Hi Friends,

Today I’m switching gears a little bit from my normal baby chat and Austin updates to tackle a big behemoth of a topic that I’ve been rolling around for a long time now.

Things have been pretty good around here; renovations at our new house are well underway and Matt and I are going through everything we own and trying to purge as much as we can leading up to our big move on August 25th. Austin has been doing more and more each day, and is just so much fun to hang out with, and we’re getting ready for a road trip up to Sault Ste. Marie next weekend to take Austin to meet my mom’s side of the family and spend some time with his Great Grandma!

With all of this wonderful stuff going on, I’ve also been fighting a constant battle against the fear, anxiety and sadness over the state of my body and the long term prognosis for a full recovery from our birth. I met with a specialist this past week who had an incredibly bleak prognosis for me, and basically told me that he would bet that I would have issues for life as a result of our birth experience. It’s been tough. Extremely tough.

Today I wanted to talk a bit about the underlying issues that I’m starting to see at play here. And that is the concept of expectations vs. reality.

Expectation is a nasty little bitch responsible for so, so much unhappiness in this world, don’t you think? How many hundreds of thousands of times have bad things happened because someone is pissed off, or sad, or disappointed or upset that something didn’t go the way that they expected it to go? It seems that we (in general, I totally see exceptions to this rule even within my own circle of family and friends) just aren’t as receptive to adjusting our expectations (or better yet, dropping expectations completely) as we should be to maximize our own happiness. I’m culprit number one for this.

I’ve been struggling so much looking at the long term prognosis for the rest of my life, because there’s a good possibility that it won’t be quite what I had expected. For some naive reason, I expected to be in perfect health for my entire life. I expected to be the super mom who ran marathons, did tuck jumps that awed and inspired her kids, all the while baking the best chocolate chip cookies on earth, being present for every activity they have, and being the best wife on earth. Now that something has happened to me that is threatening many aspects of this, I’m having a really hard time adjusting to the new reality of what could be.

So, just throwing it out there. What if we all worked to drop the expectations completely. Completely. 

Instead of expecting things to go a certain way, and then being devastated when things don’t turn out quite that way, what if we worked together to have goals and dreams and aspirations, but agreed to surrender to what is, instead of what could have been.

I wish every day that things had gone differently with our birth. I’ve cried a million tears or more over it. I’ve lavished more self-hate on myself in the past 10 months then you can begin to imagine; hating my body for how badly it failed us that day.

But the fact of the matter is: I can’t change how things went down that day. I just can’t. What’s happened has happened, and there isn’t anything I can do to change that.

And so I’m trying a new approach. And that is to surrender. Surrender to the past, because nothing can be changed back there. Surrender to my expectations for the future, and letting go of what I think should be, and being okay with what is.

I may not be in perfect health for the rest of my days as I expected to be. My body may not work 100% as I hoped it would, and I may deal with issues earlier in life then I had initially thought I would. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t live a wonderful, happy, rich and fulfilled life.

And so, I surrender. I surrender to what is in the past, and I surrender all expectations and what I naively thought I was owed for the future. And oddly enough, surrender feels like the greatest victory I’ve had so far.

Happy Canada Day from Matt, Austin and I!!

Well, actually, it’s just Austin and I over here for this long weekend; Matt is away for the weekend on a canoe trip with all three of his brothers and his Dad for a retirement celebration for his Dad, so Austin and I are holding down the fort here for the weekend, along with Matt’s mom!

It’s been a while since Austin and I have had an extended time without Matt around, but we’ve been managing well and having lots of fun together so far. In fact, truth be told, I’m actually kind of enjoying having my little muffin all to myself!

Austin is just about 9 months now, and he is in this absolutely amazing stage of his life where he interacts with us so much now, is so quick and easy to make laugh or smile, and has this cheeky, determined, focused little personality that comes out more and more every day. I’m pretty much just absolutely obsessed with him and nothing makes me happier then making him laugh his little buns off (and man, when he gets going, can he laugh his little buns off! LOL)

I thought for this update, I’d do a bit of a different format and tell you….

All About Austin (8 Month Edition)

Favourite Foods: Baby Mum Mum crackers (veggie flavour) and sweet potato puree

Least Favourite Foods: Prunes, Peas, Green Beans and Creamed Corn (lol the kid is crazy when it comes to the corn, I think it smells so good!)

Sleeping: Pretty well! I’d say about 4 – 5 nights a week he will sleep through the night for us, and the other nights he will be up once max. Not too bad. I will say that I’m feeling even more tired then I was before though; possibly because we’re starting to catch up on a little bit of sleep now?

Naps: Pretty consistently every 2 – 3 hours during the day…progress!

Crawling: Army crawling!! A few weeks ago, he started to show signs that he was interested in getting on the move, and sure enough, over the past few weeks, he’s progressed to doing what we call the “drunk inchworm” across the floor in pursuit of his favourite toys LOL…it’s seriously so funny to watch. He hasn’t quite made his way onto all fours yet, but I’m sure it’s coming! He’s pretty good with his inchworm though, I must say!

Favourite Toys: The remote control (HANDS DOWN), and my car keys. Go figure. Also, pretty much any household item that he isn’t allowed to have. Here’s lookin’ at you Swiffer.

Swimming: Like a little fish! We did another round of swimming lessons this month, and he’s still loving it! He LOVES to kick, kick, kick his little legs, and pretty much does it non-stop when he’s in the water!

Shots: Next set of vaccines is scheduled for this coming Friday, and I’m dreading it. I just despise the thought of anything hurting him, or making him feel unwell. Sigh. We will also get to check his weight and height at this appointment, and I am looking forward to that! The last time we weighed him was back on April 19th and he was 16 lbs 5 oz. I’m  hoping that he is at least 18 or 19 pounds now!

Loves to Laugh At: Pretty much anything LOL, but especially loves when I make elephant “clomping” sounds, especially when I walk around with him on my shoulders, also loves having his belly tickled, or when you play peekaboo around the corner with him. The higher pitched the “PEEK”, the bigger the laugh. Also, when I lower my sunglasses and look at him in the rearview mirror in the car. LOL. I pretty much spend 75% of my day trying to make this little guy laugh.

Speaking: Consonants! He pretty regularly babbles “mamamamama” now, and we’re pretty sure we’ve heard lots of other consonants in there as well! I don’t think he really has associated me with the words “mama”, so I’m not calling this his first word officially, but he’s doing pretty well with his babble speak!

Wearing: Still mostly sleepers around the house lol….I just don’t have it in me to get him dressed in nice clothes when we’re just playing around the house, but I do try to get him dressed in some of his cute little clothes when we go out to art or music class. His 9 month clothes are getting too small for him already though….almost time for another wardrobe update!

Vacations: No more for us for a little while! We are taking a family trip with my family up to Manitoulin Island in October for my cousin’s wedding, but apart from that, we are sticking around town for the summer! I’m hopeful to take Austin to the park a bit more when the weather cools (the F) down a bit, and maybe to the splash pad when he gets a bit more mobile and can enjoy it more!

In general, it’s just been a really, really awesome month for us. I feel like we’re settling into our roles and our family dynamic so well, and really finding our groove. I just couldn’t be more in love with Austin; just thinking about it wells me up sometimes. I would do anything for him, literally anything; he is the absolute best part of my day and I just feel like this is exactly what I was put on this earth to do. It feels really good.

In other news, Matt and I have been busy as bees with all of the renovations at our new house (which we took possession of back on June 1st – EEK!), and it’s looking amazing so far! We’re 3 weeks into the 8 week renovation now, and the entire house is really starting to take shape and feel like it will be a really handsome family home for us.

The original owners of this house lived in it for 40 years, before selling it to the last owners who renovated the first three levels and sold it to us. I just love the idea of breathing new life into this house and bringing a new family into it to love on it again. I’m probably the most excited to have a big playroom in this house for Austin to cruise around in, and a huge park in the backyard; our small townhouse living room is really cramping his style now that he’s on the move!

I’ve been still working on my recovery, and am back off of high impact activity again after changing physiotherapists to a new (and very good) one, who advised against it for now. Honestly, I’m fine with that, because any exercise at all is just a major stress inducer right now for me because sometimes it brings on symptoms and problems for me. I’m also dealing with a lot of anxiety and mental trouble with healing and accepting what my body is now, and how it functions for me (or doesn’t). I’d like to say it’s a work in progress, but I’m honestly not even really working on it right now. I’m feeling a bit stalled to be honest.

Anyways – I think that’s it on our end! Wishing you and your family a very happy Canada Day, or 4th of July long weekend, and I hope your home is as full of love and laughter as ours is right now!

-Sara xo