How much our lives will change is the big question, and something I've been struggling with personally, as well as discussing at length with Siobhan.
The past year has been an interesting process, and one that I wouldn't take back -- no matter how difficult it was at times. It's very hard to know when you're ready to have kids. I would say I still don't fully know, but I trust my wife and I trust myself, and I know that we're going to do the right thing when that baby opens its eyes for the first time. Last January, Siobhan and I decided we were ready. Or at least, we thought we'd be ready after the baby cooked for 9 months. So we went for it. It was a little bit of a roller coaster, much more so for Siobhan than it was for me, but of course she's the most important thing I have, and I need her to be by my side, so it affected me too.
First, she dealt with some complications getting off of birth control. It's never been fully determined what went wrong there, but it took her 3-4 months before she was able to ovulate regularly after getting off of birth control. In the meantime, she dealt with a scare of cysts and the fear that her ovulation was never going to happen naturally. Luckily, with the help of her doctor, everything got better after those first 4 months.
But still, we had no baby. I'm not an expert on how long it usually takes, but we've heard all kinds of stories from those around us as far as how long it took them. Some it took a year, some it took a week. We've heard of friends who determined that they were unable to have kids naturally, so they adopted, only to end up pregnant after all. Our bodies -- particularly women's bodies -- do some truly amazing things, and it's something I don't think about and appreciate as often as I should.
This past September, something happened. We found out that Siobhan had actually gotten pregnant, under the worst of circumstances. We only found out once the baby had already been lost. It's hard to describe what that feels like. We don't even fully know how long it had lasted, maybe a few weeks, but for a couple trying to have a child, it was a shock to have the first positive test be a bad thing. My heart broke for Siobhan, because she was devastated. I tried to hold it together a little bit, and I told her that I believed when it was going to happen, it was going to be at the right time. It was insensitive, given what she had just gone through. As the husband you're put in a much easier position, and I wasn't aware enough of what was going through her mind. This is definitely one case where, as men, we truly don't understand.
Siobhan's reaction to the miscarriage was pretty astonishing. She was upset, and rightly so, but after a few days, she had renewed excitement. At least we had proof that it worked, even for a short time. She's made an effort (and I have as well) to not be ashamed or embarrassed about what happened. Miscarriages are always dealt with in a hush-hush way, which is understandable given how sensitive of a topic it is, but at the same time, they happen. After going through that experience, I feel strongly that no woman should feel ashamed or held responsible for losing a child. It is not a reflection of you, in any way. So many things have to go right for people to conceive, so if something goes wrong, it can't be controlled. (I should say that many of our friends have shared with us their personal stories, each one a little more devastating than the last, especially after several weeks or months of pregnancy. For us to be where we are now, having had a few ultrasounds and getting to actually see the little Koch, I can only imagine a fraction of what that must feel like.)
At this point, I'm going to make a quick tangent to address something that happened between Siobhan and me. In the couple months after the miscarriage, Siobhan internalized a lot of the concerns and problems she was having. She was upset that it was taking so long, and she thought that it was somehow her fault, physically. I can understand why she didn't tell me these things, because they're upsetting to talk about, and she didn't want to make me feel worse. But to any women out there trying with their own partners, I just want to say that I think you should open up. For those of us on my side of things, ALL we want is to know what you're thinking, what you're feeling, whether you're excited about it, or nervous; whether you're ready to carry a child or if you want to wait longer; all of that. Eventually she and I talked it out, and at least from my perspective, I think it was a good thing.
So, a few months after that, everything lined up right and the little zygote found its place, and on New Year's Eve, we found out for real.
It's been a fun time since then. We told our parents, and a couple weeks later our sisters and brothers. We told our close friends and the people we see regularly -- many of our friends who lit the path towards parenthood ahead of us, and to whom we are indebted for their support. We've had a couple ultrasounds and seen the baby's arms and legs and future gymnastic skills. We creepily ogle at parents on the sidewalks and in restaurants who are using interesting looking harnesses, or pushing strollers that we're interested in trying out. We started mapping out how we're going to move all our furniture around, and had a new closet put into the house so we didn't push it off until September.
I think right now is the fun stage. Siobhan has just the tiniest little belly (and she told me to write this ASAP because she's worried it's going to start showing in all her instagram photos -- this is 2017, folks) and even though we've seen the baby through the ultrasound, it still seems far enough away that we shouldn't start getting anxious.
But at some point, we're going to be there. It's going to be a couple weeks away, and we're going to say to ourselves, "How did this happen so fast??!" I've been grateful, in many ways, to have had this last year. I know it might sound odd to say, considering how stressful it was, and how many things we dealt with that were upsetting. Maybe Siobhan would tell you different, because her body was going through a lot. But the end result is that we got through those things. And we're not heroes here, I'm not suggesting we overcame the greatest challenges known to man. I'm just saying, we were faced with some pretty difficult things after having what had been a pretty awesome few years. And we got through them. And we learned a lot about ourselves and about each other, and hopefully prepared ourselves better for the discussions that are going to come for the next 20, 30, 40 years.
Also, we got to enjoy the last year of just us. I was a little bit leery of buying a house and trying to have a baby in such quick succession, mostly because I make things out to be financial decisions when they're more than just that. But we did get to experience both the joys and frustrations of owning a home, in our new (or not-so-new anymore) home town. We had family and friends visit, we took trips just the two of us (okay okay, you know us too well -- we took Alfie too), and Siobhan was able to accomplish a hell of a lot at her school, even through the stress she was dealing with at home.
Even after that baby arrives, we're going to make an effort to still be the same people. I say make an effort because almost everyone warns us it's quite hard to accomplish. We love being outside and being active, and even though that means we'll probably have to coordinate our schedules or buy a really good jogging stroller, we want to keep doing that. We want to love Alfie just as much, if not more, than we already do. We want to be involved in our neighborhood, which is developing very fast and bound to go in some interesting directions. We still want to eat some good food, even if it means becoming much more familiar with take-out. It's going to be difficult to maintain all these things, but it's important to stay well rounded as people to help us be better parents.
Lastly, I will just say that, we have had some of the best role models in this process to look towards. Some of the greatest people we know have become parents in the last few years, and it is truly invaluable to be able to look to them, the things they've done, to help us shape the future we see for ourselves. So thank you.
TL;DR: Baby is due September 9th. We're not finding out the sex. (Or I might, but I won't tell.)
