Thursday, June 2, 2011

June Blog Spotlight - Life of a Doctor's Wife

I'm not going to spend too much time introducing Mrs. D because you're going to want to just jump right into this post here.  I'll just say that aside from being absolutely hilarious and honest, the air of mystery makes Mrs. D incredibly enticing.  So once you're done laughing your little butts off at this post, visit her blog at Life of a Doctor's Wife



Who are you?
I go by Life of a Doctor's Wife and occasionally Mrs. D (as in Mrs. Doctor) (I know, SO original and clever!). These days, I am 30. But for some reason I always initially click "31" when I'm keying in my age on the elliptical machine at the gym. Before hurriedly correcting myself, of course! And if I'm being completely honest with you – and I'd like to start out on the best foot possible, seeing as Kat so kindly loaned me this space for today – I don't go to the gym nearly as often as I should. Hmm… Other things about me… My husband and I have been married two and a half years, but we've been dating for almost a whole decade. I am shy in person, long-winded in print. I love grammar, cats, guacamole, and skiing. And, well, let's stop there.

Why did you start blogging?
When I was planning my wedding – which took over TWO YEARS OMG – I read thousands of wedding blogs. That was my first introduction to the blogosphere. Through the wedding blogs, I found other bloggers – some were newly engaged or newly married, others were moms. And I fell in love with reading about others' lives. I'd compose blog posts in my head, or experience something and think, "Man, I wish I had a blog on which to record this!"

Then my husband started his medical residency. We moved to a new city in a new state. He was gone all the time. And I started a blog to stave off the loneliness. It worked, and today I feel so lucky to be part of a little community of strong women who are also beautiful writers.

What's your favorite summer-time activity?
Is drinking margaritas an appropriate answer? Hmm, probably not, as I am wont to do that any time of year.

I guess my real answer would be going to the lake by my parents' cabin. Since my parents live thousands of miles west of me, that doesn't happen very often. But I have decades of memories to rely on. Lying on the sun-baked dock surrounded by mountains is one of my favorite things in the world.




The Hibbety Jibbety

Thanks in large part to bloggers like Mrs. King and their Internet brood of adorable chubby cheeked children… I have recently begun thinking that maybe I, a lifelong baby-hater (and by "baby-hater" I don't mean "kicks babies in the street," I mean more "thinks babies are NOT for me, ever, not in a gajillion years" – but really, those babies shouldn't be in the street), might want a baby for myself at some point.

You can imagine, dear reader, just how momentous that decision was.

It was as if the ground beneath me had tilted ninety degrees, turning me and all my comfortable notions of baby-hatery all askew!

But now that Having Babies is pretty much all I think about, I have come across something horrifying.

No, not the thought of labor. (Although man alive, that sounds pretty terrible.)

No, not the knowledge that my husband and I would be responsible – until our deaths – for the life of another human. (YIKES. I can barely keep my plants alive, y'all.)

No, not… Okay, I better stop there lest I talk myself out of this Baby Thing completely.

Anyway, the real horrorshow lies in two words: We're trying.

Because when you say, "We're trying." what you really mean is, "We do the hibbety jibbety a lot. On purpose."

And I don't know about you, dear reader, but I do not particularly care to share my hibbety jibbety habits with the rest of the world.

Least of all my parents.

Let's talk about them for a second.

My parents are wonderful, loving, supportive folks. My whole life, I'd say things like, "I'll never have kids!" and they nodded along, agreeing that that was a fine choice. They never pressured me. They never said things like, "Just you wait." or "You'll change your mind, mark my words." or really ever "Mark my words" because who says that?

So when my husband and I felt that Having Babies might be in our future (FUTURE, dear reader – no "we're trying" here!), I felt that I should probably warn my parents.

Believe me, I'd just as well show up at their house one Christmas with a baby and say, "Oh by the way…"

But I don't think that's quite how things work. Also, I can barely keep it together as is, so it would be lovely to have my parents around to answer questions and pitch in with housework and other Things Parents Do When Their Kids Have Kids type of activities.

The other thing I want to avoid is my parents thinking we had a baby by accident. If I call them up to say, "I'm pregnant!" I'd want them to be fully delighted… not 99% delighted and 1% afraid that I was knocked up with a kid I don't want.

But oh how I dread the idea of saying things like "We're trying." to my parents.

If anyone in the world should be shielded from the hibbety jibbety, it is one's parents.

I would rather that hibbety jibbety thoughts never even cross their minds… let alone in relation to me and my husband.

My current plan is to let them know well in advance that we are considering Having Babies. This is not a Now thing, by the way. This is a Future, Possibly 2013 sort of thing. So I think giving them ample warning will a) prepare them and b) put them at an acceptable distance from hibbety jibbety thoughts.

But what I really need is an acceptable euphemism.

Jenna from That Wife coined the phrase "expecting to expect." I think that's adorable. And it sounds wonderfully passive to me. My husband and I aren't doing anything – we're just sitting around expecting things.

But I'd like to come up with something even more removed from the hibbety jibbety.

The only one I can come up with is "waiting for the stork." But it's imperfect. Mainly because I'd worry that people would think "The Stork" was a nickname for my husband's junk.

So, dear reader, what would you say in lieu of "we're trying"?

12 comments:

  1. I like the "waiting for the Stork"! But...I've got nothing since we weren't so much trying...but are still 100% happy!

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  2. Omg this was a hysterical post! I can relate on so many levels from the "baby-hater" to the whole dislike of the phrase "we're trying". I cringe everytime I hear that from someone (not me, I'm still in my baby-hating stage).
    I really don't know what to call it, but the stork comment almost made me spit out my coffee!

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  3. Just tell them you are no longer opposed to the idea of having a baby. Then when you show up one Christmas with a swaddled baby they won't experience that 1% of fear. Congrats by the way. A long time ago I said I'd never have kids; I still maintain that a child screaming like they are being murdered, even if they are having fun, is one of the worst sounds imaginable. But I got over it and am due in 3 weeks!

    ~ GGG

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  4. I don't think I'd go with the stork line because I think the stork means you're pregnant and just waiting for delivery. The stork delivers babies. I agree with Girly Green Girl - tell them you're no longer opposed to the baby idea..at all..in fact you feel the opposite. They'll get it, without all the hibbity thoughts.

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  5. Why not just "We've decided we want to have a baby."

    I did not tell my parents we wanted to have a baby, but I also had never told them we didn't want to have a baby. I was really nervous and felt awkward about telling them I was pregnant. It felt like I was saying, "I have sex!" Ew.

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  6. You make me laugh so much. I think I would say something like this:

    "Mom. Dad. Hubs and I have decided we would like to have a baby sometime in the future. Just wanted you to know. Hopefully Jesus blesses us with the immaculate conception in about a year and a half, as that would be ideal for our timeline. So I'll let you know when the angel comes to tell me I'm pregnant."

    Of course, this is coming from the person who, when I told my mom I was pregnant asked her not to tell Dad because "then he'll know I had sex."

    My dad found out eventually.

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  7. You are so cute! I feel the SAME way as you and think the whole darn thing is awkward. As my husband and I knew we were more interested in a family, I just would always talk to my parents about all of my friends kids. They got the hint that I liked babies and the more ppl around us who had kids made it easier for us to break the news that I was knocked up! Ultimately Mom and Dad were so excited that they were going to be grandparents that the fact of HOW I actually got pregnant didnt really cross their minds. Love your blog and thanks Kat for a fun blog spotlight!

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  8. Well, my mom just flat out ASKED me if Elizabeth was an accident. (My answer was to fall down laughing hysterically on the floor.) Now, your parents might be an exception to this rule, but my opinion is NEVER TELL ANYONE you are trying. You can't untell that and people will start staring at you all the time. And you won't be able to sneeze anymore because everyone will be "oh, you are pregnant! That is why you are sneezing!" (Because do you know what everyone is doing right now around me? Assuming that we are trying again. And staring at my poor midsection which doesn't look all that great anyway.)

    I do like the no longer opposed to the idea of having a baby eventually line from above. It doesn't put any kind of timeline on it and never mentions anything about actually having sex. There's no real pressure there.

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  9. Ah! I absolutely loved this post. Especially since I have an aversion to those words myself, though admittedly I did use them on my blog when I wrote about this very thing awhile back. I like "expecting to expect," or, my personal favorite: "We're not *trying* per se, we are just no longer actively NOT trying."

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  10. Thank you all for the sweet comments! I totally love the "we're not opposed to babies" stance. That seems perfectly removed from the situation.

    Thanks for reading, and thank you Kat for the space to air my silliness!

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  11. Haha! Brad and I totally call it the hibbety jibbety too! Um, when we stopped preventing we used the mantra "whatever happens happens", and "we're not stopping it from happening, but we're not trying either". Either way, I was knocked up in 3 months...so we didn't have to explain anything for very long =)

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  12. BABY HATER, right here. And I'm too thinking do I want to go through life childless. I think the main reason I want a kid is so I can take pictures of it. lol Great post and I will head over for a visit!

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