The Unplanned

I apologize for my recent hiatus.  It was unplanned, I assure you.  I finally got that big promotion I’ve been working on so I was easing into that role.  And we had a family vacation that was long overdue.  There have also been a couple of very emotional events to mark the miscarriage mixed in there.

But it shouldn’t surprise me much that I didn’t plan this hiatus.  Not much in my life is ever really planned.  My career has been built on taking a series of opportunities as they arise, even when it seems like I’m going off track.  Even with this move into an analyst role, there is the possibility that I could end up being less of an analyst than we had anticipated though still in the same area.  Every time my manager asks if I have a problem with the potential change in responsibilities, I want to laugh.  I don’t have a set career plan other than not getting fired.  As long as I’m in a position that I like, I’ll be happy.

I also never planned to meet C and fall in love.  My assumption was that I wouldn’t marry until I was in my 30s and wouldn’t have kids until I was closer to 35.  Now I sit here at 29 years old, married for 6 years with 3 crazy kids.

Speaking of kids, that has probably been the least planned aspect of my life.  I keep getting asked if we “plan” to have another child or “plan” to try for a boy.  I didn’t “plan” to have our first child.

I had “planned” to wait at least 2 years between pregnancies and only made it 18 months. 

And #3 was certainly a surprise.  I don’t know of any way to plan for spontaneous twins.  Heck, I still do a double take some days and think to myself, “There’s 2 of them?  How did that happen?”

We didn’t plan our fourth child and we didn’t plan on the miscarriage.

If I had been the one laying out the events, I would not have ended up in a mausoleum full of other heartbroken families and 40 some odd tiny babies in a handful of tiny caskets.  C and I would never have sat there while the same deacon who married us asked us the name we had given to the child that we will never hold while giving us the “Blessing of Parents Who Have Miscarried.”  But I also wouldn’t have planned to have V when we were in a somewhat precarious financial situation.  And I wouldn’t have said, “Just for kicks, I want to have 2 newborns at once and make it a total of 3 kids under 3.”

Right now, I wouldn’t change a thing about how my first 3 children were conceived.  I am still struggling with acceptance of the miscarriage and how all of the events surrounding it unfolded.  My hope is that one day I will be able to look back on this painful time and, even if I can’t fully understand why it had to happen, at least be at peace with the fact that it did.

We won’t be “planning” any future children either.  In a sense, I yearn for that feeling of “deciding” that we are going to have another child.  It feels like that’s how things are done these days.  But in another way, I know that the way we approach family planning is better for our family and our situation.  I tend to over-analyze the situation and when I think of how to pay for everything or how to manage all the schedules or how to deal with all the crying and meltdowns (from myself and the kids), it’s easy for me to think “No more, at least for now.”  But God can see the bigger picture so much better than I can.  He knows my limitations better than I do and He also knows all of the resources that will be available to us that I may not always consider – whether that be a promotion or unexpected raise to help with finances or friends and family that graciously give their time to help get us through the day-to-day or even just how different I will be in time.

So the next time I get asked if we’re planning on having any more children, I’ll just shrug like I always do and say, “We’ll see.”