Getting Over the Bitterness

I've been thinking a great deal about the kind of person I've become over the past several years.  My experience with infertility really changed the kind of person I was.  I used to be so selfless and thoughtful and caring.  All I lived for was the joy of making other people happy.  Then infertility happened.  When I saw that the world went on being happy while I began to suffer through heartache, the easiest thing for me to do was become bitter and separate myself from them.  It seemed to help me cope with my unhappiness while everyone else carried on with their lives as if they didn't even notice.  Bitterness gave me strength that I otherwise didn't have within me in order to go on with my life.  I wasn't the only one to develop this defense.  My husband also took it on, and we shared many stories with one another at the end of the day about how some other blissfully happy young couple with a baby crossed our path--again and again.  My husband was really the only person I knew who would genuinely grieve in sorrow with me when another person we knew announced their pregnancy.  I can't imagine what I would have done without his understanding and support. 

The thing is, after so many years of feeling that way, those feelings only got stronger.  Now, when our world was turned completely upside down with the shock of our own successful mystery pregnancy, and we are on the verge of becoming parents in something like two months, I can't help but struggle with the old feelings that are still very much alive in me and my husband.  Even still, when people mention something about their children or pregnancy or what have you, a tenseness occurs in my muscles that I can only blame my infertility for.  You see, I'm still bitter!  Even in my happiness, I still feel like my pregnancy is nothing like anyone else's because of the fact that it took me 9 years instead of 9 months.  I don't feel like anyone else can relate to that feeling, so it's hard to accept all the advise and support that is pouring in from all angles all of the sudden. 

But what I'm getting at is that I want to change.  I don't want to be this bitter person for the rest of my life.  It might have been an easy way to cope, but not anymore.  Now it just makes me feel awkward and confused.  I am so, so excited about this baby!  But the bitterness from my infertility is holding me down.  It's keeping me from being able to fully feel the excitement I should be allowing myself to feel.  Instead I'm just sort of floating through my pregnancy on some sort of lonely boat ride.  I don't feel comfortable talking to strangers about my pregnancy, or flaunting my pregnant self around in public.  It's like I'm afraid of hurting someone else the way I was hurt for so many years.  I want to wear a shirt that says this took me 9 years to create!

When the three closest people in my life started telling me one after the other that they didn't want to throw me a baby shower, I felt really bad.  It didn't hit me right away.  At first I had sympathy for their reasons for not wanting to do it, but after a while it began to sink in that these people are the closest people to me and none of them want to celebrate this miracle pregnancy that wasn't even supposed to be able to happen!  I didn't want to say anything, of course, for fear of being thought of as a self-centered a-hole, but I told my husband.  I felt like it was all my fault for being so bitter over the past decade of my life and unintentionally pushing the people I cared most about away from me.  I lost friendships and deep relationships that I had with family are only surface relationships now.  So, naturally, why would anyone want to throw me a baby shower?  Because of our selfishness and bitterness, it looks as though Mike & I are alone in this.  We're the only ones who are truly blown away by our miracle and the only ones who really want to celebrate it.  I can't blame anyone.  It's my own fault, but in my defense, I couldn't help having those feelings.  I wanted therapy after IVF failed it was so bad.  There really wasn't anything I could do consciously to fix the bitterness and hurt except to fulfill the hole in myself that was made by the inability to have children.  

Like I've said many times before, I know there is nothing that will ever take those painful years back, but like all grief, the rawness does fade with time.  I am working very hard at becoming a better person.  No one can expect to gain anything without giving a little of themselves first.  In my opinion, it is still so much more gratifying to give than to get.  It fills your heart with gladness when you know you've done a good thing for someone else, especially if they appreciated it.  It helps you become a better, happier person when you spend less time thinking about yourself and more time thinking about others.  Because when you help other people and show them how much you really care, suddenly that care is returned to you in the form of genuine appreciation and love for you.  

Being childless and hopeless was hard on us, especially because of the fact that we were unintentionally pushing loved ones away from us.  That hurt worse than the infertility it's self, but we didn't know how to fix that.  It was tiresome having to pretend we were happy when we were not.  Finally it just got easier to become recluse and not involve ourselves in anyone else's lives--especially when it came to happy events usually involving children.  I just mentally couldn't do it.  It was like being stabbed in the heart every time by their gloating selfish parents.  How could they be so heartless, I'd wonder?  Don't they realize that babies are an extremely sensitive subject for us?  I'd become angry inside and want to climb under a rock and hide from the world so I didn't have to subject myself to that kind of pain anymore.  I hated feeling like if I didn't show my happiness for someone else, they'd be hurt and angry at me.  But if I did, then I'd be hurt and angry at them!  It was a horrible cycle of madness.  It isn't that I disliked anyone because of their pregnancy and joy.  I wanted to be happy.  I wanted to feel what I would have felt if I hadn't been so hurt.  It was so difficult to make sense of my feelings that whenever I tried to express them to anyone, they would usually shake their heads and think I was being selfish and mean.  That hurt even more because I was struggling.  I was in a constant battle with my emotions, and only now at 7 months pregnant am I starting to gain control of these feelings of bitterness.  But I still think I'm living a huge dream, because there's no way I could have just gotten pregnant like I did and I still can't believe I'm experiencing this for real.  I can only hope that someday I will start to feel worthy of being halfway normal again. 

No Room for Baby

So, Mike & I are in a bit of a pickle.  Our pending baby has no room.  You'd think that after almost 9 years of waiting for baby that we'd have some sort of idea where to put it once it got here, but I suppose that was the least of our worries at the time. We figured that would work it's self out if it ever happened.

Almost as soon as we found out we were expecting, we decided that the best option would be to put our house on the market and buy a bigger one.  Interest is at an all time low right now and after a few calculations with our realtor, we realized we could actually afford a much nicer home now for the same monthly price that we're paying now than we could when we bought this place 4 years ago!  That sounded like a pretty sweet deal, so we signed our house on the market the first of January for the grand price of $99,000, not expecting to make much if any profit, but feeling it was worth a bigger home.  Now we understand that winter is a pretty terrible time to sell any house, but it's now almost mid-April and aside from the one open house we had in February, there have been only TWO people to look at the house so far.  Neither showed a lick of interest, obviously, as we never heard back.  

Our house then...

Our house now

When we bought this house 4 years ago, we were extremely limited in the amount of money we could spend and we were desperate to move out of my grandparent's basement.  Because of the fact that we had pets, no one in this small hick town would allow us to rent without paying out our hindquarters, so buying was our only option.  This little house was the best choice at the time.  It's a 2 bedroom, 1 bath home with only 675 square feet of living space, but with a nice large yard.  We use the "biggest" room for our bedroom (which we barely fit in) and the other tiny one for our office.  It has no garage, no dining room and only 2 puny 2'x2' closets.  When we moved here, it had a small aluminum shed that promptly blew away in a wind storm a couple years later, so my grandpa and dad built a nice sturdy wood shed with an attic and a LOT more room for storage.  The kitchen and bathroom have both been remodeled, we ripped out the carpet and fake tile in the living room & kitchen and refinished the hardwood floors underneath.  We added a pretty new front door with a window, refinished the ugly laundry room and painted everything inside and out.  In addition, we also added lawn and flowers and a vegetable garden in the yard because when we got here it was nothing but dirt and weeds.  My grandpa & dad also added a new wood fence to the backyard and a nice little deck off the back door.  So, there have been many, many upgrades to this place that we've made, and still plenty we could do, but sadly, none of them we did included more square footage!

When we put the house on the market, the real estate lady said that we needed to "de-clutter" and get rid of a lot of our stuff so that the house looks bigger (HA).  So, we did, knowing she was right.  We moved half our furniture and packed tons of boxes of stuff and moved them over to my grandparents basement for storage while the house is on the market.  Even still, I can't imagine how we'd live here with a baby if we had to!  Since it is getting closer, and I have less than 3 months to go before this baby is born, we have been brainstorming other ideas.  If we do stay, it's really not very nice of us to leave our stuff over at my grandparent's house, but there's no room for it here either, and we can't readily afford to pay for a storage unit on top of a baby and everything else.  So, we've been throwing the idea around for months about building an addition to our house.  Like maybe a 3rd bedroom or master bedroom extension.  I know my grandpa would be more than willing to help build it, since he's fantastic at construction, so hiring contractors wouldn't be necessary.  That would help with the cost enormously.  The lot is certainly big enough too, but what would the cost be?  And how would we fund it?  We were approved for another mortgage only on the basis that we sell our house and pay it off first.  Would the bank allow us to take out a home improvement loan?  Could we even afford a home improvement loan?  Or is there a way to consolidate or combine it to our current mortgage payment?  What kinds of problems would we run into with building permits and such, and would that delay the project?  And why is everything so difficult? Why can't we just bang down a wall and go buy a bunch of wood?  Seems easy enough, but everything has to be up to "code" or it's illegal.  I have experience from helping my aunt a few years back turn her garage into a family room.  It was fun, but those permit guys really slowed things down.  I'd be really worried it wouldn't be done in time for the baby and we'd be bringing her home to a room with a huge hole in the wall!  LOL!  

I really had my heart set on moving to a new house though.  After thinking about all that remodel junk, buying a new house just seems so much easier.  Especially when a new baby is involved.  I keep picking out houses I like, showing them to Mike and getting excited about them only to find they've sold a week later.  Why can't someone buy OUR house?  Isn't there anyone out there as desperate as we were 4 years ago when we bought it?  Someone has to be on a tight budget like us and find that our house is in really great shape for it's age and price, right?  All we can do is wait and hope.  Meantime, I'm still planning how on earth we're going to fit our daughter into this house with all her stuff.  I thought for a while she can sleep in our room in the tiny cradle, but even that's going to be one tight squeeze.  Everything else like her dresser/changing table and stuff has to be in the 2nd bedroom with the computer I guess.  Certainly no room for her clothes or anything in the closet because it's already crammed with ours!  I know it can work.  My mom reminds me constantly that I was born in a tiny little trailer house when they already had 2 kids before me and they made it work. People keep telling me it will work because we'll have to make it work, but that doesn't mean it's going to be easy, and it definitely doesn't mean we're going to like it.  It's just sad that after so long of waiting to have children, we finally get to and we have no place to put her. 

Slightly Off Subject: Our Country

There has been something weighing on my mind as of late, and even though it doesn't really have much to do with "baby dellosa", I felt the need to express myself in blog form.  Well, in all fairness to the baby blog, I suppose I could say that in honor of the anticipated 4th-of-July (or close to) birth of my daughter, I am reflecting on the greatness of this country that she is about to be born into... or rather the lack of greatness.

I want to know why are people so disillusioned that the United States of America is such a great country?  I mean, honestly.  Don't get offended by that question, I want you to think about it with me.  When it boils down to it, I am actually embarrassed to be a US citizen.  I'm nervous to bring my daughter into this messed up country because all I see is a world of hate and deceitfulness.  Don't know what I'm talking about?  Let me explain:  

Ever since I began working as a Certified Nursing Assistant, I was hurtled directly into the eye of the storm.  Not like I wasn't fully aware of the existence of nursing facilities or anything, but when you work in one, you become so much more aware of the wrong that this country is committing to it's residents.  I don't mean the isolated mistreatment of nursing home residents by staff.  I mean the general mistreatment of the citizens of this country!  What is wrong with us?  How can we, as a country, stand by and watch while our parents and grandparents fall ill with life-destructing diseases, lose their minds and become totally banished from the family and dependent upon caretakers for the next decade of their lives before they finally die a horrible and dishonorable death?  Does the majority of this country actually believe there is nothing wrong with that?  Or that even if it is a horrible thought, do they really think nothing can be done to change it?  And if so, why don't they try?

What I'm getting at is that our country is currently a sloppy pile of crap.  Just like most of you, I was born and raised here, pledged the allegiance to the flag of the United States of America everyday of my life in school, sang the Star Spangled Banner, watched the firework displays every fourth-of-July and waved the American flag proudly believing we were the greatest country on earth, completely unaware of the truth that lie underneath all the deceiving red, white & blue stars & stripes.  We are not a sweet land of liberty, and despite what we were taught in grade school, this is among one of the most UN-free countries I've ever heard of!  Don't fool yourselves.  America the great is not letting freedom ring.  Just take a look around you, if you still don't believe me.  This country is a toilet!  Everywhere you go, people here are self-absorbed, materialistic mercenaries!  They walk around with this "I'm better than you" attitude and never lift a finger to help anyone except to make themselves look better.  No one truly genuinely cares about anyone else but themselves.  They're rude, racist, sexist, ageist, and just plain biased.  Hardly anyone ever takes the time to get to know anyone anymore.  There's too many of us.  This country is so big, that's part of the reason we are so culturally divided.  The government does nothing to mend that problem because it actually IS the problem.  Splitting us up into groups of political parties and allowing freedom of religion and all that other junk is only dividing us further.  We are divided into religions, and then because this country is so "diverse" we divide ourselves into nationalities, as if we are actually all just a bunch of mini-countries in one.  If you happen to be in the wrong "mini-country", you stand out like a sore thumb and become the object of their distaste.  Bullying and teasing are the least of your worries in that situation.  Then, as if that wasn't already over the top, we further divide ourselves into class judged by how much money you make, what you do and/or what you are worth.  The sad thing is that this is how people interact with strangers in this country.

What's better is that we are so selfish, we even hate spending time with our own families.  It's dreadful to think about family gatherings and holidays in this country.  No one really looks forward to them because of the stress and differences we all experience in spending time with our family members.  Disparaging comments and bickering turn the once anticipated family events into horror shows that nobody wants to see.  We make fun of our old, failing grandparents, crazy aunts & uncles, annoying, bratty cousins and all their completely insane ideas and opinions about everyone's life.  This negative image has caused us to dread family because it is a natural defense mechanism to recoil from things that cause us stress, discomfort or pain.  And this is the reason for the development of nursing homes.  No one could handle the stress, discomfort and pain of watching their aging parents lose their minds and die a slow and horrible death in front of them.  Their lives are simply too busy to have time for that, and besides, it's just too hard, so they developed a place to send them where other paid workers could take care of them until they die. 

So, how did this all come to be?  Why are we so negative?  Why is our country like this?  My insane opinion on this matter is that our country is simply too large and the founding fathers whole idea to create a blissfully free country went totally wrong.  There are too many laws, and yet there are not enough of them.  We find loopholes in everything and everyone fights to the death because they expect to always get what they want.  We don't have true values in this country anymore.  The "freedom" idea is out of control.  People's freedom to practice their own beliefs is destroying us because guess what?  Not everyone has the same beliefs in this country and most of them downright clash.  There is hostility, gangs, rapists, disease, suicide and murder all because of our blessed American freedom.  All this "freedom" has seeped into our water, contaminated our food and intoxicated our environment and now we are all killing ourselves unknowingly.  Before you know it, we'll all be dead.  All in the name of freedom.

I'm reading a pretty awesome book called "Healthy at 100" by John Robbins.  You may think it's a book for old people, but I think the sooner you read it, the better off you'll be.  It's an insightful and eye-opening book almost about this very topic and how our society is killing us.  It highlights remote civilizations that live far better in their small lands than we do in our huge technologically advanced country, then goes on to explain how we can break ourselves off from the pressures of society to make the necessary changes in our own lives.  One by one, maybe we can "make a difference" and turn this country around.  If not for us, then how about for our children?