Baby Proofing

No, my little Nickie has not learnt to crawl yet - the title of this post refers to baby proofing of the mind haha. I wish there was a way to do it. It's funny how when you are trying to have a baby your mind seems to constantly be focused on all things baby! We are still waiting not so patiently to begin our IVF. My mind is racing and so I am dying to start if only to put my thoughts to rest.

It's especially difficult at the moment because Rhea, my sister in law, has hit the 12 week mark of her pregnancy. That's not the difficult part, by the way because I am thrilled for her. She deserves it and will be a beautiful parent. I just mean that now she is in the safe zone the whole family is buzzing with the impending arrival of another baby and it is the first topic of conversation. I should add here that Brad and I have decided not to tell anyone about our upcoming IVF because when we originally broached the subject that we might possibly do another IVF round we were met with a lot of negative feedback and we decided we didn't need to hear that sort of talk. I realise people have their own opinions and that's no problem to me. I just have issues with people voicing them regarding other people's lives when they haven't been fully briefed on the situation. Instead of stopping to think that there might be a medical reason why we might be forced to be doing IVF again so soon (which is in fact the case) people would jump in with all the same lines: "no don't do that you don't want two babies so close together, you'll never get any sleep" type of thing. Consequently we have decided to go it alone - or more precisely we are going it "alone together".

Because nobody is aware of our secret and the fact that we are planning another baby a few things have started to happen that we are not sure how to get around. Nickie is just at the stage where he is starting to grow out of those initial items we purchased for him as a newborn, like his bassinet. Both my family and Brad's are saying things like "oh great! Pass it onto Rhea and Paul for their baby! Perfect timing!" and we are not quite sure how to explain the fact that we want to hold onto those items a bit longer. It is a completely innocent thing, by the way and I'm not blaming anyone as they aren't to know. It's just something I'm finding tough to navigate!

Because my boy is getting so big he is growing out of his 000 size clothes and is now in 00's and this week I packed up all the clothes that were too small and put the next size in his cupboard. I found several outfits as I was putting everything away that unfortuneately he never got to wear as we just got so many beautiful and thoughtful gifts for him that he didn't manage to wear all those nice clothes in time before getting too big for them. They still have the tags on them and my first instinct was to put them in a bag for Rhea. Brad saw them and said to me "Pax, why don't we keep these for a little longer. We don't know what's around the corner." and so with relief I put them away at the top of one of our cupboards.

It is strange to be packing up one baby's things and thinking that you might be getting them out again sometime very soon. Brad and I never expected to be back in the IVF game so quickly. We did plan to start trying to get pregnant again in the not so distant future as you'd remember from my previous posts but we were optimistic about giving natural conception a try before we resorted to IVF. We always planned to use the embryo but weren't really prepared right now for the medical roller coaster. Circumstances have changed though and so here we are. I am doing my best though to try to put it to the back of my mind as best as I can because I worry about Nicholas losing my attention which he really does deserve to have at its fullest right now.

I wish this wasn't an issue that I felt compelled to obsess over. I would give anything to be one of the many women of this world for whom fertility is not a luxury, it is a normal reality. I know that many people out there would read my blog and think I was ungrateful to be yearning for a second baby when they themselves have not even been blessed with one. I completely understand that and I don't want you to think I'm not grateful. I know what I have and I know how lucky this makes me and if Nickie is my only child for the rest of life that makes me so very lucky anyway. But it is so hard to take that while people like me get told to just be grateful for what we have, be content and move on, there are so many women out there who are not forced to settle for that. They can have 5, 6, 7 babies etc... as many as they want yet I have some sort of restriction on me that seems so unfair. I am yet to know what God is trying to teach me and I am sure there must be a purpose in this but it doesn't mean that some days it is not hard to take. I am not saying that those women don't deserve to have lots of babies either, far from it! I am just commenting that I wish sometimes I was one of them!