Enjoying Life Before/Without Children

I make it a point to enjoy my life no matter the circumstances. I choose to have as much fun as possible and I choose to love my life. As I stated in my last post when I talked about my miscarriage, my husband and I have such an awesome relationship and so much fun together that we can accept having to live childfree if it is necessary. Now remember I do have a 13 year old stepson so we are not completely childfree, but he does not live with us so most of the year we are childfree and there is little we can do about it.

I like to remember the things in my life that I can enjoy, especially things that I can only enjoy until or if ever I can get pregnant and have a baby. Things like sleeping in late on the weekends, or getting tipsy one night if I feel like it. One time at Mother’s Day I even ran off with my mom to Florida on a whim. When I think about living childfree I think of the vacations we will be able to take, the romantic places we will go. Until now those have all been farfetched dreams, because as much as I would like to go to Hawaii with my awesome husband I have been working in minimum wage jobs with no room for advancement and not even getting 40 hours a week. However, I just got a state secretary job and he just got a promotion so things are going to change. Of course until that money piles up enough to fund these great vacations we have to have our fun in other cheap/free ways. So we have taken to going to the creek every once in awhile and swimming.

This past weekend we went to this creek with some of my husband’s brothers and sisters who were visiting for the weekend. My husband’s cousin and his son who live next door to us also went. One day there were some men jumping off the bridge, and they showed Danny and Nate the right place to jump from where you won’t hit bottom. This time Nate and Danny went back up on the bridge and Nate jumped in the right place and loved it. It took Danny several false starts and a lot of time thinking about it, and his 15 yr old jumping for the second time that day before he decided to go for it.

The next time we went back my husband and I got there later than everybody else, and as we were walking down from the road Nate was walking back up to jump again (after having done it a couple times that day already) and asks my husband if he was jumping. My husband says “no way, I jumped off a bridge once I don’t ever have to do it again.” So I told Nate, “wait, I’m coming”. I gave my husband my camera and told him exactly what time to take the picture, and went on back up to the street with Nate to jump. Nate jumped first and then I climbed over the railing and looked down, and made the jump from 30 feet above the water with very little hesitation. I had done all my debating with myself and deciding long before I went up on the bridge so there was little to think about once I was up there. However, once I was in the air I was TERRIFIED. I was scared to death once I was in midair and I couldn’t bring myself to move my legs into the straight up and down position so that my feet would go straight into the water, and I hit the water in kind of a sitting position smacking the back of my legs hard on the water. Even so I think I would do it again. I would try to be more conscious of the way I went down so maybe I don’t get any more giant bruises on the back of my legs, but I am glad I did it and I think I would do it again.

That's me! My husband got a great shot!

And that’s what life is about. You have to take chances and do things that are fun. This certainly isn’t something I would have been able to do while pregnant, and I probably wouldn’t have even been able to be at the creek that day if I had a young baby. It’s not something I could have done if I had a young child, because what if that child wanted to do it because mommy did it? I wouldn’t allow a young child to make that jump, though while we were there that day after I jumped there was a family with a 4 year old boy wearing a life vest that jumped. I just wouldn’t let one of my children make that jump, and its hard to tell a kid they can’t jump because it’s not safe, but mommy can jump, its safe for her. So basically this is something I could only do because I am childless, and I plan to continue to do fun things like this. I plan ongoing skydiving one day, I have always wanted to do that. I love my life because I choose to, and I try to spend as little time as possible wallowing in the pain and depression that is caused by my infertility. There are times when it bubbles up and consumes me, but I try as hard as I can to push it away and get rid of it. I will not let my infertility control me or make my decisions for me.