I chose out of my list of reminders to write about pregnancy.
I love children. I love being a mother. This has not always been the case. When I was just about to turn 11 years old my youngest brother was born. None of my siblings and I were very happy about it. I remember the general feeling being something like, "really, another one!" Most of the time from when he was born until I left for college I felt very responsible for his upbringing and was always responsible for him when the parents were out of the house. At the time this was something that I didn't really think about I just did it.
I remember back when I was very young, I must have been 4 or 5 when my other brother would have been about 2, that I used to pay very close attention to how to change his diaper and I even remember doing it by myself for the very first time and proudly showing my mother. (who then had to redo it because I had pinned it too loose. :) ) I remember being very proud about being able to do it all by myself and then even cleaning off the used one in the toilet. (This was back in the days of cloth diapers.) You would think that my mothering of this sibling would have continued past diaper changing but it didn't. I don't actually have very many memories of Tim growing up. I do remember always trying to keep up with my 2 older brothers. Looking back I think Tim must have had a very lonely childhood. Especially after he told me once that he always thought I was purposefully not talking to him on the bus on the way to school. I've always lumped him in with my other younger brothers but that definitely wasn't fair for him since the other 2 are so much farther apart in age.
Jeremy has always been a whole other animal from the rest of us. Maybe that's because by the time he was born the rest of us were too "grown up" and "dignified" to play "childish" games. I remember him always being full of energy and even following me around. I remember complaining to mom about it trying to get him away from me and she just said something like, "he follows you because he likes you." I remember wishing he would go away and never come back. I really don't have many memories of Jeremy until after I left for college.
Now I come back to Paul. I remember feeling that he was always being neglected. He cried a lot & it didn't seem like anyone cared to figure out why. My theory is that his primary love language is physical touch because he always wanted to be held and is always attacking me with hugs when I see him now. I remember feeling a connection to him because I felt neglected and I didn't want him to feel the same way. By this point the only time I got to hang out with my older brothers is when I convinced them to let me play video games with them which wasn't very fun because they were always better than me. I came to feel very close to Paul and considered myself his 2nd mother. It was definitely me who made him after school snacks or made sure he had food to eat on Saturday afternoons. Mom only ever made dinner for the family, everyday of the week, including weekends. It wasn't until a couple years later, when I was in high school, I realized that Tim and Jeremy needed food too and started helping them with snacks and lunches.
Even at that age I was a poor sleeper and I remember Paul always waking me up at night so I told mom to just keep his crib in my room that way he would wake me up sooner and I could come and get them, which then evolved in me not even bothering to wake them up and just feeding him or changing him myself since there was no point in everyone being awake in the night for 1 baby. As a result of this I came to understand him better than anyone else & I could usually understand what he needed when he cried. I remember the first time I ever said "I Love You" to anyone was to Paul one day when he was crying and crying and everyone else had given up trying to find out why. I remember whispering that to him in his ear and telling him I wanted him to know that at least one person loved him & I didn't want him to grow up not knowing that like I had.
Unfortunately there was only so much I could do for the kid having to go to school everyday and I soon turned into a teenager myself who resented being straddled with the responsibility of a child that wasn't mine. Especially as he got older he got to be very out of control because no one was disciplining him (or any of us really) and I didn't feel like it was my place to since I wasn't his mother. Tension between the siblings grew as Matthew and Andrew now in their mid-late teens were still stuck sharing everything since they were the oldest 2 bothers. Andrew also hated how much noise Paul made and they were always fighting. Jeremy and Paul had also started fighting pretty regularly because they had to share everything even though there was a pretty big age difference. Someday I'm going to find out from Tim his take on our childhood. I remember people thinking we were twins but because we were different genders we didn't have to share anything, but he did have to share with Paul & Jeremy.
I was pretty close with my older brothers in high school because they would drive me to school and band. I didn't start growing close to my younger brothers, ironically, until after I started college. I remember coming home for breaks and being very lonely. By this point my oldest brother was married and my other older brother was away on a mission and never wrote me back when I would write letters to him. One day I realized that I didn't even know my 3 younger brothers and that was very weird for me so I decided to get to know them the next time I was at my parents house.
I remember talking to Tim and Jeremy in the dim light of my room for hours. I remember talking about our parents and growing up. Tim didn't always join in, he's never been much of a talker, probably because he's never had anyone to talk to. I remember for a couple years we wouldn't let Paul join in because he was too young but then we let him once and realized he was actually able to have intelligent conversation. This is when we started developing inside jokes with one another and discovered that we were usually thinking the exact same thing, we had the same train of thought and often finished each others sentences or even realized we didn't need to because if we couldn't explain something we were all already thinking the same thing so we didn't have to. Actually this mostly applied to Tim, Jeremy, and I. Paul had a much smaller knowledge base and we did usually have to explain things to him but he was often thinking the same thing just in smaller terms.
One of the most gratifying things about the experience was learning that Jeremy was mature beyond his years and often had gospel and even political discussions with his middle school friends. They were all mature, and I felt better knowing they would all take care of each other in life. (Sadly they have not kept in very good touch after graduating high school.) At this point is when I started to feel like a mother again but to all 3 of them.
Being in college and active in the YSA program there was a lot of pressure to get married. I never felt like this would be good for me, I already had 3 kids and I did not need any more. I had also done a lot of babysitting my teen years and into college so I was getting pretty burnt out on kids. I was very anti-marriage and something that's not related but is interesting: I never felt comfortable around boys who I wasn't related to even though when I was around relatives I was very comfortable being "one of the guys". I never even made any guy friends in college except for 2 of my roommate's fiances. In a lot of ways I had a lot of growing up to do even though I had already been a mother.
Now fast forward a couple years to me graduating from college and thinking I may be ready for boys in my life. Well, I wasn't too sure about how I felt about boys but I could definitely tell my biological clock was, as they say, "ticking". By this point I had been on dates but still didn't feel comfortable with guys. Eventually I moved to Texas and discovered that the boys here are much different. Or at least the guys in my single's branch. I felt pretty comfortable with all but 2 or 3 of them and even though I felt practically no pressure to get married or date I found myself thinking of possible matches of the guys I knew. Well, as you know, I did marry Marley and one of the great things about him is that I always felt like I could be completely natural and at ease when I was around him. I felt like I had known him my entire life but at the same time was always wanting to learn more about him.
Now that we are married a topic that has come up a lot has been having children, especially since by the time we got married I felt like my alarm clock had already gone off and I was now very late. We discuss it over and over again and always come back to the disappointing answer of "not yet". Well, I think it is pretty lucky that Marley made me promise him that I would not stop taking my birth control without telling him, otherwise I would have done this already. I had it stuck in my head that we really were ready and Marley was just afraid. I started praying that Marley would have a change of heart or that I would get pregnant anyway. At least until 2 months ago...
This story actually starts with my previously mentioned dentist woes. I knew I had teeth problems but had not felt comfortable with going to a dentist other than my dentist in Indiana and it wasn't a problem because although I did have cavities none of them were bothering me and I didn't even know which teeth they were in. Last year I made an appointment at my Indiana dentist to have the issues fixed when we were there on vacation. It went great but I was only slightly concerned that on one of the fillings that they repaired they hadn't drilled out the old one and made a new bigger filling, I completely trusted my dentist, he's always been wonderful. Well, starting about 4-5 months ago that tooth started to get sensitive when I would chew things with it, the weird thing is that it usually only hurt when I chewed soft things not hard as you would expect for a sensitive tooth. Still I didn't think about it very much as it didn't happen very often but I didn't realize that it was happening more often until it started to be occasionally sensitive to cold. Then about 2 months ago one day it just decided to start hurting in general whether I was eating or not but it was intermittent and not very painful so I just figured it would go away or if it didn't I would see about getting in at my Indiana dentist when we went down for vacation because they might just redo the filling for free.
Well, this plan didn't work out so well. Day by day the pain got exponentially worse until it was a constant pain and worse when I chewed with it. This started on a Monday and by Friday night it was hard to think from the pain. It was too late to make an appointment in Indiana, we weren't scheduled to go for another 3 weeks anyway and I knew I couldn't hold out. I also knew that this would probably end in a root canal since I had had this kind of pain before when I was a kid on the other side of my mouth which eventually ended in a root canal. I think I was a little hysterical even because I knew root canals were expensive and by now I had learned that medical expenses in Texas were much more than in my home town. Marley offered to drive me to Mexico but I was still worried about the quality of work that would be done there. I didn't know what to do, I was out of time and had nowhere to turn.
This is when Marley remembered that there was a Mormon doctor somewhere in town that offered free dental exams for kids planning for missions and that was where he had gone for his. We tried to find out where his office was but neither Marley nor his mom could remember the name and they weren't even sure who would know. Marley then remembered that a childhood friend had married a dentist and that we had actually been at their house a month or so before for her grandfather's birthday (a whole other story in itself). I was very glad to hear that because I remember him being nice when I met him and he had to be good or they wouldn't be able to live in the house they had. We looked up the office and called to book an appointment. The problem was that he was on vacation and by this point I was willing to settle on one of the other dentists at his office reasoning that such a nice guy wouldn't chose to work with someone who wasn't. We managed to get an appointment for that Monday. (If you want to know how my weekend went I'll let you know, it was quite an experience.) Marley took me in and I called in to work not knowing what would happen at the appointment. The dentist was great. He was really nice and put me at ease, I was willing to let him loose in my mouth. They took an x-ray, asked all the standard questions twice and confirmed that I would in fact need a root canal. They drilled out my tooth, took out all the nerves and gave me a prescription for antibiotics to take until my next appointment when they would finish the root canal. Every single person we spoke to at the dentist's office informed us and/or reminded us that we would need alternate "protection" because the antibiotics would counteract birth control pills.
After discussing the matter Marley and I decided to save some money and I would not take my pills for the month and we would just use condoms during the time of the month it would be "risky". For a week of that month we would be at my parents house anyway and I'm sure everyone is familiar with the "calming" effects of staying at your parents house. Everything was fine until the 5th of July when we were on our way with several of my family members to Holiday World and I discovered something while going to the bathroom. It was very light and hadn't even gotten onto my underwear but I was not at all prepared for it, it was a week early and I didn't have any of the necessary supplies. Luckily there was a Walmart about a block away. Normally I don't shop at Walmart and have sort of black-listed it but this was definitely an emergency. I bought a pair of regular underwear and pads and liners. The next day there was not a trace of anything. Neither was there the next week when I was expecting it.
This is when I started to get worried but I didn't want to say anything because I had been very confident in assuring Marley that everything would be fine with the plan and there would be no hangups. I started to worry that I had miscalculated the days. I double checked the calender and searched Google, no, high school health had not failed me, I had done that math right. I also wondered if my cycle may have altered by the fact that I didn't take the pills that month. Before I started taking them I had always had a much longer cycle but just assumed that there wouldn't be that much of a difference with it being the 1st month not taking them after having been taking them for so long. I recalculated based on what my cycle used to be and going by that cycle I still had another week. By Friday of that week however, Marley and I were both worried enough to warrant taking a pregnancy test. I actually already had one that I had gotten as a gift at a couple's baby shower. Saturday morning I couldn't sleep and took the test-negative. This time around I was slightly disappointed but Marley was very relieved. I started to think that maybe we weren't as ready as I thought we were to have kids. At least not like this. Still hoping that Marley would realize that he was actually ready for children.
The next Monday there was still no sign of my old friend. By Wednesday I was in a panic again worried that I either was pregnant and the child would grow up thinking that we thought it had ruined our lives or that I wasn't pregnant and there was something much worse wrong with me. I made Marley drive me to 3 different stores before I finally let him buy me another test. He wouldn't let me wait until the morning, again negative. The next day I made an appointment at Planned Parenthood for Tuesday to talk with a nurse.
After talking with the nurse about the situation, showing her my calendar, having to tell her when the last time Marley and I had sex, she concluded that I could have a pregnancy test done today using a blood sample or I could wait until Thursday and do another urine test. I decided to go with the blood test. An hour later-again negative, but the nurse had said that I could take another urine test in a week if I still hadn't started my period "if you want to, just to be sure"...This did not make me very confident in the results. I thought to myself, what was the point in taking the test if I couldn't be sure. During the hour Marley and I were waiting for the results we had a long talk about what the results would mean for us. Have I ever mentioned how much I love my husband? He finally came to terms with the fact that it would not be a bad thing if I was pregnant, I finally came to terms with the fact that it would not be a bad thing if I wasn't. I also came to terms with the fact that I was scared about being pregnant and that it didn't make me a bad person for not wanting to be. I was still worried about what it meant that I wasn't pregnant and still not having a period but since Marley and the nurse weren't very worried about it I tried not to be as well. A week later I still hadn't started my period but I was done spending money on it so we just waited. I finally started 2 days later, a full 3 weeks late.
Other notes on pregnancy:
It's on my list of things to do to speak with everyone I know who's had a baby and hear their experiences before we go through with the real thing. Also, after watching "The Business Of Being Born", which I highly recommend, I'm pretty sure I'm going to go with a home birth. I definitely don't want to be in a hospital, just the thought of it makes me uncomfortable. The only concern I have is whether I'll be able to continue normally living in the same place I gave birth in, and if not; what's the likelihood of someone letting me give birth at their house?
