Pregnancy and the outcome

So I'm sitting at home right now, waiting for labour to start. Baby Bean is officially overdue by 6 days and I'm really excited to get things going! We're on Bean-Watch 2009 now and everything is ready for this kid to make his/her grand debut in the breathing world! I am so done with being pregnant (yes it was a great experience, but seriously, the whole point is to have a baby at the end of the day) and am looking forward to starting our lives as a family of 3.

You'd think that people would just wish us well and move on, right?

Nope!

So far, I've been told by numerous (yet I believe well meaning individuals) that I shouldn't be looking forward to the birth of my child for various reasons including:

• Never sleeping again
• Never eating again
• Never drinking tea again (wtf?)
• Never taking a shower or bath again (ew.)
• Never having a moment to oneself EVER AGAIN
• Never experiencing a quiet moment....ever again

Oooookaaaayyyy.

I can't help but wonder at these ladies (and yes, usually it is women who are currently moms) who trot out these gems of saintly advice. Ummm..did no one ever warn them that kids were work before they had babies of their own??? I mean, seriously, I'm 32 years old and I understand that having a newborn is going to mean a lot of sleepless nights and our lives will change dramatically once Bean comes slip-sliding into this world. I also understand that having children is a huge challenge with numerous rewards and I'm looking forward to the adventure of it all.

The downsides of having a baby are something I've known about for years and years...have seen first hand with friends and family and am totally committed to dealing with. Otherwise I would have decided years ago to get my tubes tied and never ever reproduce! The whole point of going through pregnancy is to have a (hopefully healthy) baby at the end of the process. It isn't to be indefinitely pregnant (as though pregnancy is some kind of blissful state in the first place)!

I find myself having to bite my tongue at times when some sage and well-meaning person spouts one of these 'horror stories' of parenthood. I honestly want to ask them if they resent their kids...because it sounds as though they do! Life before children (in the way that they paint it) is a dream world of rest, sanity and order and life after children is a hellish dimension where one exists in a perpetual state of unhygienic, sleep deprived physical and mental starvation where the mother is the sole provider of care. I can't believe that the whole message that 'raising children is hard work' wasn't given to these ladies before they even knew about the birds and the bees. Obviously, for some, they must have missed that school day because now they gleefully tell moms-to-be the horror stories of what lays in store for them just beyond labour and delivery.

Don't even get me started on the horror stories told to pregnant women about childbirth!

wow....so it's been about a year

Okay...I'm officially a terrible blogger!

My last post was in NOVEMBER of last year!!!! LOL!

Alright well first things first and I'm currently pregnant with our first child who is due in a few weeks (October 16th). We've dubbed our little offspring-in-the-making Bean since we decided not to find out beforehand what the sex of the baby is. I think it's funny how 'unconventional' it is these days to NOT find out the sex of the child beforehand given that for, well, almost the entire course of history this information was not available AT ALL. Now everyone is a Type A trying to make sure that their nursery decor is completely colour coordinated (pink for girls and blue for boys of course) with a set theme (Disney movie or classic Beatrix Potter?) down to the last receiving blanket and soother.

I'm just excited about actually meeting this little person who has taken up residence in my body for the past 8 months!

Life in small town Ontario isn't much easier than when we first moved here. The house is coming together more and more though and after intensely searching for a job before becoming pregnant I've resigned myself to being a stay-at-home mom/spouse for the next little while.

I'll write more about the transition to military spouse and now mommy to be in the next little while!

I like the word 'downtown'

It's hard to believe but it has already been a month since we moved from the big city to small town Eastern Ontario. It has been such a journey so far; emotionally and physically!

The biggest adjustment that I find myself making is the change of pace. In Toronto it was always go-go-go, bigger, better, faster and nothing was ever good enough or fancy enough or perfect enough. Life was going at hyper speed at all times and I barely had time to buy groceries let alone cook myself a decent meal and keep the apartment clean and work full time and, and, and. All of a sudden it's like a Star Trek episode where they fall out of warp speed (or whatever it was called) and the stars turn from streaks of white to individual little dots again. I have whole days to organize my home and cook a good meal! Oh my god!!! :-)

The downside to all this slow time is that my mind is still so revved up after years of the go-go-go hyper stressed lifestyle that it's sending me signals that something is desperately wrong with this scenario. Like a drug, my body was addicted to the rush and the stress and the adrenaline needed to maintain the downtown lifestyle. My daily existence of power walking through the PATH system in high heels while lugging around my laptop, heading for a meeting that I'm already 3 minutes late for all the while cataloguing in my head what my agenda is for the three meetings afterwards, what to cook for dinner tonight, reminders to call back my mother-in-law/brother/fiancee and need to send my boss the final version of the monthly newsletter sent constant surges of stress and adrenaline coursing through my veins. And now it's over.

I think I'm going through withdrawal!

gear switch

So since my last post alot has happened!

We've moved from Toronto to Pembroke for our first posting. The whole process of posting moves is not as complicated as I once thought it would be. Basically once you've decided whether you're buying or renting, you contact the moving company (or they contact you) and you confirm the dates. Some guy shows up to figure out how many boxes they need to bring and lets you know what restrictions they have in terms of moving certain things ( like propane tanks). On the day of the pack, a whole army of people show up at your place and start packing things away...within four hours all of our belongings were wrapped and packed into boxes. The next day the movers show up and again...they packed everything onto the truck in about 4.5 hours and drove off!!

Now I realize that we have very little furnishings and effects and so this first one was probably a cake walk in comparison with other family moves (we don't have any kids or pets).

The whole process is relatively straight forward. We stayed in hotels from the day that all of our stuff got packed to the day the truck pulled up and they dumped all of our effects into our new home.

Now the physical part has happened, I'll post a bit more about the emotional journey that I'm (still) going through!

"next year sometime" just turned into "tomorrow"!

So after living apart for 16 months and getting far to used to only seeing each other once a month...we are finally going to be living together again!!!!

What seemed so far away for so long is actually just around the corner and my life is suddenly in flux. I think for a long time I was in denial that it would ever really happen. September/October 2008 was so far down the pipeline and I was worried more about getting through the day and wedding planning than what this transition would mean to me. I'd push back the thoughts about our first posting into the mushy recesses of my brain in the hopes that when I finally have to start dealing with the process it will seem much easier....a little like marinading a piece of unappetizing meat.

Well...it's still not so appetizing...but it's not as stomach-churning as it once was.

I think part of that change in outlook can be attributed to the fact that although I will miss sooo many things about my life in Toronto...I've missed my husband even more.

There are times when I wish I was more like some people who's lives seem to come together effortlessly. Not that I think that it happens for them without any kind of sweat and tears but it certainly seems that way at times. In their world, no sacrifices need to be made...no hard choices need to be pondered. They simply yearn for something and whatever it may be presents itself to them all wrapped up with a pretty bow.

Ah well...

Life as we know it...

Since I'm at the very beginning of this journey as a Canadian Military Spouse, I thought it a perfect time to start blogging my experience.

Why blog?

Well, for one, it's a great way of getting information and sharing experiences out with a wide audience and secondly, it very well may prove a sanity saver for me.

Up to this point in my life, I've never found a really good reason to start a blog. A blog always seemed a form of glorified diary keeping and I haven't really done that since I was in the grips of serious teenage angst and melodrama.

Who is this woman?

So just a little bit about myself: I'm currently 31 years of age and have recently married my best friend, my heart, my other self in June. We started dating over six (oh yeah...count'em six!) years ago and at the time he was working in Finance in downtown Toronto. So far, so good.

Then, about three years ago he dropped a bomb. He was seriously considering a career in the military. All stop.

I think my brain couldn't comprehend why someone so smart and wonderful would willingly put themselves in the position of being physically assaulted (if not outright killed) for a living. The military world was/is completely alien to my own. I don't know anyone in the military! Don't they live in bad housing somewhere that's NOT Toronto???

I have lived the majority of my life in and around Toronto. I grew up in Mississauga. I graduated from UofT (aside from a short stint at McGill in Montreal). I've lived in downtown Toronto for the past 10 years. I'm vaguely aware that we have some military presence in the city..but it's few and far between.

Now it's becoming a major part of my life in more ways than one.

Life as I know it will never be the same!