I am currently a consultant in my university educated profession. I used to work for a big company which I quit after our 4th loss. I left so that I could focus on my physical and mental well being. I left so that we could try one more pregnancy without the 70+ hour work weeks, high stress and a not very nice boss. Removing work stress was not the answer to our pregnancy struggles as our 5th pregnancy resulted in another loss.
I lasted a few months as unemployed by choice. Then my phone started ringing with requests for me. And, a few months later I had started my own consulting firm. I work for me, myself and I. (Oh, and our dog, clearly she’s the real boss).
Working for myself has been life changing. Most days, my commute to work consists of walking down 1 flight of stairs from our bedroom to our office. Most days, I work on interesting projects. Most days, I work with decent people.
But then I still have days where I work for frustratingly hard to deal with clients. I have days where I spend most of my time dealing with conflict in high stress situations. I still have some 12 hour work days. And, I still have days where I have to commute at least a few hours to meetings.
Honestly, my chosen profession is not the nicest of professions and often it’s just not something I am passionate about. Some days I wonder, will I ever truly figure out what I want to be when I grow up?
I know now that at the end of the day, working for myself is much more pleasant then working for not very nice bosses. Being my own boss makes my chosen industry bearable at the moment.
In fact, as my own boss allows me to be pickier with my clients. At the moment, I’m currently trying to figure out how to fire a client while keeping my reputation intact. My reality is that I am not prepared to work for hard clients that make me miserable – I learned that lesson in large part as a result of our struggle to have a family, and for that I am thankful.
I realize now that my life is more then just work and my wellbeing matters.
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I’ve realized that the first year of being a parent is pretty epic and pretty life changing. I suspect this is the case for almost all parents.
Photo Source: Adapted from Office.com Clip Art
But, I’ll admit, as we approach the Christmas holiday season I am starting to think that the first year of being a parent after loss and struggle is just a little extra sweet.
Why year one? Well, it includes all kinds of firsts that we never thought we’d get to experience. For a while there I honestly didn’t think we’d choose adoption. For a while there I honestly thought we’d choose to be childless, which meant there was a time we were grieving the loss of having children, the loss of the first smiles, the first crawl, the first word, the first day of school, the first of so many things. Obviously, in the end we followed our hearts and threw ourselves into the unknown world of adoption, and at the same time we slowly started to believe we may one day be parents.
And here we are now savouring every single first. We have experienced so many other firsts – first bath, first camping trip, first day at home, first flight, first real food, first roll-over, first stand up, first time swimming, etc. Soon enough we will experience a first Christmas. And most recently we experienced Mr. MPB’s first birthday as a father.
I cannot speak for parents who didn’t struggle to have children, but I know for us, every single first is extra sweet as we know how close we came to not getting to experience these moments at all.
And, if there is one positive of having survived 5 miscarriages and very nearly not having children, this is it. We are determined to embrace these moments, celebrate milestones and simply soak up each moment. So for us, these moments, they have been nothing short of amazing. We are making a point to enjoy each and every second and to savour the sweet moments.
For us, these moments are the things our dreams are made of.
We know our dreams are coming true and we never want to forget just how fortunate we are to be Baby MPB’s parents and so we don’t ever want to take a second for granted.
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