Hi there, how are you...Yes, there are five of us. Two adults...and can I get two high chairs and a booster seat? Actually...make it two booster seats and a high chair. No, wait, come to think of it -- three high chairs is probably safest. Honestly? You know what? Just forget it. We're gonna get going. I don't know what the hell we were thinking coming to a restaurant in the first place. Thanks anyway.
Yup. We're pregnant again. And while thankfully this time it was planned (earmuffs, Ronan) I still think about scenarios similar to the one above and am like, WHAT THE HELL WERE THINKING?!?!?!? I know, I know.....To Three or Not To Three....I always knew this was coming and yet I'm 17 weeks into it and thinking....oh lord.
Honestly, this third kid cemented its place in our family a while ago -- it's been taunting me for years -- even when I tried to make the image go away. There was always this third child. "Oh, hi mum, ya it's me again -- your third. Thinking about not having me again are we? Ok, totally your choice if you don't want to try and get pregnant again -- but I'm just staying -- I either live inside your head talking to you like this for the rest of your life, or you can just go ahead and bring me into the world like you're supposed to, attempt to raise me into a functioning adult who can have a civilized conversation with you face-to-face over a glass of wine one day. So, have your doubts -- but I'm fine living inside your head or out of it. Totally your call. So, I knew. I knew this little one was waiting to catch a ride on the mollygog-uterus-train and make its entrance one way or another. So here we are.
I gonna have to start going back to church or something because we are literally going to need a higher power to get us through this next and FINAL pregnancy. And asking other people to pray for us is just not going to cut it. I'm going to need to put some serious time-in if I'm going to get the kind of help I'm gonna need from above. But I'm thinking with the Pope shenanigans going-on -- my calls are likely to go unanswered anyway. So back to being an ex-catholic who still hopes someone is looking down on her even though she doesn't practice or believe anymore.
So what does this mean? Well first of all -- we have to start by counting our blessings. I barely finished writing To Three or Not To Three and I was pregnant again. Getting pregnant is NOT an easy thing to just go and do in an afternoon for a lot of people. In our case, it felt like the conversation itself conceived a child. So we know how lucky we are. Really.
But we also know how screwed we are. Three kids under three and half is about as smart as driving down a dark rural country road in Ireland without the lights on (I've actually done that before -- it's clearly a Ger story, and a story for another day at that -- but let me just say....it's f'ing terrifying). So smart decision? No. The right decision? Yes.
Our lives right now -- with me at home, a three year old with an impending heart surgery, an 18 month old about to become a toddler himself, and a husband who is working two jobs, pretty much 24/7 seven days a week.... it's a lot like...well....a balsa wood structure competition.
Didn't see that analogy coming did you? Well here's a visual....this is pretty much what we're knowingly doing with our lives -- not as bad as Russian Roulette but close:
Too bad these sweet little geeks don't realize just how much shit is about to go down after they graduate from high school and their adult life starts to replicate what used to be a fun little science project. No one ever explains to you that YOU will become the balsa wood bridge in shop class and that the whole project is a metaphor for what lies ahead and how hard life can be. You don't even get a complementary pair of safety goggles when you enter the real world. What the hell ever happen to Safety First, people?
So why is it right to add on the weight, the pressure, the stress of a third child? Well, the obvious reason is because it's already happening. But surprisingly for the "pro-life"rs out there that's not actually why. It's right because we decided to do it and we decided to do it KNOWING how freaking hard it was going to be. It was an eyes-wide-open-type decision and we gotta stand by it and know deep, deep, deep, deep, deep (have I made my point here?) deep, way deep down that we made the right decision.
But having the vision of the third child and logistically managing the reality and the day-to-day of a third child are completely different things. We have a lot of work ahead of us and by we I mean me. I'm kidding. I'm half kidding. No, I'm not kidding at all. While my husband has been working at an ungodly clip for longer than I can remember now -- and worse than even that -- it has become totally NORMAL in our lives for him to burn the midnight oil like de does -- that this is not exactly a healthy way for him to be living and god willing their won't be any longterm consequences health or otherwise with just how much stress and pressure he is under in order to support what will be a family of five.
But as most mother's can attest to...the child rearing years are different for the dad than they are the mum. I'm not insinuating here that it's a competition because I'm winning anyway -- but let's be honest -- in a lot of ways even with all the pressure in the world on his shoulders -- he's the same guy, with the same body and mind (ok that's not fair -- his body is falling apart and he's not getting any younger -- but his mind is still totally intact -- so that's a plus, right?) Where as three pregnancies in three years and the physical work it takes to be a stay-at-home mom is just a tad different from his day-to-day no matter how stressful it is. Being a stay-at-home-mother (in my humble opinion) is like waking up every single morning to immediately run an Iron Man race while simultaneously participating in some kind of mental health study sponsored by McLean Hospital. At least my husband is qualified to do the work he does everyday. Me? Not so much. I am "working" from 7AM-9PM, seven days a week, without any supervision and without any fucking clue what I'm doing half the time...wash, rinse, repeat, wash, rinse, repeat. So, I can't really say that my body or my mind are really intact at this point. And being a woman with hormones through all this is not exactly a plus. My own body is attacking my sanity? Doesn't really make a hell of lot of sense for the survival of the species to throw hormones into the mix of the person bearing the children. Not cool, God. Not cool.
But even in light of all this -- we decided to throw caution to the wind on this one. And that's mostly because a fair amount of heavy duty shit played into our decision to add on more weight to the balsa wood structure and have yet another child -- knowing that we are greatly magnifying the current insanity that is our lives. Looking back at the past three years -- and in particular the heart condition diagnosis during my first pregnancy -- that could have gone one of two ways. I could have easily made every effort possible to not ever get pregnant again for fear of what could happen the second time around. And many heart families make this decision and I completely and whole heartedly understand their reasoning. And then there is our way and the road we have chosen. We have learned some amazing lessons since we started our marriage and family and in our case these lessons led us to the road we're currently on:
1. We have never once believed in the illusion that marriage is a honkey dorey love fest where you find your soul mate, make beautiful music together, and grow old holding hands with that same sparkle in your eye you had for each other at 25. We carefully chose one another on probably a more practical level than would be considered romanic or sexy -- but was thoroughly based on love, respect, and a shared agreement to roll our sleeves up and build this damn balsa wood structure together. And we had the same goal that it had to be strong. Like really, really strong. Strong enough to carry a shit ton of weight strong. And that was before we actually realized how much weight they planned to start putting on....one by one by one....
2. Haven's heart condition schooled us in the lesson that you are not in control of what happens in your life. Really, ever. You can try to be in control and honestly -- you should try. Amazing things happen when people go after their goals, work hard, stay healthy, make good decisions, and take care of one another. You should try to control your life in the same way you train to run a marathon. You get as healthy and as strong as you can to run the race -- but try as you may -- you will not dictate how that race goes -- even with proper training. Everything else -- even when the scariness of it all brings you to your knees and you think you can't simply survive something -- even then, especially then -- you gotta let go of the reigns -- cause they aren't for you to hold in the first place. You gotta do your best in life without ever having the luxury of knowing the final outcome. Over and over and over again.
3. We have to believe that we are walking the walk exactly as we should be. That every challenge and every time we run out of gas (and man we have run out of gas a few times and will run out of gas again soon!) is a temporary struggle that will be survived. We will make all kinds of struggles and sacrifices in our lives and it's not so much that in the end we all sit around and talk about how "it was all worth it....." Cause I gotta call bullshit on that. Some of it isn't worth it. It's just fucking not. It's hard. It hurts. You do get run down, you get worn out, you run out of emotional and even physical strength sometimes and you're not getting any of that time or any of those muscles back. I'm sorry but it's gone. That's the deal. That's the true sacrifice that is made. But instead of having my retirement, with my three kids around me as my life's greatest accomplishments as my end goal where I sit back and try to convince myself, "It was all worth it, everything I gave up, every last ounce of myself that I sacrificed was worth it in the end." That just doesn't ring true for me. Because what I think of as the end of the road accomplishment for me in life? It's is going to have to have been the actual road. I have learned more to keep moving, keep getting up, never be complacent, never accepting my faults or the things that hold me back but struggle like hell to commit to change things about myself and to just. keep. moving. So.....I guess I want to be able to survive the road. Not necessarily get to the end of it in one piece.
I was lucky enough to go to Egypt when I was 18 years old. I met an Egyptologist there (seriously, they exist) who obviously with a title like that spends a lot of his time thinking hard about one of the oldest cultures in human existence. He got into a conversation with me and he said to me, "it is already written in your book. The next chapter has already been written and now you must go and discover it but int he end it has already been decided." I'll never forget that.
Similarly, a couple, who are two of my closest and dearest friends have always had a saying that is displayed in their offices, in their home, at the end of the their emails, in cards they have given me -- it always reminds me just how awesome these two are and why I like them in the first place because of how much this quote resonates with me, "Everything will be okay in the end, if it's not okay, it's not the end."
So with that? Bring it on, baby. Let the balsa wood competition begin. We do not have on rose colored glasses about your arrival or even the the next several years. Hell, we don't even have safety glasses on. We know how difficult and challenging all of this is undoubtedly going to be -- and man o' man this is year alone is going to be one hell of a year -- but we as a family will survive this too. It won't always be this hard. But just a heads up we're probably not 100% prepared because how could we be, but we're committed to you taking this road with us -- wherever it goes and whatever it brings.
We'll take what we can from the lessons we've learned and forge ahead, you are already written in our book, you are the next chapter, and in the end we just have to believe that everything will finally be ok.
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