vent my frustrations.

There is less than 6 weeks to go of this pregnancy and I am determined to enjoy every last minute of it.

Baby Shower Blues....

I have been away from ICLW for a couple of months and it is great to be back in amongst it. Sorry all, I am not doing an ICLW post this month but welcome aboard and I hope that you stay and read a few posts to see where this blog is at. Sorry, this was not my ideal ICLW post but I really need to get this out.

**Disclaimer: Firstly, I just want to let you know that I am extremely grateful to be in the position of being able to plan a baby shower. I know I am having a whinge but I want you to know that I absolutely realise that there are many of you out there who are at various stages of TTC and running the gauntlet of friends and families baby showers - with your hearts yearning to have your own. My heart is with you gals as I do understand the difficult situation a baby shower is for the IF woman. I am begging you to forgive the self indulgence of the following vent.

Now, I need to have a bit of a vent because being an IF survivor, the baby shower has been very fraught for me over the years. I cannot count how many I have gone to and sobbed all the way home or felt physically sick trying to make myself get ready to go. So, when I found out that I was pregnant, after awhile I started to dream about my own shower and how lovely it would be. To be the one who was having the shower, who was having the baby, who was cooing over tiny little clothes and preparing for a baby to enter my life. It is a beautiful dream.

A couple of months ago, my Aunty very kindly asked if she could throw the baby shower for me and considering the situation that my mum is in at the moment, I thought that this would be a really good thing. After awhile (making sure that everything was going well) I picked out a date and left it at that.

In the meantime, I realised that there was a little issue with my friends. It seems that assimilation back into my group of friends was going to be harder than I thought and why did I need to assimiliate? Of course because of the journey through IF - as my journey progressed, I withdrew further and further into myself - I found it very hard to be in any social situations. The upshot being that because I didn't go to many gatherings last year, I was left off the list of invitees. Very disappointing and certainly of my own making. I have spoken about this before that I thought that once I was pregnant, I would go back to being myself. This was not really the case. I continued to worry all through the pregnancy and I still found it hard to be in social groups, though I did catch up with quite a few friends one on one.

The fact that I was being left off the list of invitees to any social gathering made me throw a bit of a childish tantrum - "I'm not having a baby shower" - mainly because deep down I was afraid that noone would come. I also must mention here - I am not a giver of parties, I have never been, I really don't like them and I do find them stressful, I find I am good with people one on one but a group scares the hell out of me basically. Anyway, I got over that and then last week, I started to think about the guest list. I realised that if I invited children to the shower it would be 26 adults and 28 children coming. Now, call me a selfish, diva, princess but I did not want my baby shower to be a children's party. This guest list was gotten to by thinking - if I ask this person, then this one has to be invited and even though I am not close to this person, I will invite them so that I won't hurt this person - in itself, just getting the list together was an arduous task because I don't want to hurt or offend anyone.

My Aunt had told me that her best friend was coming (I have met this woman about twice) and my MIL is inviting her best friend and I knew my mum would want to invite a couple of her friends. My aunt had said that her best friend wanted to do the invitations for me and honestly, I am not an invitation person, I was just going to send around an email. It seemed to me that more and more, the shower was becoming less about me and more about everyone else.

I discussed my dilemma with my bestie last week end and after a couple of hours of tossing the situation around with all sorts of different options, we hit on a plan of having 2 events, one at my Aunt's place with only close family (including my two nieces and my 3 nephews if my sister wanted to bring the boys) and then go to a cafe with my girlfriends on another day. It wasn't a perfect solution but I felt bad about asking people not to bring their kids.

I then had lunch with my older sister during the week. She has 3 boys and I thought she would be able to give some good advice about how offended people would be if I asked them not to bring their kids. She was excellent and provided wonderful advice. She basically said that 'it's my party and I can ask who the hell I want to'. That made me feel better, better that is until last night.

I went to the footy with my Aunty as usual last night and I was telling her the whole story about how I didn't want it to become a kids party and she was agreeing and everything (I am sure a lot because she didn't really want her house over run with kids), she also seemed a bit put out when I told that there would be about 28 people coming, to which I said no worries because Mum had said that she would have it if there were any problems. Now that was all fine but then she told me she had invited her son's fiance and two granddaughters and honestly I was floored. Mainly because this would mean that I am telling all of my friends and some family not to bring kids but there will be kids there which I think is not fair to them. It also means that I am being unfair to my aunt on the other side of the family and now have to invite my cousin's wife so as not to hurt my aunt. Honestly, I could have screamed (and poor old JourneyMan got vented on a treat when I got home - he has been extremely supportive in this and has not tried to make me feel guilty about inviting or not inviting anyone on his side of the family - he just let me choose).

The fact of the matter is now the shower has the gloss taken off it. It just does not seem to be about me anymore and the intimate, fun shower that I had imagined now will be filled with people who I barely know and me worrying that people are resenting me for being inconsistent on my invitation policy. I don't necessarily think that everything should be about me but I thought that this was one thing that pretty much should be. Now I don't even know for what purpose I would even be having it. My original purpose was just to celebrate quietly becoming a mum but at last count there are more than 30 people coming so it is certainly not intimate anymore. I am tasked with getting all the snail mail addresses of people and honestly, I can't be bothered, I feel like I have enough on my plate at the moment. I never wanted it to be a big deal, just an afternoon tea chatting with my mates.

Now I wonder if I cancel the shower altogether, would I regret it? Or should I just deal with the situation, grit my teeth and endure what the shower has become? I seem to change my mind in every minute. I barely slept last night and I am absolutely exhausted today. I know that there are so many other hardships in the world, I know that many of you girls are going through horrors that I cannot even imagine and I realise that this is not a huge problem. It is just annoying and disappointing because my dream of what my shower was supposed to be is not to be. In a fit of venting last night I said to JourneyMan that I might take my bestie out to a cafe for lunch and call it the baby shower. Maybe that's what I will do.