Down

I've been down these past few days. First my friend Ella had her beautiful baby a few days ago. I am so jealous. Ella is great and I'm happy for her, but it just reminds me of how long we've been at this so far. See, Ella and I met on ivillage before we even started TTC. I connected with her b/c we are both in academia and were trying to work out when to start trying with the academic calendar. We had both planned to start in one month and then threw caution the wind on the same weekend a month early. But from there are stories diverged, although neither has been easy. One of the things that made my niece's birth hard was the knowledge that if we had been successful our first month, we could have had a baby at the same time. That was how long we've been trying. And now, here is someone who started TTC the same time we did, who even had difficulty on the journey to pregnancy, and now she has her cute little baby. I feel like I've been lapped again.

Also, as the Christmas season is getting closer and decorations are going up (not in our house as I believe in giving Thanksgiving its due, but you can't escape Christmas in stores), I remember how optimistic I was last Christmas. We trade off spending Christmas with each other's parents, so last year I knew we would be spending this year at home b/c his parents live nearby. This will be our first Christmas as adults where we wake up in our own bed. And I was so sure that it would be our first Christmas with a baby. I thought everything would be different this year.

Last night I went to my church's women's council meeting for the first time. I should have known to avoid it when I'm feeling down, but a friend has been encouraging me to go for a while. But as she was introducing me to people, the first question everyone asked was how many kids I had, or if my kids went to the parish school.