So when I got this particular one last month while enjoying some China Isle with my family, it really stuck with me.
The last few months have been pretty difficult, to say the least. Beginning in November, we hit a horrible string of bad luck, and I felt like everything in our lives was falling apart.
To begin with, I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. I stayed in denial for quite awhile, but have really hated coming to terms with it and dealing with so many restrictions! There's nothing that makes me want something more than someone telling me I can't have it. Curse my oppositional-defiant personality!
Brett's car (our most reliable vehicle) broke down and was going to cost $3000 to fix. This happened just before Christmas, when we were wanting to drive out of town to spend the holiday with family.
I realized that in order to keep our insurance benefits while on my maternity leave, it would be better to pre-pay premiums (so we could get the pre-tax benefit), which made my last four paychecks half or less than what they usually are. We'd already been cutting into our savings, and have been stressing about how we are going to pay our bills while I'm on my UN-paid leave, so that lack of paycheck has added a whole new level of stress.
Our dryer completely stopped working and we had to replace it. Brett and his friend hooked up the new one (an electric one), and in the meantime removed a gas pipe/valve that we had spent almost $100 to have a professional install when we first bought the house. I had a mental breakdown thinking that our house was going to blow up from a gas leak. (Needless to say, Miles was really worried about his mama that day...)
A snow-storm postponed our trip up north and we had to push things back a week. This wasn't the end of the world, but it was a big bummer at the time, and I worried there would still be snow the following week when we would have to make the trip, regardless.
We discovered that something under our kitchen sink had been leaking (for WHO knows how long), and had to pay almost $100 bucks to have someone from our Home Warranty come check it out... Turns out it was a simple nut in the faucet itself that we could have tightened by ourselves in less than five minutes.
Miles got sick and spent a whole night throwing up while we were up visiting family. It seems like the majority of times we've gone up to visit, he ends up barfing everywhere and feeling miserable. It is the worst feeling in the world to feel so helpless when you can't make your baby feel better.
Our washing machine broke. It would get to the spin and rinse cycle and the water wouldn't drain. We spent hours googling YouTube videos and trying to figure out a way to fix it, only to realize that the part we bought to do so wasn't the same as the one on the tutorials...
And on top of all that, there are leaks and issues in our sprinkler system which we will need to fix once spring happens (which here is any day now, really), and I found out that none of it will be covered under our Home Warranty or anything, so we're completely on our own...
So now that I've shared all the poop that's been dumped on us, I figure I better focus on the point of my post... That beautiful fortune.
There were days and weeks on end in these last months, when all I could see was the negative. My mind was so focused on "what else could possibly go wrong?!" When life gets hard, I quickly jump to that, and forget to think about what is going right.
Really, despite all of the shit that we've been served lately, there has also been a lot of silver lining.
Even though it has sucked having gestational diabetes, I've been able to stay away from needing insulin (and if you know how much I hate needles, you know how important that is to me). While I have needed to take a very small dose of an oral medication, my doctor has still been very supportive of not requiring anything that would change my birthplan. I can continue to plan for a natural, unmedicated, un-hooked-up-to-everything birth. I have absolutely found my HypnoBabies to be the best thing in the world, and I feel like it has also helped keep my blood sugars in normal ranges and has helped me focus on bringing more positives into my life, both pregnancy and birthing related, and otherwise.
Although the timing of Brett's car breaking down really sucked, it was also sort of perfect. My parents let us borrow one of their cars to get us by until we figured something out, and they just happened to be coming down the weekend before Christmas, so they dropped it off then. We were able to have a car for the holidays and some post-holiday family events that we needed to make it to.
Christmas also left us feeling really blessed. The gifts we were given were things that we could really use, and even though we didn't have a lot to spend on Miles, he still loved what he got and was spoiled by his grandparents, uncles, and aunts! I also wasn't completely sick-as-a-dog like I was last year, and Miles actually slept all through the night on Christmas Eve . That was the biggest Christmas miracle of all!
I made it past February 4 at work, which was technically my one-year mark that I needed to meet in order to be eligible for FMLA maternity leave. Because of my gestational diabetes, I was worried about baby coming so early I wouldn't make it to this day and qualify for my leave. Now I'm just dying to get baby out!
Even though it sucks that Brett and his friend accidentally removed the expensive gas pipe/valve, it was a miracle that Brett's friend had a working dryer to let us borrow so that we didn't have to pay for a brand new one (and worry about how to transport it and hook it up and everything all by ourselves!).
In order to fix the washer, we had to ask our neighbors for help, and although I HATE having to ask for anything from people, it was a good thing to be forced out of my comfort zone. It was a great opportunity to get to know one of our neighbors a lot better, and even though the part we bought didn't look exactly the same, it was just what we needed. It felt good to know that even though we are clueless as new homeowners (I mean, see the sink example above...) we were able to seek out and find a solution for a problem on our own.
It turns out, that postponing our trip up north ended up setting us up for perfect timing. We had stressed about buying a new car before the baby is born and we were not having any luck finding anything down in St. George. That's the one thing that sucks about being down here... limited options for big things like that. We planned to check things out during our last-hoorah up north, but weren't completely confident we could find something and make it happen in one day. Turns out that we were able to, after all!
I was very excited about one car in particular that just felt right (almost too good to be true), and the minute I got in it to do a test drive, I knew it was perfect! After I took my dad for a drive and he gave his approval, we were able to get the paperwork and everything done for a loan, and we now own my dream car which did not completely break the bank! Hooray! It was also nice because we were able to stock up on Dream Dinners, diapers and other needed things for the baby on the trip while also enjoying some precious time with the family.
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| Miles and his buddy, Jax, checking out our new car. |
Curse life for always being right on me like that and serving me up some powerful reminders in the form of fortune cookies.
And for making me crave Chinese food when I'm too poor (and diabetes-ed) to make it happen!
