Dear Me - 2016

A letter to remind me what's important in 2016 and what my hopes & aims for the year are.

Dear Me,

2015 has been a really hard and emotional year for us. We started the year at the doctors' surgery discussing our fertility problems and went on to start our first IVF cycle in May/June, only to finally realise our dream of becoming pregnant throughout the second half of the year. It goes without saying we may have been distracted from anything else; there was little to no writing, hardly any reading, even our OCD inspired clean house seemed to take a back seat. There were lots of tears and fears as well, but these (the fears at least) seemed to calm the nearer to the end of year we got; the further into our pregnancy we went. Now we have to look to the year ahead.

2016 is going to be a BIG year for us on so many different levels.

The biggest and most fundamental change/achievement this year is “scheduled” to "drop in" around the beginning of April as this is when we’re going to welcome our little one into the world. It’s the realisation and completion of a journey we started over five years ago; one that part of us thought would never happen.

To say it’s been emotional would be an understatement. It’s been hard, tiring, and on times soul destroying. This year the theme is most defiantly BABY!! So maybe it’s no surprise that our goals for this year seem on becoming a mum for the first time and our baby – Noo.

As we embark on what I'm sure will be a memorable and life altering experience, these are the promises I make to you/me, our husband and Noo:


To enjoy the last few weeks of being just a couple.

There're just over thirteen weeks left of being a "twosome" before we become parents, and while I’m looking forward to meeting him or her I’m very aware that life as we know it is going to change to dramatically - beyond anything we can imagine.

Our friends have told us to make to most of the time we have together because as soon as the little one arrives our priorities are going to shift and romantic meals and gestures will be replaced by nighty bath and bedtime routines and stories with cuddles, which I have to admit sounds appealing at the moment, but then we're not struggling to function after weeks of nightly feeds yet.

It does make me realise how much I don’t want to lose the “us” in our relationship. I want us to remember that we’re more than just parents, we’re husband and wife, and that won’t change just because we create a little mini-mee.


To continue to write in our journey regularly.

We may not get the chance or have the energy to logon to the computer every day to update an online diary/blog, but a handwritten journal may be more feasible. I want us to continue with our pregnancy journal. And I also want us to create one for the first year of being a mum – We’ll of course be creating a baby journal to chart Noo’s progress as well.

I’ve loved re-reading our chicken scratches about our early days of IVF. There's something very personal about a hand written diary as opposed to an electronic one. It capture so much more than just words; the accidental tea stains; the drops of tears; the pressure of the pen/pencil; and let’s not forget the doodles.

I've yet to buy a baby journal book. I'm tempted to make one. It will give us something to do while we're off for three weeks before the baby arrives. For the pregnancy and parenting book, I think we should continue in our leather bound book. It makes more sense to keep the two together - they are both sides of the same coin in a way anyway.


To enjoy our six and a half month maternity leave and make the most of our one-on-one time with our little Noo.

Everyone tells me how precious the first year is and how quickly it goes, so I don’t want us to take it for granted. There are going to be so many “firsts” this year and I want us to capture them all, whether that’s photos, videos or hand prints. I've seen a little packs of cards etc.. that people have been using to show how old their kiddies are in weekly/monthly photos. I've also seem some "first year" wall clocks where there's a photo each month instead of a number. I haven't decided yet but I am tempted to get one for the nursery. Maybe you can get one.

We also have three weeks together, as a family, in October, as Guy is taking the last six months of our 12 months maternity allowance, and we have three weeks holiday we're tacking on to the end of the first six months, so there’s a cross over. We've been talking about going on our first “Family Holiday”. Going abroad may be a little too much for us, but we could rent a cottage and take the dog. There are plenty of places we’ve yet to visit in the UK and October is usually quite mild – I’m thinking Loch Ness; Noo searches for Nessie…


To finish and edit our “Hello Little One” story.

It will be nice to know how the story finally ends – or begins, depending on how you look at it.

Our IVF journey has been draining, as well as humbling. I know how lucky we’ve been to get our "Big Fat Positive" in our first cycle and re-reading our notes and diary entries has brought a tear to my eye – which technically isn’t that difficult these days… I cried in “Honey! I Shrunk the Kids” on the weekend. I often joke that by the end of this pregnancy we'll have been “pregnant” for eleven months not nine, and cried for most of them.

IVF still feels like one of those taboo subjects that’s only spoken about in hushed tones, and only happens to “Other” people. I’ve come to learn that nothing could be further from the truth. Sharing our experiences will be cathartic for us, but I also hope it gives some type of reassurance to anyone starting out on the same emotional ride.


To start working on our Dragonoo series – a collections of children stories that focus on Noo, a part dragon, part kangaroo kiddlywink and the mischief they get up to.

We’ve wanted to do this for so long and now feels like the perfect time to start it. I'm sure we'll be inspired by Noo as they grow up and have their own set of adventures. We've talked about getting Audra illustrating the stories. In fact she's creating some wall art of dragonoos for Noo’s room - a present for her little niece or nephew.


READ

I’m not sure how much time we're going to get to read during 2016. There's a list of books to get through that I completely neglected last year, but I think we’ll be lucky if we manage to read a handful. I’m led to believe sleep will be at a premium, squeezed in between feeds and nappies changes, and there’ll be days when we won’t want, or be able, to get out of our PJs. It doesn’t sound like an ideal reading environment. But we enjoy reading and so we’ll just have to remind ourselves to take the time every so often – maybe when we're relaxing in the bath, or perhaps while the baby is busy breastfeeding.


WRITE

I always have this down as an aim each New Year, and it’s success varies greatly. I start out strong, with a plan and dedicated writing times, but something always seems to come along that takes priority and nothing could be truer this year. There’ll be priorities on top of priorities that come before writing. And we have to be realistic, as much as we want to write every day it’s not going to happen, but we can promise that we‘ll write when we can, be it our diary, an outline, a character development, chapter entry or short story draft.


My last commitment to us is to relax and not get too stress and annoyed if we don’t achieve many of our goals. I want to read, I want to write, I want to lose the baby weight, but sometimes the best laid plans fall apart. What matters, and will always matter, is our family and our happiness, and that means being the best wife, mum and Stephanie we can be.


This is going to be our year!! 2016 is going to be amazing and truly life changing in ways we can't yet imagine. Enjoy it. It will pass very quickly, so sure you make the most of the time we have at home.

Stevie


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