As it’s my birthday week, there’s a question that someone is bound to ask me this week – how does it feel to be another year older?
And for some reason this has been playing in my mind all week.
You see, when I turned 30 I really didn’t think much about it as my 30th and 31st birthdays were marked with baby loss so my actual birthday just didn’t matter. And the last few birthdays, I’ve just been in disbelief that I’m actually a mom!
Now that I’m turning 35, I know a lot of people will tell me how young I am. Some will even say, how great it is that I’m now a self-employed consultant whose doing pretty well. Most will comment on how I’m a mom to an amazing little toddler. Most will be impressed at how I seem to have everything somewhat together.
And yet, if I’m honest, how does it feel to be another year older? For the first time in my life I just feel old.
I’m not sure if it’s that I’ve moved out of the basic survival mode that comes along with years of recurrent pregnancy loss, and I’m realizing just how much those few years really aged me? My birthday will be forever marked by the loss of 2 babies, including the only one that was every healthy and was supposed to live. I doubt I’ll ever be able to disassociate those dates in my mind. I went from being fairly naive to facing life and death and entirely new way while contemplating decisions I never in my life thought I’d have to make. There’s no doubt these losses changed and aged me, and right now, I’m feeling it.
Within the last 5 years I also quit my professional job at a decently well paying firm and walked away from career in favour of our family – also around my birthday. No matter how hard I tried to find something else to do with my life, I found myself back in the same profession. But I started working on my own terms, and now I work for myself. Most people seem to look at what I’m doing and are pretty impressed as I’m rather young to already be an independent consultant. Truthfully, it works for me, I love my work situation 90% of the time. But gosh, it can be hard! The stress that comes along with not knowing what my next pay cheque will look like, isn’t that much fun. Honestly, I’m pretty sure everything about quitting my traditional job has definitely aged me a tad bit.
I’m not sure if the old feelings come from 2 years of a not sleeping well, thanks to a wonderful toddler who has made my dream of being a mother come true. Even this morning he decided 5:30am was morning time, regardless of my prayer/beg of It’s mommy’s birthday, please let me sleep just a bit longer. (I wouldn’t trade the lack of sleep for anything, but gosh I could have used another hour today). Toddlers, or at least my very active toddler, has a way of keeping us very active. We never sit still anymore, we never have real down time. Instead we chase, we play, we tickle, we sing songs, we read books, we constantly worry about development and happiness, etc. I feel as though life these days consists of toddler time, work time and hopefully sleep time. It’s delightfully exhausting!
And don’t even get me started on my complete and utter lack of fitness in my life. I just need 1 more hour in the day to fit that in. Heck, at this point I’d take just another 30 minutes. I’m confident that an out of shape body whose stomach is causing nothing but problems is definitely contributing to feeling old.
I don’t know, right now, I just feel like the last few years has really impacted me (as it should). And, I feel more like I’m 40 or 45. Or maybe this is just some sort of normal transition that occurs in the mid-30s?
And yet, I realize aging is just a state of mind. So, maybe next week I wont feel so old? And maybe, if I’m lucky, next years 36 wont make me feel so old?
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So, I’m back to one of my favourite topics – puppies.
We are getting one for sure this spring! Little MPB is not allergic to dogs and my dog allergy isn’t bad enough to worry about, so the immunologist gave us the green light to get whatever dog we want. (More on our immunologist appointment later this week).
So, moving forward on actually getting the puppy means we have some decisions to make. Our puppy criteria is rather simple:
- must be kid friendly.
- ideally a larger breed – around 50-70lbs full grown would be ideal. (Our last dog, whom I miss so dearly, was almost 90lbs, so we are completely good with large dogs).
- must be a female.
- ideally not black like our old dog (we think it’ll be too hard for us). But for the right dog we’d be totally okay with black.
- less shedding would be nice.
While our last dog was a rescue dog, this time we’ve decided not to get a rescue. We’ve spent a lot of time debating this and have decided that we really want to maximize the chances of having a positive relationship between the dog and the toddler, so a kid friendly breed is our first priority.
We HAD narrowed down our dog choice to 2 breeds – Old English Sheepdog (OES) and Sheepadoodle. But, before making a true committmemt I decided to stop in and talk to our vet about dog breeds and now we have no idea what to get! Our vet gave me some good things to think about:
- Local OES’ tend to be aggressive. She simply wouldn’t recommend getting one with a 2 year old in the house. So, we’ve removed OES from our list completely.
- She thinks the poodle in a sheepadoodle would probably help balance out the OES aggressiveness. But, she’s not sure as there are no guarantees.
- As for doodles in general (goldendoodle, labradoodle, sheepadoodle, ausiedoodle, etc.) she worries about their ear health – apparently a lot of them have ear infection problems and can require a lot of money to treat and maintain the ears.
- She strongly recommends a retriever/hunting dogs as they tend to be great with kids as they are motivated by making their people happy.
So, we are back to thinking golden retriever or chocolate labrador retriever or yellow labrador retriever. Maybe a flat coated retriever if we find a breeder. Mr. MPB and I both grew up with golden retrievers, so we know the breed and we both like them, we just always wanted to get a different dog breed. I’m not sure about the flat-coated retriever, but for non-registered golden or lab we are looking at paying around $800. And they are rather easy to get, so I don’t have to pre-register and wait months and months for one. Of course, with any of the retrievers we are also looking at having more fur around the house.
So, maybe a goldendoodle or a labradoodle? Less shedding. Priced at about $1200ish. But maybe still have ear infection issues.
But here’s the problem we are currently on the list to pick out a Sheepadoodle puppy in a few weeks which we would bring home at the end of March. So, do we keep going with the sheepadoodle, knowing there could be some behavioural risks? And pay $2500? I love the look of the sheepadoodle, but I’m just not sure anymore. The possibility of aggression has made me really increadibly hesitant. $2500 seems slightly crazy for a dog.
Does anyone have any thoughts or words of advice? Mr. MPB is leaving it completely up to me, and I’m now just so confused that I have no idea what to do!
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