The Distant Memory of Life Before Trying to Conceive

The other day I was driving along thinking about babies (as usual) and suddenly had a thought.  What did I actually think about before all this baby-making malarkey came along?  And you know what?  I could hardly recall what it was like, never mind what I was thinking.  What a sad state of affairs that my life before TTC had become a distant memory.

Life before baby thoughts

Isn’t it strange how consumed the brain gets with current events.  Three or four years ago, I’m sure babies popped into my head from time to time (since that was the long term plan), but what else was in there I have no idea.  I’m pretty sure my biggest concerns were things like:

• What to wear on a night out at the weekend.
• What bottle of wine and snacks to choose for our “TV night in.”
• Which cocktail to choose during happy hour at a trendy wine bar.
• Where we should go on holiday next.
• Winging about work (because even though I love my job, we all have to have a moan now and again).

Wow!  All stuff that seems so insignificant and unimportant these days.  How I long to have my head filled with all that trivial stuff again, and come to think of it, to be out during happy hour in a trendy wine bar (but of course that’s off limits with our TTC “no or low alcohol rule“)!  <Sigh> Care-free, unimportant thoughts that bear no importance or significance on my future happiness.  Because let’s face it, if I wore the wrong top and chose the wrong bottle of wine I wouldn’t be thrust into the throws of depression would I? (Well, I’d hope not. LOL.)

A pact for the night and old times.

Anyway, last night Hubby and I went out for dinner together and made a pact…  No baby talk!  Now we’d tried this before several times, and failed spectacularly (or rather I’d failed spectacularly, Hubby is a bit better at it than me).  Usually by the time we’d walked from the car to the restaurant I was already talking (and stressing) about it.  However, last night was a success!  A massive pat on the back to us!  We talked about:

• Our recent holiday.
• If and where we’d like to go for a summer holiday.
• How we will book a special break away next bank holiday.
• Gossiped about friends.
• Winged about work
• Put the world to rights.
• No pregnancy, baby or miscarriage talk!!!!!!!!

And how refreshing it was.  Just like old times.  Memories of how we were “before” came flooding back.  We were back!!  Just us!  No imaginary baby sat slap bang on the table between us to direct our conversation onto them.  All too many times in the past, our talk of the future has included an imaginary pregnancy or baby…  You know how it goes… “well we could go there on holiday, but if I’m pregnant we’ll have to watch the pennies, so lets not book anything just yet.” or “Well, hopefully I’m be on maternity leave by then, so let’s not plan on any career moves just yet.”  But this time we did it, and it felt so refreshing.

A pact for the future

We have decided two things:

1. That we need to do more things together with no baby talk.  If we carry on the way we are, we’ll forget what we had in common before TTC.  We need to find ourselves again as a couple, think about what we what to do and not plan everything around “if” we are pregnant or “if” we have a baby by then.
2. Do more things for ourselves individually and together.  Plan things, buy tickets, book holidays in advance and treat ourselves.  No more living in the present day to day; no planning around the hope that we will be pregnant or have a baby by then.  And what’s the worst (or actually the best) thing that can happen?  We would be pregnant or have a baby by then and would have to cancel our plans.  Well, surely it’s a win win situation then.

After last night the distant memory of our old life started to come back to me and I realised that I actually want our old life back.  Maybe I’d failed when we’d tried this before because I didn’t want to have a night off the baby talk; it was all I wanted to talk about and think about; I’d been consumed.  But now it’s time to move on and get the old us and our old lives back.  Of course, it will never be exactly like the old days; we’ve had too much of a journey since then.  But I’d like to think that it will be even better.  If anything has changed over the last two years it’s how much closer we have become.  So the new “closer” us and the old fun carefree days?  It might be a bit of a challenge to get there, but I’m sure as heck going to try.

How do you cope with your TTC relationship?  Do you find it hard to talk about anything else these days?