Recently, my wife and I were able to announce we are pregnant. Woo hoo! We are both definitely excited and looking forward to bringing our baby into the world. Given we are due in November, I am even going to give the baby an emoji in order to have a way to reference the baby. I’ll refer to the baby as 🍗. This seems to make the most sense since our little 🍗 could be born on Thanksgiving day.

However, plenty of life change comes with plenty of reflection. The part of all this I have been reflecting on most is my inability to get excited about this phase of the pregnancy. Last year, we were pregnant and we experienced a miscarriage. Before we miscarried, I was pretty much over the moon with excited for the next phase of our lives. This time, not so much. And my lack of excitement has been weighing on me.

As a matter of fact, I was even a little mad at myself for not being excited or overjoyed yet. I could not figure it out. I thought to myself, “I am having a child and I am not even excited about it. What is wrong with me?” Before I realized a couple things.

One, I am still a little hurt and afraid we will lose this baby too. My fears have mostly subsided given we are approximately eighteen weeks along. There are still some irrational fears in my mind. It hurt quite a bit to go through that pain. I will always look back on the end of last summer and remember the pain we went through. I am not crippled by the pain and it still does not control me. Obviously, I have been able to heal from the pain we felt and we are moving forward with our lives. The pain has left me timid but not destroyed and together, my wife and I have been able to overcome the pain and move on with our lives. The loss has left a mark on me.

Second, I am I do not have to be over the moon just because everyone thinks I should be and I do not have to conform to what everyone thinks is normal. I am who I am and I feel how I feel. I am excited. I am not excited to tell the whole world the ‘big news’ in my life. I am excited for this next phase of life. I never have been excited to share with a bunch of people the big or little things going on in my life. I am relatively private person. I am also a little too independent for my own good and one way it shows up is not wanting to share everything going on in my life, whether good, bad, big, or small.

Realizing these two things has set me free. I am now more excited to be a dad and to bring our little 🍗 into the world. I am still not excited to tell people, but I am getting better at telling people.

I am on a good trajectory and I am excited to see what the next chapter has for me as everything is about to change.

What pain do you carry? What does your pain stop you from doing? What does your pain hold you back from enjoying? How do you do with sharing what is going on in your life? Who do you share what is going on in your life with? Are there people you trust enough and you tell them everything going on with you and they reciprocate? Do you tell too many people? Do you tell not enough people?

Excited,

–JT

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