A Great Blog? Definitely!

Another guest post by another of my favorite bloggers: Beverley.

I can't even remember how I found Bev's blog, A Baby? Maybe... Most likely some lucky Googling about Infertility. But I've been a big big fan of hers for a few years now. Her posts are always clever, and she always closes with the very best quotes.

I love Bev. I love her style, her sense of humor, and her honest yet polite way of writing. If we lived near each other, I'd beg her to be my real life friend. But since we live far far away, we are stuck being Internet friends. Her adorable little Lucy is a month older than Olivia, and OHMAHGAH is she just so freaking cute you won't be able to stand it!

(I'm not going to post for Thanksgiving - I think we all know what I am thankful for this year. So make sure you enjoy this post from Bev before you pass out from your Turkey coma, and have a fantastic Thanksgiving!)

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Oh man, I’m so excited to be here. It’s like a birthday present in itself because I luuuurrrve me some Jennepper. Truly. She’s amazing, and she didn’t even pay me (very much ) to write that. Anyhoo…

Well, here I am. I had the big 2-9er yesterday and I am now officially in the final year of my twenties. Do I think that 30 is old? Absolutely not, but the recent streak of gray hairs on the top of my head and the wrinkles on either side of my eyes say differently.

It feels like it was just yesterday that I was graduating college, soon to turn 23. I was going to be big time. A big time journalist. Traveling all over the world. No settling down for me, no way. Husband? No thanks. Kids? Absolutely not.

Then I met Rob. Freshly single and looking for a summer fling. He was visiting Oregon for the summer. He would be gone by September. It was perfect. We’d have fun, he’d go home and I’d get my big time job and start living my glamorous life.

Fast forward to the end of that summer, I was not letting that boy go anywhere without me. We were madly in love and that was it. I picked up and moved thousands of miles across the country to a city where I knew no one. All alone in New York City living above Wall Street with two complete strangers, a curtain as a wall and a low paying job at a crazy animal magazine that I hated. All for him.

We married the next September, just before I turned 24, barely over a year from when we first laid eyes on one another. In a vineyard in the breezy late Oregon summer. There was dancing, laughing, so much happiness. The thought of needing anything else, anyone else, in our lives, far from our minds.

All that no husband stuff that I thought before. Silly! Ridiculous! At 25, when he jokingly asked about having a baby, I did a double take. A baby? No thanks, I told him. I’m not the motherly type. I’m not good with babies. Children don’t like me. I’m not silly enough. I don’t like cartoons. Hate them actually. I haven’t changed a diaper since I was 13, and even then I doubt I did it right (and now that I think about it, who the hell leaves a baby with the 13 year old? Really?) I’m never the one who “wants to hold the baby”. Besides, I would go nuts if I had to stay at home with some sticky child all day long. I don’t even know how to do art projects or whatever else you do with small children. No thanks! He laughed and told me he’d gladly be a stay at home dad, think about it Bev.

I did. The more I thought, the more I liked the idea. Maybe I could do this. I could be a mother. Hell, why not?

So we tried. This is exciting. And fun! We’re going to be parents. What should our baby’s name be? Do you think its going to be a boy or a girl? I’m certain it worked this month. Maybe next month. I so don’t want to have a baby in January. I’d prefer a spring birthday. Maybe next month. And then we tried some more. Why hello there 26th birthday. And tried some more. Hmmm. Turns out they lied in high school. It isn’t that easy to get knocked up.

See you later 26, here comes 27. Damnit, I want that baby. I don’t care what month. I don’t care if she’s a girl or he’s a boy. I don’t care. How can I want to be something so badly, something that I never thought I wanted in the first place? But I did, more than anything. Then it happened. We were pregnant.

28th birthday I’m huge. I’m ecstatic. We’re waiting. It’s almost been 9 months. I get a girdle-like belly contraption to hold my enormous girth that is hurting my back and a pregnancy massage for my birthday. So glamorous! My feet look like sausages in my too small shoes. I waddle around at work, need help getting up from the couch at home. Hey, 23 year old self, look at me now? Betcha never would have guessed it. Ultra glam job? Nope. Married? Yes! Baby on the way? Yes! Happier than I’ve ever been? Absolutely.

29th birthday. Yesterday. My last year in my twenties and how I have changed. What I wanted for my birthday at 23… probably a pair of designer jeans and that chunky Tiffany necklaces that EVERYONE wore back then. What I wanted for my birthday at 29? A maid, because damn it’s hard to keep a house clean these days, and my post-pregnancy OCD has kicked in to high gear so much so that a maid is my ultimate dream. A not very feasible one, but a little wishful thinking never hurt anyone.

What I got? A husband who stayed home from work in order to clean the house top to bottom, cooked a traditional English dinner for my birthday. A beautiful baby, who is the light of my life, that went to bed without so much as a peep last night so that Mama could watch So You Think You Can Dance and read her new book in absolute peace.

No maid? No problem. I couldn’t want for more (ok, maybe I still want the maid a wee bit). I’m living my last year of my twenties with all the things I thought I didn’t want, but in the end have made my life complete. A very Happy Birthday to me indeed!

Thank you Mrs.Jennepper for having me!



“Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be.”
- Robert Browning