Waiting has never been my strong suit. Perhaps I have mentioned that before. I am a planner by nature. I like schedules and timelines, goals and objectives. You give me a deadline, by George I will meet it. I may cut it close, but I will meet it. I like deliverables. It was one thing I struggled so hard with when I quit working in the corporate world to turn into a full-time mom: How do I know I'm getting it done? I don't feel the need to just be "busy," but I like to know that I am moving forward.
It's an odd trait to have when I look back on my family. Not that I grew up with a bunch of lazy people by any stretch of the imagination, but they are all more laid back and relaxed about time than I am. My mom tells me I was the last person to fall asleep and the first person to wake up as a toddler/preschooler and I can remember being the first person up and about as an elementary aged kid. Now, I'm not going to lie and say that that continued in high school and college (I learned to sleep in!), but once I was out of college and working I was once again an early riser. As a child I used to make schedules for myself. I would sit in my room at night and write out what I was going to do and what time I was going to do it the next day. Like I said, I am a planner.
Our family has (largely) been planned. When Nat and I got married we had talked about 5 years into our marriage being a good time to think about having kids. About 3.5 years in we started talking about it and agreed that we would start trying after we took our trip to Europe that fall. I got pregnant immediately and Alexandra was born 12 days after our 5th wedding anniversary.
After Alexandra was born we agreed that about two years between kids would be good. We jumped the gun slightly on that one as Alexandra and Woodson are 21 months and 1 week (exactly) apart, but Woodson fit into our plan.
After Woodson was born we were on the fence about adding to our family. For starters, we were overwhelmed. Two little ones is HARD and somedays I am still happy to have survived. Then there was the issue of Woodson's birth. It was by no means catastrophic or near death, but it was scary enough to make us both question whether we wanted to go through it again. We also faced some health issues with Woodson as a newborn that really rocked us for a brief period of time (thankfully all of them turned out to be insignificant) and so we agreed that we would think about closer to 3 years between Woodson and another potential baby...if we decided to have one.
We had artificially designated Woodson's 2nd birthday as our "line in the sand" to make a decision about another baby. With Alexandra and Woodson being so close together we didn't want to feel like we had a 3rd baby all on his/her own, but I also wasn't ready to sign up for another round of "2 under 2." The fall and winter leading up to Woodson's birthday seemed to have us heading down the road to being a full-time family of 4. But then April came and went and we didn't make a decision. April was followed by May, June and July (aren't you glad I know the months of the year?) where there was talk of "what if we had another baby," but no decisions. Then came August and the day Nat asked me point blank: "Do you want to have another baby?" I won't bore you with the details of that conversation, but I did, he did and so we decided we would.
I (perhaps naively) assumed I would get pregnant right away. I was running on a "2 for 2" with the others, why would this be any different. Turns out I was wrong. In hindsight, the wait wasn't agonizing, but for me any wait seems that way. A few months later, there it was. The positive pregnancy test. We were going to be a family of 5. We were cutting it close, but even with the new school age cutoffs, this baby would only be 3 years behind Woodson and 5 behind Alexandra (believe me, I know how insanely stupid it sounds to even think of this). 3 kids in just over 5 years...it worked for me.
Then, as we all know, my plan fell apart. And I have been annoyed. I've struggled with a lot of the same issues that a lot of people do: why did this happen to us? did I do something to cause this? could I have stopped it? I have been sad, hurt, confused, and broken, but never angry. The closest I have been to anger is the frustration over this not being "my plan."
Ridiculous, right? Please don't misunderstand me. I'm miserably upset (less so most days, but yes sometimes still), but the sadness has faded in a lot of ways. I have accepted that this is reality and, while I may never understand it, I get it. But what about my plans?
At Christmas last year I remember thinking that I could finally buy the matching stockings I've always wanted. Plan out the window. We were discussing plans for a fall break vacation that would be easy to do with a baby since we weren't going to be able to travel this summer. Gone. I was planning to go through the attic in March when we (hopefully) found out if we were having a boy or a girl so I could organize and finally purge some of the baby clothes. On hold. I was pretty sure this baby was a girl (yes, I know I could have been completely wrong) and I was looking forward to being able to use some of my favorite outfits of Alexandra's since they would both have been born in the same month. Not going to happen.
I feel like everywhere I look there are plans that are gone. And here I am waiting. First it was waiting for my body to officially realize it was no longer pregnant: for the nausea, food aversions and exhaustion to completely subside. While that was going on, it was waiting to heal both physically and emotionally. I dealt with a lot of the same feelings you have when you actually have a baby: the hormone crashes, hair falling out, waiting while your body goes back to "normal." And now we wait to even be able to think about having another baby. I'm not anxious to move on because I think we can replace what we lost (we can't). I am anxious because I have no answers. There are no potential timelines, no definitive answers on when. There is just waiting.
And, so, I am trying to learn something about patience. You would think my children would have taught me that already (believe me, they try!), but this is different. This kind of patience is with myself. It's learning to let go and accept that I am not in control. It's learning to look back on my life and see where things haven't worked out "my way" and it's ended up being a good thing. It's accepting that I can not map out every second of my life and expect it to all fall into place on my time.
And when I can take a deep breath, step back and look at my life reflectively I can see that this (the waiting) has the potential to be a good thing. Losing a baby has brought me to my knees in front of God. It's made me painfully aware of what I have been holding onto and need to let go of. But it has also opened up opportunities to share with Alexandra and Woodson, in a very tangible way, the hope that we have in Christ.
And so, rather than worry about the whens and what-ifs of tomorrow I am trying desperately to learn from today. It seems that growing often takes place in our waiting, if we are willing to slow down long enough to see it.
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