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"?