These last few days I seem to have clicked over into a pretty good place and have really felt thankful for the three things I have mentioned in today's post title. I thought in honor of this I would just do an update post on what's happening in my life at the moment and at the end I would like to share a really special story about something that happened to me the other day which I am still reeling about. Before you ask, no I'm not pregnant but it is something really amazing.
I know I try and maintain my anonymity as best as I can but I thought I might include a pic or two and I've decided I'm comfortable doing so. Here goes:
Nickie: First and formost I will start with my little boy, the absolute light of my life. He is growing so fast, has three teeth and a fourth one has just come through ever so slightly but you can only see a tiny bit of white. He says 4 words: Dada, Nan, Bub and as of last week Mama, which was an absolute joy to hear I can tell you. He is just over 9 months old and we are gearing up for his first Christmas in December. I am extremely excited about this. I am looking forward to decorating the tree with him as even though he can't really help much he is very intrigued by visual things so I think he will love the lights and all the tinsel. I really want to take him to see Santa at the shopping centre as well and get a photo. My favourite time of day with him is when he has just woken up first thing in the morning. He is always so incredibly happy then and in a silly playful mood, it is really beautiful. Below is a pic of him waking up from his nap yesterday.
Brad: Nothing much to report on my husband other than we are in a great place right now. We just celebrated our 3 year wedding anniversary last week, and even though we were still not feeling great from our stomach virus, we did still get to go for our night away and had a great time. Other than that all I can say is he continues to be a wonderful source of strength and love for me and I'm very lucky to have such a wonderful husband.
Rhea: My SIL is now 32 weeks pregnant and looking and feeling great. They have only just started doing all their preparation for the baby's arrival. I think after losing their first pregnancy last year they were really heartbroken and not wanting to tempt fate by getting excited too early. Rhea was telling me yesterday that the car seat has been installed and that she had purchased a painting that she saw of a giraffe for the nursery. She sounded extremely happy. Fingers crossed for a safe delivery and a healthy happy bubs in early December. Baby is due Dec 11. Rhea has been a great support to me these past few months since I miscarried, because she has been there before and is familiar with all the emotions involved. I don't like to talk about it too much with her now though because I want her to enjoy her happy time.
My sister: It appears that my sister is indeed pregnant as I might have mentioned to you before that we were unsure if she genuinely was expecting, or whether she had invented the story. People might think we were harsh for thinking she would lie and make up such an important thing, but she has made up things like cancer scares, illnesses, friends that she has met who turned out to not be real, jobs that she has gotten that have also turned out to be fake. The list goes on. She told us two years ago that she and her husband had bought a house. She even took us to see the house complete with a sold sign. She told us very lengthy stories like how it was walking distance to the kid's school, how it took only 3 minutes to walk to the shops etc. We bought her gifts for the house, like table runners and towels and saucepans. The story kept going all the way up to supposed settlement day when she then had to finally admit that they had not actually bought the house at all. This is why it is a great disappointment to me to find that the pregnancy is real, as I believe my sister is very unwell psychologically and I feel sad that another child is being subjected to that kind of life. Both her kids are struggling at the moment. They live with their Dad now. They fluctuate between being completely off the rails and unruly and being quiet and withdrawn. I have included the update on my sister more to ask you all for your continued prayers for my sister and the baby. While I have made my choice to not have contact with her, I still pray she gets the help she needs, that she can get herself well and together and that the baby will be happy and healthy and the same for her two kids already here. Also just to let you know that she is due late Feb apparently. I think I will struggle with this at the time because my due date for the baby I lost would have been March 6. I hope I can deal with that ok.
Mum and Dad: Last time I spoke about them I told you all about the whole Nickie's car seat incident which blew up into a big family feud. It was really ridiculous and I still don't understand why it somehow ended up being my fault. It has all blown over now and we are all back to our old selves. Mum still isn't minding Nickie regularly although she does help me out from time to time which is great. I must say I am still a little annoyed by the whole situation but i think it has turned out to be a good thing. It has prompted me to be more assertive with my folks. My parents are very attached to me, I suppose because of my sister, and they can be a bit possessive of me. An example of this is for Christmas every year I have to tiptoe around and make sure they are not offended in any way by us spending too much time with Brad's family and not enough with them. If for example we leave their house too early on Christmas day to start going over to Brad's to see his family, we will definitely hear about it. And not just in passing it will be a big "they got half an hour extra of your time than we did" rant. For many years this has caused me a lot of stress. The car seat incident has really brought it home to me that while I love them and 80% of the time they are fabulous, the other 20% of the time they can be really unfairly demanding. This has prompted me to make some drastic changes for the better. For example, last week I laid down the law in regards to this Christmas. I called my parents and said that Christmas is supposed to be special and relaxing and that every Christmas my day is ruined by keeping everyone happy and travelling in the car to all different places to see every person. Now that we have a child we have decided we don't want the stress of that for now and that everyone is invited to our place for either lunch or dinner, whatever they preferred. I am going to cook a turkey and ham and have everything ready for people to show up. I said "If you show up for lunch, great. If you show up for dinner, great. If you just want to come for an hour or two for coffee and go somewhere else for lunch or dinner, great. But we will be here and are not leaving the house." It went over really well and has eliminated a lot of stress for me that is usually there keeping me awake in the holiday season.
Friends: I have such wonderful friends I am very lucky. Whether its my work friends or you guys here in blog land, or my friends from other aspects of my life you have all been so caring. An old friend of mine, Jack, that I used to play in a band with in my early 20's took me and Nickie out for lunch yesterday and it was such fun. It just highlighted to me the importance of good friendship and how it can get you through the toughest of times.
Lastly and most importantly, there is God.
My faith has wavered at different points in my life, but I have really felt God there for me during these last few months since having the miscarriage. Even so, I still don't go to church. I used to but during the infertility I really had a falling out with God and stopped going and I have kind of been too ashamed to go back. Lately I have been feeling like I want and need to go back to church and have been trying to work up the courage to go to a local one. My old church was where we used to live which is almost an hours drive so I would like to find one closer to home. I always get nervous about going somewhere new where there will be no one I know so I haven't worked up the courage yet.
The other day, something wonderful happened which made me marvel at how great God really is, and how loving. I have really struggled with the fact that the baby I lost is someone I will never know. I wonder whether it was a boy or a girl, whether it would have loved the water like Nickie does, wther it would have been a good sleeper. It keeps me awake at night knowing that I will never know who that baby was and who it would have become. Brad and I decided to plant something in our garden as a tribute and we decided also that it was only fair that Nickie got a tree too. In our garden right outside of our kitchen window, so whenever I make my coffee of a morning, or cook dinner in the evening it's the first thing I see, are two crab apple trees. One for Nickie and one for our angel baby. When we bought them they were not flowering so the only way of telling what colour the blossoms would be was by the label on the plant. We chose a red blossom for Nickie that had flecks of dark purple through them - so dark that they look blue. That was as close as we could get to a "boy coloured" blossom. For our angel we chose soft yellow, not knowing if we had a little boy or girl up in heaven. I have been praying lately for God to give me peace that I will never know whether our baby was a boy or a girl. Then one day this week I woke up and made my coffee, looked out the kitchen window and saw that the buds on our baby's "yellow" blossom had finally opened up. But look what I saw!!!:
PINK!!! The plant had the wrong label on it when we chose it and we ended up with a pink one! Maybe this is God's way of telling me something about my baby, so that I can know one small little detail about who my baby was. That is how I am taking it, and I can't tell you how much peace that little detail has given me. God is amazing and I am so thankful.
I wish you all a wonderful week. And apologies for my bad pic posting skills, I'm still learning how to insert the pics in my posts!
