There never is a perfect time

There never is a perfect time…

I’ve always dreamed of becoming a mother. I watched my mother do her best as a stay at home mom to raise 5 children. I started babysitting other people’s children at the age of 12. I perused a degree in elementary education. Now, I teach second grade. Being around and working with children has been a huge part of my life. When would it be my perfect time to bring a precious child into this world to hold, nurture, and raise?

 When my husband and I got married just over three years ago, we established that we would wait until I was graduated (at the time I was going into my junior year of college) before we would try starting a family. Life was going to be crazy with my husband going back to school and me gearing up for student teaching. The last thing I wanted was to be pregnant while going through student teaching. Even though we decided to wait a couple of years to have kids, we adopted an adorable puppy just 4 short months after being married. What a tremendous blessing that was.

After I finished student teaching, I graduated, and two days later received a job offer to teach second grade. I was thrilled! Being a teacher has been something that I always wanted to do. I prepared my classroom, went to lots of trainings, and began my career. In the meantime, I was thinking about the conversation my husband and I had after we got married. I was now graduated, so now should be the perfect time to start a family right? Wrong. Every time I prayed about it, I felt nothing. I would try to talk about it with my sweet husband and he felt lost as well. He still had three years of school to complete. So, maybe we needed to wait until he was done with school? This just pained me even more because that meant waiting even longer. As time went on, I continued teaching. I would often look at some of my students and dream of what it would be like if they were my own children…. how I would take care of them, love them, teach them, inspire them to themselves. This brought upon a small spell of depression. I was depressed that our family hadn’t started yet. Depressed that now wasn’t the perfect time. Depressed that those children were going home to loving parents. I wanted to be more than just a loving teacher; but a loving parent. Once again, why wasn’t it my time to have a child?

My husband was loving and supportive of my choice to pursue my career and reaffirmed to me that we were doing everything that we were supposed to be doing. Then, one day, in the early spring I felt that now was the time. At first, I doubted this feeling, because it had been nearly three years of it not being the right time. But, now was the time to start trying. I was so excited because finally it was my turn! But this brought about a new fear…what if I can’t get pregnant. Fortunately, that fear didn’t last long, because my husband and I were blessed to get pregnant shortly after trying.

We found out at the beginning of June that we were pregnant and waited to tell my family on Father’s Day. I was sure that my mom already knew because we took a trip out to AZ together and I wasn’t always feeling the greatest. But, she didn’t! We surprised my whole family with a “Hello Grandpa” onesie from Hello Happy Baby! Many tears of happiness were shared that day. I’m pretty sure it was the best Father’s Day gift my dad has ever received ;)

At 20 weeks, one of my best friends put together a gender reveal party for us. My husband and I went to the ultra sound and asked for the gender of baby to be put into an envelope. When we got home, we handed it off, and she was able to finish preparing for our Disney themed party. We were lead through a scavenger hunt of clues until we found the item in the oven that would lead us to discovering if baby was a boy or girl. Much to our delight, the smoke turned pink after lighting it and we are welcoming a baby girl into the family!

Is now really the perfect time to bring a child into this world? No, probably not. My husband is still in school and I’m entering my second year of teaching. BUT there really is no perfect time. I just know that we are being entrusted at this time to raise this sweet baby girl who will be joining our family in January! And what peace it brings to my once troubled heart.

- McKinstry