Oh, Baby.

I started this blog as an autobiography. I shared the story of my painful childhood. I talked about challenges I faced in my 20’s and 30’s and it flowed like warm melted chocolate until my writing brought me to the current decade. I’ve told my story through 2007, then realized the events of the current decade were too painful, too fresh and too overwhelming to write about. This blog was about healing for me and since it brought me pain, I stopped for awhile. I have a lot of rough drafts but I have not been able to compose a worthwhile entry in well over a year. When I feel more ready, I will pick up where I left off in 2007 and write about that part of my life because it is by far my greatest story of pain, betrayal, failure, success, and forgiveness. When I’m ready, I will share. For now, thank you for allowing me to skip that 12 years and bring you current because I definitely have something worth writing about today.

I am 43 years old, periomenopausal AND pregnant, which I didn’t even realize was possible. If you’ve followed my blog or you know me personally, you know that I made the very firm decision in my early 20’s not to have children. My husband also made that decision for himself long before we were married. When we met, we were in our 30’s and neither of us had or wanted children. We got married when I was 36 and he was 40. I was his second marriage, he was my first.

You can read more about my very personal decision not to have children in a previous blog entry, To Parent or not to Parent?. If you are just now reading my blog for the first time and curious about my autobiography, you can start at the beginning by reading my first entry, When a Ginger Snaps and follow my story chronologically from there. Reading those entries will help you understand why I am terrified, excited and determined to bring this baby into the world under far better circumstances than I experienced. Regardless of what my plans were, this is my new priority. Along with that, I have to continue to make myself and my health priority #1 which is what landed me here in the first place. I got my health back on track and that led me to pregnancy.

In October 2018, my husband and I had some hard conversations, made some big decisions and began to focus on the parts of our life that were the most dysfunctional. Newsflash: We are very imperfect people and we have struggled hard. The only thing that has saved us is patience, unconditional love, my willingness to call out bullshit and his ability to handle my very harsh communication style and process it in a productive way by trying to hear me.

I am the most loving, loyal and caring person. I will do anything for someone I love and I will take care of them without hesitation but I have deep rooted pain and was raised in an unhealthy home where the silent treatment ruled, following an anger fill outburst full of words that my dad could never take back. Consequently, I keep things bottled up until I rage. I am the epitome of the raging redhead. The “Irish temper” is not a myth. Once I’m angry, I can’t keep my mouth shut and if you hurt me, you pray for my silence because I will destroy you with my words until you understand my pain. It’s my darkest side, my hardest truth and a personality trait I have worked very hard to control. I don’t make excuses for myself but I recognize that I was treated this way and it’s the way I was taught to process my feelings. It really sucks and I’m not proud of myself sometimes.

My dad is egotistical and old school and he told me my whole life that I was too young to have feelings or know pain. He disregarded anything that upset me and got angry if I disagreed with him. I was a child who was to be seen and not heard. I have a lot of negative perception about his generation, born in the 40s and 50s, especially those from the south where my family originated.

Why is ignorance bred and born there? If you look at the educational statistics, concentration of welfare recipients, and the financial burden these states place on the rest of our society, it’s clear to see the root of the problem. Knowledge is power and those parts breed ignorance. My family is proof. 85% of my family is rooted in Arkansas, Oklahoma and rural Texas. I was born in California and much of my family relocated there 50+ years ago but their ideals never changed. The same 85%, plus some native Californians in my generation, still perpetuate those toxic cycles, have received taxpayer funded welfare in some form. Their children were born on state funded health insurance, out of wedlock, fed with food stamps, housed with government assistance and they have raised their children in poverty or barely making it. They are the first to support conservatism, Donald Trump, hate immigrants, accuse “liberals” of being takers and my personal favorite, blame Mexicans for stealing their jobs. What they forget is that I’ve watched them stand with their hand out and play victim about their lack of opportunity while I worked 3 jobs to pay the bills. Most of them struggling with alcohol and drug addiction at some point, if not currently. I can’t tell you how many of their children are being raised by someone other than them or were surrendered to Foster Care.

Family or not, it’s an ugly cycle. I have checked a few teenagers in my family for judging others, hating immigrants who are “takers” and reminded them that the taxpayers in their state paid for their birth, food and home. Their parents don’t appreciate that but I refuse to allow ignorance and let these kids think they weren’t given all the opportunity in the world to rise above. Their parents weren’t suppressed. They made bad decisions. It’s not OK to be a person who receives help then blames others for your failures because you did meth in your 20’s instead of securing a good job and educating yourself. If you got pregnant your senior year and quit trying to make your life better because you had kids, your kids are going to be just like you, feeling like the world owes them something and blaming others for their “lack of opportunity.” It’s laughable. I have been on my own since I was 16 years old and I have never received a dime of assistance. I have always had to pay for private healthcare or go without because I didn’t get pregnant which automatically qualified me for help. That’s how the cycle starts. You can preach abstinence and morals but the reality is that your kids are capable of having sex without protection and out of wedlock…just like you. Why not prepare them for the real world and face the truth? Break the damn cycle!

You can hate progressive societies all you want but they are thriving, producing economically and sustaining these backwards places with larger tax contributions. You can FEEL however you want but the fact is that old school politics, old school conservatism , suppression of women, children and minorities (who are the hardest workers I’ve had to pleasure to know) and lack of investment in education has created the mess our society is in. I don’t care which side of the political fence you are on. If you have ever collected a dime of assistance and you are judging someone else or angry that someone else is now receiving help, please take a look in the mirror. Please know that while you are receiving $8,000 tax returns which is more than you’ve ever paid in your life, my husband and I are paying $18,000 tax bills every year with no write offs and we have never received help of any kind. We went into debt to pay the IRS 5 years in a row until I quit my job to become a small business owner so I could bleed financially on paper to get ahead. We’ve lost everything and started over 3 times. No one bailed us out, not even the government and our families certainly weren’t going to dig us out. In fact, they didn’t want to hear about it so we buckled down and handled business alone. We didn’t run or expect a bail out.

I don’t want to hear anyone complain about their woes, the immigrants stealing their jobs or how America is not great anymore. This is the land of opportunity and you chose to sit with your hand out, blaming everyone else for your failures. You look and sound ridiculous, even with an American flag in your hand. I want everyone who needs help to receive it temporarily and I will never understand anyone who doesn’t want that for others. It’s just selfish. I have never taken but if I have a crisis, I hope I have a lifeline.

The trend of my parents generation seems to be that children were there to serve and I strongly believe our society is paying the price. I have paid the price first hand because the man who raised me used me as his emotional punching bag, made me feel inferior and responsible for his failures as a parent and as a man, and made me feel like a burden. Look at the generation who has been running our country into the ground for far too long. That generation needs to step aside and let a healthy cycle begin. We are tired of being seen and not heard. Please, retire and go away. Enjoy your golden years and stop trying to make decisions about my future and the future of the generations behind me. It doesn’t even effect you anymore and the fact that you still want to control everything and live in a world from 50 years ago where women couldn’t have an opinion and black people had to sit in the back of the bus is infuriating. America was not great back then so stop longing for the old days when it was acceptable to be an asshole to someone you thought was less than you. Raising your children in a world of resentment breeds resentment and anger. I am proof of that.

I could never condone my behavior in anger or my terrible words but I will say that my verbal aggression has brought me to a place of peace where I’m learning to speak up for myself in an aggressive but calm manner so I am more likely to be heard. I don’t let anyone walk all over me or tell me my feelings aren’t valid.

I have realized that people will suffer in silence rather than speak their truth. The worst communication is no communication and our marriage has grown because we are willing to argue. My husband is non-confrontational by nature and I know my outbursts can be terrifying but he has learned to listen and I have learned to calm down. All of this has taken about 10 years but we finally understand each other on a deeper level and whether we planned to be parents or not, I feel very confident we are going to rock this together, as a team! We’ve survived more than most people would ever believe because on the surface, we are magic. I am so glad people see us that way because we are working very hard to make the tough stuff easier and laugh our way through struggle. We get better and better every day.

My deep seeded fears about parenting still exist but if there is one thing I feel better about today, it is my ability to offer this baby the life he or she deserves. Our relationship will never be perfect but it is loving and healthy. We have survived poverty and losing our home but are finally prospering financially. His income increased and I no longer have to work 60 hours a week for 40 hour pay to make up the difference. In reality, my income was only increasing our tax bill. Isn’t America great?

We moved to a city we love with an abundance of resources. My health is on track for the first time in many years after a cancer scare that turned out to be a combination of thyroid disease, anemia, iron deficiency and malnutrition from gastric bypass 12 years ago. I do not absorb nutrients properly through food. I will share more about my recovery but the bottom line is that I worked very hard to focus on myself, mind, body and spirit and restored my health to optimal levels.

I saw my OBGYN in January of 2019 after neglecting my female health for 5 years because I could not receive decent healthcare where I lived. She did a full work up on me, blood, urine, etc., and I had my first mammogram. My female health was fine but my blood work showed that I was in periomenopause with FSH levels too low to ever become pregnant. My IUD had reached it’s 10 year expiration and at the advice of my doctor I removed it. I got pregnant 4 days later but I didn’t find out until almost 10 weeks later.

Removing the IUD meant I should expect irregular periods. We moved 1,800 miles and changed our life which had an impact on my body. My life long best friend had struggled with CML leukemia and was losing her battle. She passed just this month on the 7th and I spent the last week of her life at the hospital in San Francisco. During this time I had one period that was just not right and I felt like something was different but I took 2 negative pregnancy tests in April and chalked everything up to stress and life changes.

The week before I flew to San Francisco to be with her, I felt unusual and random nausea. It was crippling but infrequent. I was suspicious but thought it was stress and anxiety. I just lost my mother to Cancer in 2015 and the thought of going back to the hospital for round 2 was emotionally paralyzing for me. I did it anyway. During the week I was at UCSF I threw up a few times without any warning and my panic started to set in. I also realized my pants were becoming snug which was odd because I had been on a medically regulated diet since January and had lost some weight. I flew home from San Francisco on a Saturday morning with a hole in my heart because I knew it was the last time I would ever seen her beautiful face. She passed 3 days later with her son by her side. She was 45 years old and my best friend for 32 years. No one can ever or will ever replace her or understand our history. I am broken over the loss. #fuckcancer

I had locked myself in my house, riddled with grief and praying for her peace. The day she died I had to get outside and I asked my husband to take me to dinner and out into the sunshine because my world felt dark. During dinner I shared with him that my nausea and vomiting were a concern, that I didn’t feel like myself and I’m sure it was just grief but that I needed to take another pregnancy test to be sure. We stopped on the way home and bought a 2 pack.

The next day, as a precaution and a way to confirm for myself that my body was just off balance, I casually took a Clear Blue home pregnancy test and it showed positive before I could even set it on the tub next to me. My whole word spun in that moment. I tested a second time hours later… still positive. My husband was speechless for a couple of days and I was lost. He was supportive and we never had an argument but the shock was overwhelming to both of us. I am very in tune with my body and keep a calendar of my cycle so I went back and started counting. I realized I was about 10 weeks along already and we had a trip to Nevada planned to clean out our storage and finish our move to Texas. We were flying out that Friday. That meant I couldn’t get in to an OBGYN for another 2 weeks when I returned. I already had a previously scheduled appointment with my Hematologist the next day to follow up on my labs and progress of treatment so I discussed it with her and she ran a blood test to help ease my mind. That test showed me pregnant, 10-14 weeks gestation, pending OBGYN exam. That’s where I am today, waiting for my exam which is in 2 days. I am showing, feeling fabulous and haven’t had any sickness or nausea except for the 2 weeks I discussed earlier. I feel fortunate.

In the 10 days since I’ve confirmed my pregnancy, we’ve gone from terrified to excited (ok, still terrified) and hit the ground running to plan for this very unplanned life change. In October, we gave up our 1,800 square foot home with a pool and a yard because it was just the 2 of us and we didn’t need the space. We wanted to downsize simplify our life and travel. We sold everything unless it was personal or a necessity and we packed our clothes and dogs into our cars and started a new life in San Antonio, TX.

It was an easy job transfer for my husband with the exception of 2 weeks of unpaid training on his new route but we made it work. We had never been to San Antonio before but when we researched our options, the area and amenities were most appealing and the job offered him the opportunity to work in the highest seniority conductor position in San Antonio which meant greater stability, a regular schedule and higher pay. We lived in a motel for 3 weeks until we found a place to live. We moved into an 800 square foot space on the south side of downtown San Antonio with a view of the #Riverwalk. I still think we are the oldest people in our very modern resort style apartment complex. Most everyone here is a doctor, nurse, in the military or a student of one of the many universities here. Our building has a very social vibe and we often interact with our neighbors while BBQing on the rooftop or enjoying “free beer Friday” which is a weekly social event. We’ve met so many great people from different walks of life and most of them at least 10+ years younger than us.

We are enjoying the culture of the art and music district and a much simpler life. I traded my 7 seat SUV for a 2017 392 #DodgeChallenger, #ScatPack #shaker with 500 horsepower, 2 door, color, yellow jacket. I love it but it’s not practical for a baby. Neither is 800 square feet of living space facing downtown with the sound of the freight train blaring through my living room at least 6 times a day.

This baby is forcing us into unexpected change once again and we have become professionals at it so I know we are going to be OK. We’ve secured a larger apartment in the same building to move into on the 28th of next month. We will change our car situation and my husband will adopt my Challenger as his daily driver (I still think that was his plan all along, lol) and I’ll go back to an SUV. I can’t say I resent any of these changes.

I am looking at this as a gift, a chance to break the cycle and the next great adventure of our life. I am 43 and he is 47. Both of us will be a year older by the time this baby arrives. My birthday is within 2 days of my estimated due date so we’ll see which happens first. I MIGHT deliver at age 43. Happy birthday to me. It will be a challenge but we are determined to make the most of this and embrace that we are in the best possible place. He is a locomotive engineer who spent most of his career and our marriage working out of town, on call 24/7 and spending more time in motels than at home. He now works a set schedule 5 days a week and even when his days are 12 hours long, he is home for dinner by 6:30 every day, and off Friday and Saturday. I am a housewife and supplement our income by selling custom crafted items, mostly glitter tumblers, (you can see my work at #gingershippieshack ) but it’s at my leisure because my sole focus has been restoring my health. My health is restored, my nutrition at optimal levels and my diet under control. My age could pose a challenge but my attitude is good and my willingness to adjust is without question.

This week will be the start of my medical journey through my #pregnancy and I am researching the difference between doctor vs. midwife birth and exploring the option of a Doula. I come from a long line of women who have had easy pregnancies and labor to delivery in under 4 hours. I can only pray I inherited those genes. So far, I seem to be doing OK. My hope is to bring this baby into the world naturally with as little medical intervention as possible. I am not ignorant enough to believe that everything is going to go my way but I know what my goal is and I’m striving to make it happen.

Thank you for following me on

my journey. I’ll be writing as I go, especially after my doctor appointments and I’m hoping they schedule an ultrasound this week. I’ve been teased about being pregnant with twins and I need to eliminate that fear or face that reality soon. Either way, I have never been a failure at life, though I have failed at many things. Parenting is my biggest adventure yet. So far, my biggest issue is insatiable hunger. Wish us luck!