A 1st Birthday Wish

It’s been a long time between posts – and it is a very, very busy life here. 

First things first – my beautiful Boo2 has turned 1.  My goodness where did that year go.  When I think back to the days before he was born – I was so fearful, Boo2 had stopped moving as much and I was constantly worried.  I remember Anzac day last year was horrible, I was cramping badly all day, I felt super sick and he wasn’t moving very much – I was desperately worried.  Fast forward a year later and our Anzac Day was spent on a family holiday to the Gold Coast where Boo2 took his first steps. Our lives have changed immeasurably since he came into it.

To My Darling Boo2:

Happy Birthday my big 1 year old.  You were tiny when you came into our lives but you have gone from strength to strength.  You smiled so early – months earlier than you were supposed to and you haven’t stopped smiling since.  You are a happy and engaging fellow, who loves to laugh and play games.  You started walking on our Easter holiday to the Gold Coast and there has been no stopping you ever since.  You call your Dad and I both ‘Da’ and there is no greater joy in my day when I see you and your face lights up and you say ‘Da’ and crawl (now walk) to me as fast as you can.  You gave me a beautiful present for Mother’s Day yesterday, you said ‘Mum’ super clearly for the first time – well the smile still hasn’t left my face.  You are super cheeky, you love to climb up on things and when I notice and say ‘Tiny!!!! ‘ (one of your nicknames), you give me a big grin and a hearty laugh!!

You have had your challenges over your first year.  Firstly, there was the bout of bronchiolitis, then there were the ultrasounds because your hips weren’t developing properly, then we found out that you had pretty bad eczema and there were more trips to the doctor.  Then there was the trip in the ambulance to hospital when we found out that you were allergic to egg and, of course, now we know that you are also allergic to peanuts.  It has been a massive learning curve for all of   Apart from that

Exploring is your favourite thing to do, along with just being able to do what everyone else does.  Indeed within a couple of weeks of taking your first steps, you are now running.  You are super social and love people, especially all of our immediate family.  You love your Nanna’s especially as they both take such beautiful care of you each week.  You love music and singing and you can’t contain your delight when we sing songs. 

Your brother is super special to you and the feeling is reciprocated in spades.  You love to mimic what he is doing and after you walked to me, you were the person that you wanted to walk to the most.  You have a special laugh of joy when you first see him when you wake up in the morning or from a nap.  He loves you so much and is a super great brother to you.  Sometimes he gets a little jealous but for the most part, you are his favourite person.  You are a bit of a Daddy’s boy and for a bit you only wanted to go to Daddy

The day you came into our lives, Tiny, was like when the sun hits your body for the first time after a long winter – and you have been shining for us ever since.  You make me laugh, you are a joy and you are so special to me.  I love you my darling – thank you for coming into our lives.  Love Mummy.

In other news – I have to give a bit of a bullet list because so much has happened:

• We sold our old two bedroom unit for a good price

• We bought a new amazing family home that we hope we will never have to move from – it is a gorgeous two storey house with a lovely outdoor area and most beautiful garden 
•  We spent our Christmas holidays at my Bestie’s new house by the beach while they were in Las Vegas getting married

• We celebrated my Bestie’s Australian wedding with her – it was a lovely day
• We moved into our new house in February – it was a hard move but thankfully we hope we won’t have to move again.  We are just now really only starting to settle in to the house – though there is still heaps to do!!
• My sister is pregnant with her 2^nd baby (a girl – yay!!) and she is due in July
• We had Boo2's 1st birthday party at the new house on the weekend - it was immediate family only but there was still around 26people - it was a really nice party
• We are hoping to travel to Thailand in October for our first trip there (since our honeymoon) that we won’t be having a cycle

That’s about it for the moment but it has been soooooo hectic – I have many, many posts in my head – I hope to start posting regularly again soon.

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.

Being Mum....

There are times when I mentally double take about being a Mum.  The past couple of weeks, I have come to the realisation, I am happy!  It is such a revelation, I have always been one of those people that 'will be happy when.....' - lose weight, meet the man of my dreams, have a baby, get the promotion etc.  

It all started with a domestic moment in the new house.  JBB love being outside and despite it being the wettest, coldest winter in recent memory, he's gotta go 'side, mummy, side' but I wanted to go back inside because I wanted to make him some stewed apples.  So I got the bag of apples, my knife and bowls (a big warm coat) and sat outside peeling and chopping apples while JBB rode his 3 wheeler and chased the dog.  It was in this moment, I realised that I am happy and it is these simple things that make me so.  Watching JBB running around and hearing his beautiful laugh, seeing his cheeky smile - I just thought 'how lucky am I to be his Mum?' and then I had the mental double take 'I am his Mum'.

It is strange that after 2 years, that the title that sometimes fits like a glove, sometimes feels like I'm having a beautiful dream and that I will wake up and realise that I never had that successful cycle (that thought causes me to break out in a cold sweat).  

At some point in the past few years, I have finally realised that you don't have to have everything you want in your life to be happy.  Maybe I am a slow learner but I spent most of my 20's and 30's chasing after perfection, the perfect job, the perfect man, the perfect relationship, the perfect house, the perfect car, the perfect family.  In my 20's, this chase for perfection inside and outside of myself led me to abuse myself in a variety of ways, eating, drinking, smoking and mentally beating up on myself.  In my 30's, I started to move away from this behaviour and finally I met my 'perfect for me' man and we entered the world of IF.  

I approached IF the way I approached most other things in my life, like a bull at a gate.  All of our decisions early on were based on the 'get this done as quickly as possible' and then IF forced patience on to us.  It also forced real sorrow, pain and heartache.  It forced me to look at myself and my life.  Previously, I was on the fast track at work, I wanted to work harder and better than everyone else because I 'was going places'.  In the midst of preparing for IVF #3 with my own eggs, I quit my job and ended up negotiating to go back to them on a contract doing 3 days a week.  This changed my view of work and career forever.  My priorities had changed, the important thing no longer was proving how good a worker I was, it was to start to protect and nurture myself through the stress of multiple IVF cycles.

When, after two and a half years and 5 failed cycles with my own eggs, we turned to a Thai donor and clinic and experienced sweet, wonderful success.  We welcomed our son into the world and I became 'Mum'.  It is a difficult role, there is no handover, no manual and each and every child is different.  You have to learn on the job.  When you think you have something worked out, it all changes.  It is challenging but sweet, so beautifully sweet.

My birthday on Monday was nothing out of the ordinary, I wasn't whisked off in a private jet to a tropical island to celebrate.  I was woken by my boys, JourneyMan, JBB and JourneyDog who is Woolly.  I was given presents, slippers (I LOVE them), magazines, chocolates and an iTunes voucher.  I went to work and my Bestie took me out for cupcakes for lunch.  When I went to pick up JBB from my Mum's, she had helped JBB to pick flowers for me and make a card and she gave me some presents (pi's, bras and a trestle table - all of which I loved!).  We then had Italian takeaway for dinner and chocolate cake.  This is the most ordinary of birthday's but to me, it was all bliss - I have never been happier.

I don't have everything that I want.  Of course, we all know that I want another child, that is a given.  I wish we had been able to buy a house rather than rent, I wish that we had more money so that I didn't have to work and I could be a stay at home Mum.  I think that we all want more.  Once we get something that we want, we immediately start to focus on the next thing that we want, that is human nature, I think.

Being a Mum is way different but also the same as I imagined.  I love my life, I love my husband, I love my son, I love my Woolly dog - our family is wonderful.  After all of these years, the thing that I wanted most of all, despite all of its challenges being a Mum has taught me the lesson that despite the fact that you don't have everything that you want in your life, you can still be amazingly happy.

Being a Mum is what I was born to be.