You may have noticed it has been a little while since my last update or posting any new content. This one may be a bit scattered as I am trying to get my thoughts down in words so I apologise in advance if it doesn’t entirely make sense. I wanted to write this because there may be other intended parents out there who have gone through the same.
The unintentional break I found myself having is the ‘inspiration’ for this article. I’ve been somewhat all over the place for the last couple of months, particularly since we found out that we are going to be having a daughter! I chose not to write about it at the time as I think it was pretty well documented, what with the Channel Mum live broadcast and Lisa’s wonderful behind the scenes video. As you can imagine, Marc and I were (and still are) absolutely overjoyed to discover that we have a little girl on the way. Neither of us really had a preference about whether it was a boy or girl so we are just happy everything is going so well.
What I hadn’t prepared for was the come down from that emotional high. Once the news of our soon to arrive princess settled in it I also realised that it was the last big bit of news until she actually gets here. Aside from another scan or two, the next big moment would be when we get to meet her. At the time of the gender reveal, Lisa was just over 16 weeks pregnant which meant we were not even halfway through the pregnancy. That thought was quite daunting. We had been quite lucky in that those first 16 weeks seemed to have been filled with milestones and the like. There was always the next thing within the next couple of weeks which had the effect of making the time fly. In fact, that begun even before Lisa fell pregnant, what with the inseminations and so on. Time had been flying along ever since we matched. Once we discovered the gender everything settled down for the long haul as it were. I am not going to lie, I have struggled with that.
Part of that struggle has been because in my mind, I should be the happiest man on Earth right now, or more to the point, I have absolutely every reason to be happy. I am aware of how lucky I am and how incredible this whole journey has been. I am going to be a father and that is the most amazing thing. Yet, after our 'gender-reveal' news sunk in, I began to feel exhausted. To say that the last 18 months has been an emotional rollercoaster is a cliched understatement. I have been riding high for so long I guess a bit of a lull was inevitable? It almost felt like I’d completely run out of emotions leaving me exhausted and a little bit downbeat. With each little milestone the excitement and sheer happiness continued to grow and then all of a sudden those milestone moments seemed to have stopped. The next milestone would be her arriving which felt like an eternity away. Perhaps I was naive to think I would spend the entire pregnancy on a fluffy cloud of positivity and happiness?
As a result of this odd happiness come down, I started to feel really unmotivated. Everything had all been about becoming a father and preparing for the babies arrival. I had knuckled down and got the spare room converted into a nursery really early on, mainly because I am impatient and because I needed something relating to the baby to work on and to channel my energy. Pretty much everything is now ready aside from our daughter actually being here. At that point, I was struggling to find motivation for anything.
It was then that I also started to feel guilty. Like I say, mentally, I am aware of just how lucky I am and therefore how happy I should be so I started to feel guilty that I wasn’t entirely in that place. Effectively, I was feeling bad for the fact I was feeling down which just added to the lack of motivation and feeling down. I’m aware that it sounds a lot like complaining, especially when I have no real cause for complaint. Yeah, it doesn’t make a great deal of sense to me either.
I have literally just had to tell myself to suck it up and get on with it. It’s not like I’m the one actually carrying the child having sleepless nights, backache, headaches and all the other ailments that can affect a pregnant lady. I should be grateful for that although part of me wishes I could experience more of that.
Obviously I spoke about how I was feeling (rather reluctantly as I didn’t want to come off as having a whinge or being ungrateful) but as Lisa reminded me, it was always going to be an unusual time for us, because we aren’t there everyday, living the pregnancy. We usually visit every couple of weeks so I didn’t really think I was missing anything exactly, but as Lisa said, it’s the everyday things that occur which we aren’t always experiencing so even if it’s on a subconscious level, we are aware we missing some things perhaps.
As always, Lisa has been incredible. She will roll her eyes at that, but she has. Everyone has busy lives, least of all her, with 3 children and a husband of her own, but she always finds time to chat with me, answering questions or just gossiping. She makes me laugh so frequently it’s untrue and even when her hormones are up the wall because she has a hitchhiker on board she has been so positive about this pregnancy. I am aware of how blessed Marc and I are to have found Lisa and her family which in itself helps make me smile again. Regardless of the pregnancy, she has become a very close and wonderful friend. I remember saying all the way back when we matched that Marc and I wanted to make sure that she enjoyed this journey too and that we didn’t want her to ever regret helping us.
We also attended the annual surrogacy meet-up a couple of weeks ago and it was another fantastic day, if a little surreal. It was very strange to acknowledge that last year we were attending our first event and we were meeting everyone for the first time. This time around we have the knowledge that we are expecting a daughter!! It was lovely catching up with everyone again. The event certainly went a long way in making me concentrate on all the positive stuff too.
Every time I find myself struggling or growing impatient again I’ve taken to trying to do something baby related, whether it is finding more things we need to buy, looking at toys or clothes or just researching parenthood it really helps to remind me of everything that is to come. I wouldn’t say it completely holds off my impatience so much, but it helps. After all, the last thing we would actually want is for our little one to be impatient too!
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