Did I not say without fanfare?
Perhaps the universe isn’t clear. Trisomy 18 was completely out of the blue. Yes, it’s only a 1.5% chance, but it’s frightening, positively frightening.
The baby, our son, is just fine on ultrasound – his heart is normal, his kidneys are normal, those funny cysts in his brain (that E had too) have already started to vanish. He has no cleft palette, no club foot. He’s perfect, according to the perinatologist. He (the doctor) seemed confident. He actually said we could wait to do more growth ultrasounds and then if there was an issue seen, we could do it then, which I thought reasonable for a guy who likes to do amnios.
Here’s what I really want: I checked out a lovely book about sewing today. I want to lovingly sew for myself, for my peanut, and my baby-to-be. I want this winter to drift by with visits from friends for dinners at home, to luxuriate in a night away, alone with hubby, while peanut is at her grandparents. Maybe a fancy dinner and a nice hotel stay somewhere in town.
I want spring to unfold gently, right around Peanut’s birthday. I want to hold a lovely celebration, with cake and balloons and some games for her. I want to plant seedlings with her. I want to see the spring deepen from spring jackets and raincoats, into warm days and cool nights. I want the barest edge of summer to appear, the heat arriving just as our son, our perfect, healthy son, arrives.
I want to nurse him in the nursing chair. Cuddle him in the baby wrap. I want to play in the kiddie pool with peanut and hold my new son. I want this summer’s maternity leave to stretch before me, the vegetables in my garden ripening and growing strong, just like my beautiful children.
I want to go to mom and baby yoga, go for walks with him in the stroller, with E. on her new bike. I want to sew sundresses to wear nursing our new baby.
I refuse to give in to fear and anger. I feel wonderful about this baby. He’s perfect. He’s ours. He will live, he will be healthy. And we will cry grateful tears over and over at his miraculous birth. I want a pregnancy without fanfare, a baby on the way.
Filed under Everyday Life | Comment (0)When I was two months to three…
When I was two months to age three, my mother died. In fact, my Eyrin is within a week of my own age when my mother died, so surely this was the time when she knew she was dying, leaving her babies behind. I am so, so, SO freaking lucky!
She’s singing to herself in our bed, tucked in for the night, but not yet asleep. She’s got a sniffle, so we had quiet evening on the couch, a healthy smoothie, and an early tuck in with stories. Baby is jumping around in my belly right now, I can feel him moving off to the right. They have so much room in there right now, it must be quite fun, weightless in amniotic fluid. I’m healthy, she’s healthy, the baby’s healthy, hubby’s healthy. We have a gorgeous new home, and we’re working on prosperous work for both of us (he’s got it, I’m working on it).
Life’s really, really, really good. And I’m articulating that thrive attitude. Imagining the everyday (which is what works best with the Law of Attraction.)
Filed under Everyday Life | Comment (0)Thrive
So I went back and read the what would your life look like if posts, and lo, there’s one ‘what if you had another baby”. As this one is currently jumping around in my belly (yes, lunch is coming, my hungry boy), I am conscious that we’re more than halfway to that goal. And amazing too!
So what else do I want to thrive in my life? Simply put, I want Tria to thrive. Not merely this subsistence thing we’ve been doing, but really thrive. I want new clients, new projects, new prospects. I want to love cold calling (yeah yeah, research calls). I want to reward myself by seeing this firm thrive and do well.
I want to move my handbag business forward in the next four months. I want to sell it on my friends’ Etsy store. I want to stop being afraid to succeed!
I want a healthy son, and I want my beautiful and wickedly smart daughter to know the love I have for her gets bigger, not smaller. I want to be a calm and reflective mother. I know I may have to work fewer work hours. But that’s OK.
I want my husband to thrive at his new job. I want him to move ahead and succeed so this positions him for the future of his career. I want our relationship to thrive.
Today’s word is thrive. Blossom, grow. Like the summer garden I’m imagining.
Filed under Everyday Life | Comment (0)So what is it I really want?
Today was a sucky day at work. The project that won’t die, the client that won’t be satisfied. I’m really rethinking the kinds of projects and clients we do. I mean on one had we had great clients last spring, loved ‘em, big projects, but loved ‘em. And this one? Just a pain from the get go, this project has been.
I think I’d like to back off work a bit. Focus mainly on marketing and sales. I would like some easier projects, that offer great satisfaction in client measurements and in our measurements. I would like to relax more. I need to relax more.
I can easily use doctor’s orders. I can easily not answer the phone as much. I can be succinct, polite and efficient, but not lengthy in my client replies. One of my clients said to me today after her meeting with us yesterday: “It’s still the Ann show”. Yes, indeed. And maybe well it should be.
I need the money (when we make it). I like work. But I need to work better, and less on these projects that aren’t making the grade.
I think back a bunch of years. When I had that super difficult client from the auto show, or the computer guys, and think, what has changed? fifteen years older. Nothing else. That’s not a legacy I want to be proud of. Yes, I’ve helped a lot of people besides the few problem children. But the problem children I remember mainly. Oh I do remember the standout clients, the ones I loved to work with, who challenged me, in a good way, paid fairly. It was a different world.
I haven’t settled in on what I really want. But I know it’s not this.
Filed under Everyday Life | Comment (0)Sleep!
I slept from 11pm to nearly 6am without waking – so did peanut. This is a downright miracle (for me, she’s been doing it for months now). But after 6, my brain got stuck on work clients and problems and I could never get back to sleep. I wonder what it would be like if I did not have this work stress?
I’m enjoying the quiet of the morning. The dog is snoozing on a stuffed animal and blanket on the couch. I’m upstairs (now behind closed blinds, yay!) in the office, happily catching up on e-mail and social media before I have to go get peanut up. I’ve had some fruit and tea. I will have some oatmeal shortly, but I was not feeling especially super when I first got up.
I’m mixed this morning. Worried about work. Unsure what will happen in my life when my son is born this summer. Trying to not mentally keep up with my competitors – but to be inspired by my own plan, and my own direction.
The best thing I can do today is get down to business. To have a nice lunch with an old friend. To dress nicely for a busy day, and tonight? to be home and relax with my peanut. I was going to go to a Thursday evening event, an after work social event, but being gone already one night this week is hard on my peanut, so I may skip it. It’s an industry event, mainly a see-and-be-seen (I really *should* go…) We’ll see. There’s time enough to decide.
Filed under Everyday Life | Comment (0)the important things
Mine is (not) sleeping outside our office door, playing her snow globe music and generally being cute and annoying at the same time. Thank goodness God made them so irresistably cute. I’d like to go do something else but she needs to see me to go to sleep (still).
Today I sewed two maternity garments and traced a third. I’m looking forward to sewing this pregnancy, and I’m glad I’m getting the chance to.
Filed under Everyday Life | Comment (0)finding pieces
We’re cleaning. So today, we organized the spices and put away the china. In the box of china were things that shouldn’t be there – a small cocktail purse, a prayer book, a note from my grandmother’s friend about my mother’s death, two perfume decanters. I put these away in my special drawer – for when I feel up to perfume again, and for my next trip out with hubby that warrants a purse like that (alone, any sort of dinner would do).
But they are like bits of glass, these things I find. When you lose a parent young, what you lose a lot of is a sense of who you are, yourself. Your life was shattered, and those pieces of glass went everywhere. It’s taken me nearly 37 years to piece together what I have (long lost photos my parents had scanned last year also helped.) Today’s pieces add to that glass. So much of what we are – tiny little things – are from our parents. Expressions, gestures, things we don’t even realize we do. My daughter has black eyelashes with blonde hair and brownish greenish eyes. Black eyelashes! (my eyelashes).
It makes me realize the BEST gift I can give to her, ever, is myself. My time, my love, my traditions. Not things, or even a college education or anything else, but myself.
Filed under Everyday Life | Comment (0)