Happy Mother's Day

I had a professor in college that had this saying that is so very true to my own life.  He would always say to us that, “Life IS plan B.”  This saying is close to me because I feel that I have often envisioned how my life would turn out.  I had detailed fantasies and dreams of how each major life event would occur.  I had dreamed of this long awaited moment when I myself would become a mother.  In my dreams I was happily married, my husband and I deciding when the perfect time would be to bring a new life into this world.  I would surprise him when he came home with some sort of gift, cluing him into his impending fatherhood.  Tears of joy would be shared as we began the plans of how to announce our sweet little bundle of joys arrival into this world.

Life of course did not deliver this sweet picturesque moment to me, because life so rarely happens as how we think it will.

I was right smack dab in the middle of a whirlwind romance and I couldn’t have been happier.  I was so in love and basking in the fact that I had finally found someone to love me just as much as I loved them.  I felt very blessed.  Amidst all this I was training rigorously.  My days were spent eating clean, lifting and sculpting my body, and spending time with my sweetheart.  I had goals to finally compete in a figure competition, this was going to be my year.

It was incredibly fitting that we both stood there in that tiny bathroom, hovered over a small piece of plastic that could change our lives forever, on none other than Mother’s Day.  That was the day I found out I was going to be a mommy.

I cried, like the little baby I was going to have in nine months.  I went and sat on the foot of the bed and cried.  I had to wave a silent goodbye to how I thought my life was going to play out.  I sobbed about trivial things while my honey sat next to me, hand on my back, talking me through each silly thing I cried about.

“I was working so hard on my body, now I’m going to get fat!”

“What am I going to do with my Jeep?  I can’t put a baby in that!  I love my Jeep!”

“I wanted to get married first!”

“My family is going to hate me, my sister is really going to hate me!”

“I don’t think I’m ready for this.  Most couples are prepared, we aren’t even married!”

“Your parents are going to hate me, I just barely met them… NO!”

Bless him for being so calm and taking my less than exemplary reaction in stride.  A lesser man may have taken my reaction personal, as though each tear was an indicator that I didn’t want to be stuck with him.  That was the thing though, of all the insignificant things I sat there and cried about, having him in my life as the father of my baby was not one of them.  I was never once sad, scared or frightened by that.  If I was going to be hurled into chaos then I was certainly relieved to know that he would be right there by my side, stumbling along with me.

I am certainly grateful that the gestational period is nine months.  Nine months is a good long time into tricking myself I’m ready for this.  We’ve already waded through some of the muck and the unpleasantries.  I’m uncertain but I feel that expectant grandparents react much differently to a married couple breaking the news verses a new couple, a very unwed couple.

I’m already past the halfway mark of this pregnancy and I’ve been given lots of advice, do’s and don’t’s, and how to’s.  There are times when I feel like I’ve let my little baby down, I haven’t done any progress pictures or begun work on a nursery.  I also know that there is a lot to be done and that like any major task in life, I’ve learned to take things one day at a time.  It has been my mantra and saving grace.  All I know is that whatever dreams I have for this baby I had better shelf them, because the odds of anything playing out the way I want it to are slim to nil.  One thing I do know for sure and that is that this baby has got a whole lot of love coming his/her way.