As a now stay at home individual, giving up work due to
terrible morning sickness, I have found that you really can run out of things
to do in your day. Over the past week I have been trying to figure out what I
could do to keep me from mindlessly watching T.V. all day and have decided as a
hobby to pick up blogging again. This time though, I chose not to write about
anything too specific and to just give updates and thoughts about recent events
and happenings.
For my first post I have decided to write about a topic that has been on my mind over the past three years: the many
opinions that my husband and I have received about how
our lives should be run. If any of you gave these opinions, do not take
offense, this is just my outlook and perspective on the overbearing opinions on
what the “right” thing to do is.
So, just a little background on my husband and
I: Scott and I met through my cousin and our mothers and basically went on a
blind date that we set up ourselves. Two and a half months later we were
engaged and we were married about five months later. This decision in and of
itself caused many issues and hoorays alike. In fact, I lost friends over this
decision, with a few who stood by us and realized that hey, we’re adults, and
no it wasn’t a rash decision on our part. To many I married too young and was
throwing my life away. To others, we were getting married at the right time,
although we did get married quickly. To everyone I would just say, when it’s
right, it’s right. We knew it was the right decision for us and that’s all that
matters. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my main point in this post. We make
decisions that are right for us. Are they right for everyone? NO, they aren’t,
but they are right for the right people. They are right for us, our lives, and
our marriage.
My husband and I recently announced that we are expecting
our first child. The whole thought of having children has been quite the
topic of discussion over our marriage. Everyone seemed to have their own
opinion on when we should start having children, how many children we should
have, and even how we should raise them. These free flowing opinions really
reminded me of the song "Pick-A-Little Talk-A-Little" from the musical The Music Man. It was constant nagging, pushing, and questioning. It seemed almost everyone
had an opinion. Don’t have children until you get your career going. You
shouldn’t be waiting several years to have children, it’s not the right thing
to do. Don’t have a million kids like most Mormon families do (a rash over
generalization). Don’t just have two or three kids, that’s not a large enough
family. After a while all I began to hear was “cheep, cheep, cheep, talk a lot,
pick a little more.” I was VERY grateful for the few who never stated their
opinion or the few who offered support and just said, do what is right for
you. So, what was right for us? Here’s a
little background on our journey of starting a family:
Before Scott and I got married and shortly thereafter, we
felt strongly about waiting a year without trying for children and after our first
anniversary we would stop preventing and just put it in God’s hands. At that
time, it felt right. However, not long after our feelings changed. A few months
into our marriage I began having some health issues. I ended up in the ER two
times within a few months and was in and out of several doctors’ offices trying
to figure out what was wrong with me. I was put on antibiotics several times
and eventually had to have an exploratory surgery before they finally figured
out what I had. After that I was put on antibiotics again for a 6 month time
period and was therefore on them for over a year by the time I was able to stop
taking them. I had to go on a strict elimination diet, eating nothing acidic
and eating as much organic food as I could, because pesticides and acidic foods
made my condition worse. Finally, I began to feel better and things were
looking up. I was eating healthier, started working out again, and even began
losing weight. This was great! I was excited my health was doing better. Right as we
were nearing our first anniversary, things were looking up and we were still
planning on keeping to the original plan. However, life again was about to
throw us another challenge. After I initially began losing weight, I was
thrilled, until I could no longer keep weight on. I wasn’t exercising
fanatically and I was eating plenty of food, so there was no explanation for
it. I was getting nauseated frequently and just didn’t feel very well. So after
my doctors became concerned with my weight loss I began to eat more junk food
to try and gain the weight back, but that wasn’t working. I ate as much as I
could and seemed to be getting worse. One day, I decided to eat the top tier of
our wedding cake a few weeks early, as I was craving something sweet and I
needed to gain the weight, so I ate as much as I could. However, shortly
thereafter I began having severe stomach and back pain. The pain went on for
hours and finally at about one in the morning I told my husband that I needed
to go to the ER again. This was the third visit in a 7 month time period. After some
tests they told me that my gall bladder was infected and it needed to come out.
A couple of days later I had my second surgery in less than four months. Now,
none of my health conditions were life threatening, but both ended in surgery
and my immune system took a dive. Finally, after discussion and prayer, Scott
and I realized that this was God’s way of letting us know it wasn’t time to
have children yet. So we put it off. It was over a year later before we decided
the time was right, which gave everyone plenty of time to give us THEIR opinion
of what we were doing right or wrong.
Now, the challenge moving ahead I’m sure, is still going to
be how many children we are going to have and how we should raise them. One
thing I would just like everyone to get out of this, is that just because it is
right for you, doesn’t mean it is right for everyone else. Ultimately we will
decide how many children we will have and how we will raise them. We take
our feelings to prayer and make our decisions. Every family makes decisions
that are right for them and we are no different. Soon we will experience the great nursing vs. bottle, epidural vs. no epidural, circumcise vs. do not circumcise (if we have
a boy), co-sleep vs not co-sleeping debates. These are the
issues every parent has to decide and go through and there is only one thing I
want everyone to keep in mind: WHAT IS RIGHT FOR ONE PERSON IS NOT RIGHT FOR
ANOTHER. If a mother chooses to bottle feed her child that is HER decision and
hers alone. We don’t know what everyone’s personal circumstances are. Not
everyone knew what was going on in our decision process because we didn’t
announce it to the world at the time. That information was for us, not for everyone else.
I look forward to the day when we can all just recognize that we are all
doing the best we can and are ultimately all doing what is right for our
family. Be courteous of others' choices and how others choose to live their
lives. If there is anything that I have learned in the past few years is that society really needs to work on one thing. That one thing is to learn to coexist. We don't have to agree about everything and we don't all have to do the same thing. We do, however, need to be respectful of some else's decisions and let everyone live their lives they way that is right for them. So from now on when someone tells you that you need to do the "right" thing simply proclaim "I am. I'm doing what's right for me."
