Expectations v Reality

hello bloggers & bloggees!

I’ve been thinking for awhile about how to word this next post. I don’t want to sound ungrateful or negative. My DH & I are so lucky in so many ways. We live in a beautiful country, we are mainly healthy (aside from my autoimmune issues), we have happy and supportive friends and family. We are so lucky to have been born into such privileged lives.

So I guess the next part is not so much a cry for pity or sympathy, but I just wanted to explain my feelings of disappointment, which obviously stem from a difference in my expectations, vs. reality. And it’s not even entirely conscious expectations. When I am feeling at my lowest (and unfortunately depression does go hand in hand with my conditions, so my lowest can get pretty low), sometimes it’s for no reason at all. Sometimes though, when I really think about it, it’s because of what I feel that I’m missing out on.

And that has everything to do with expectations. I think being aware of that can sometimes help to pull me out of a deep funk, just by reminding myself that in this case, my expectations are too high. It’s not a perfect world, it’s not fair, but I also don’t have to feel guilty for feeling down. I just have to acknowledge why and try to let go & move on.

Really, it’s probably a good thing to constantly be surprised by what the world throws at you, especially when TTC. After all, as any parent will happily tell you (and pretty much every new parent I know had said this at one point or another) NOTHING can prepare you for kids. No matter what you expect, it will be different. You will be more exhausted and your life will change more than you could ever imagine. If you’re a parent, I imagine you might have said something similar…

So, here are the two main expectations that I had going into this that are causing me a bit of grief atm. And here is how I am coping with the realisation that it’s not going to happen the way I thought – hopefully if anyone else is going through this, it might help?

1. Being able to surprise our friends and family with the news that we are expecting

This one is really tough for me to let go of and even now I’m clinging to the hope I’ll be able to do this with our parents. I had a whole plan in my head for the announcement and I was so excited.

So in the interest of making lemonade, how do I let go of this and turn it around into a positive? I am so much closer with my best friend already, being able to talk to her about this honestly had opened up a whole new aspect of our friendship and made me appreciate her so much more! I am sure the same will happen with my family when it comes to that.

 

2. Thinking I would already have a baby.

Obviously this is the biggie. I thought by now that I would either be heavily preggers or have a baby of my own. This is pretty tough – buuuut on the plus side, I did go out in the last week and eat unpasteurised cheese and processed meats and drink wine and beer. I slept for as long as I wanted when I was sick and had time to myself. DH and I have more time to save up for our dream house and are going on a holiday soon.

That’s just a couple, but this post is already getting pretty long so I’ll leave it there for now.

Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I now wake up singing to birds and seeing sunshine & rainbows, thinking ‘yay, how lucky I am to have had difficulty TTC’ – I’m just saying this is one way I have found that helps me to cope with some of the negative thought cycles throughout this experience.

ta for now

x