File this one under: Unexpected Life Changes

For a long time we were happy DINKs...you know, Double-Income-No-Kids. We took trips, I bought shoes, DH bought a lovely but completely impractical sports car and we saved. Every month we saved. Mostly we saved so that we could purchase the above mentioned luxuries, but we also kept some back as a “nest egg” or emergency fund.

Then we moved to Chicago and bought a house about a month before the market really started to slump (read: we owe more now than the house is worth—not by much, but enough to piss me off). Things were good though, even with a crushing mortgage payment. We took a couple more trips, I bought some more shoes and a Coach purse or three, and then we decided to start our family. So the saving went into high gear and I tried to curtail the shopping a bit. We saved enough to pay for all our medical expenses and for me to take 6 wks unpaid leave with only minimal expenses on the credit card.

Since then, between the mortgage (still crushing) and the daycare (more than the mortgage on my first house 6 yrs ago!) we’ve struggled to save—to adjust our discretionary spending to accommodate the addition of daycare and diapers and formula. We kept up the wine club, the dinners out, Christmas gifts, and um, maybe some new shoes, too. We still put a little bit away every month, but not as much as we had been.

Since I came back to work 7 short months ago, the economy started its tight spiral into the shitter. Both my company and DH’s started to have round after round of layoffs and we started to really take a look at our spending. But we’re both high performers at work and have both been promoted recently—DH as recently as January—so we felt pretty safe. And so there were still talks of trips, of landscaping projects, of remodeling projects for this summer. In fact, 2 wks ago I was planning a 3 day get-away to Vegas for the two of us, ditching (I mean, tearfully leaving) DS at his Omi and Opa’s house.

Well, it’s all on hold now. Everything is on hold and I’m trying hard not to scream inside my head, because one week ago DH was laid off. His company let a third of Chicago office go and gave him 2 days notice. Called him in on Thursday and said we need you to bring everything back in (laptop, etc.) on Monday and Good Luck.

Shit.

I’m so, so thankful that, literally one week prior to this, I called and got things rolling on a mortgage refinance which will save us $400/month. Needless to say we’re keeping our mouths shut until we sign the new loan papers. And thank God, this allows us to skip a mortgage payment. Now, everything I look at is calculated in terms of how many months can we pay the mortgage, car payment, and keep the Carpet Monkey in daycare (because in order to find a job, DH must be free to LOOK for a job, so CM stays in daycare).

Needless to say, we’ve really dialed back the spending. Things that were total luxuries all got cancelled on Tuesday. We made a list of the nice-to-haves we aren’t quite ready to give up, but which are next on the ax-list, depending on how long DH’s unemployment stretches out. I nearly had an anxiety attack on Wednesday when a coworker asked me to join him for lunch to Subway and I had to spend $5.46 on lunch.

I keep telling myself, we’re NOT poor. I have a good job, with a great salary and for the moment I don’t think I’m in danger of losing my job. (Of course, I need to wrap up this blog post and get back to it, but hopefully I’ll be able to focus better once all this is out of my system. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.) My salary will cover the mortgage and the daycare, by far our two biggest expenses, and we have enough savings to get us through several months of the rest of our living expenses.

My biggest battle right now is with fear. I struggle to banish thoughts of food stamps and my beautiful baby boy running around smeared with dirt and diaper-less and ratty clothes and…Desperation. Hunger. Bankruptcy. Foreclosure. These are the demons that tug at me, and we are so not there yet. Not even close. But unbidden images of hobos and lines outside soup kitchens from the Great Depression try to sneak into my brain and it takes a conscious effort to kick them the hell out.

I called my grandmother right after I found out and she prayed with me about it all. It’s the first time I’ve really prayed in a long, long time. But it felt good and I’ve kept it up this past week. We talked about how paralyzing fear can be, and what a giant energy drainer it is. So for right now, that’s my focus—keeping fear at bay.

Fear has no place in my life, in my family, in my home.

Please keep us in your prayers. We just need the right opportunity to open up for DH, and for it to not take too long to appear. Please also pray for an easy adjustment to our new, frugal way of life. It’s a good lesson to learn, regardless, so I’m trying very hard to simply embrace it and welcome the changes as they come.

Mysterious Me

I had my annual with my "woman" doctor a couple of weeks ago. As DH and I are "talking about talking about" having kids sometime in the near term, I brought up a couple of concerns and questions. They were normal things like, When do I start taking prenatal vitamins? and How does it work for going off the pill? but I had one unique question for her and the answer has created some angst in my life and is the subject of this post.

Several years ago I found myself in the ER with terrible pain in my abdomen--diagnosis: a ruptured ovarian cyst. I was sent home on powerful painkillers and told to schedule a couple of ultrasounds to check things out...namely make sure there weren't more cysts or something worse. Well, went for the ultrasounds and good news was that there weren't any more cysts and nothing worse so pretty much a clean bill of health....until the technician said, "Huh."

Okay, "Huh" is never a great comment when someone is performing a medical test, right? Then she says, "Your uterus is heart shaped on the inside." My response, understandably, was "What?" She says "Well, the lining of your uterus dips down in the middle. It's not normal, but it happens. So, nothing to worry about." Great. Thanks for the pep talk. It was also an Air Force tech doing the scan, so I blew it off.

Until I met with my new doctor and asked about a heart shaped uterus and how that affects getting and staying pregnant. She scheduled me for a new ultrasound since we don't have the original films and sure enough...I have a bicornated uterus. And unfortunately it's a little bit more severe/important than I was originally led to believe.

My whole uterus is heart-shaped, not just the lining. So instead of looking like an upside-down pear, mine has 2 horns that connect at the bottom. Some women have such a severe separation that they have two completely independent uteruses (some even have 2 vaginas, 2 cervixes, everything!). Thankfully, my situation is not nearly that bad.

In theory, it shouldn't affect my chances of getting pregnant, but carries significant risks for pre-term labor. As a preemie myself and having dealt with the resulting health challenges of being premature, this freaks me out on a certain level. Apparently the pre-term labor happens due to the reduced amount of space the baby has to grow. So basically, my pregnancy will be termed high-risk from the start and I'll have a ton more appointments and I'll see a specialist instead of an OB for many of the visits.

How scary is that, to know that no matter what I do and how much I take care of myself, that it'll be a high-risk pregnancy? Part of me says, "Okay, well now I know and we'll just have to keep an eye on it, and cross any bridges when we get there." But then there's a part of me that's grieving and scared.

**Update** Well, as a little bit of time has past, I'm feeling better about things. There are tons of women who have this same condition and they didn't even find out about it until their 3rd baby and for whatever reason they have a c-section and the Dr is like "Whoa, look at that!" when they get in there. And most of their pregnancies went like clock-work, full-term, yada-yada.

So, I've decided not to worry about things until I get there, especially since we don't KNOW that I will have any problems. We know about the situation, so we can keep an eye on it when I do decide to get pregnant. Not much else I can do at this point.

Ramblings of an unsure and tired mind

As my project winds down to a trickle, I have this nearly irrational fear of going back to the job I moved to Chicago for. In many ways it's just as unknown to me at the moment as it was back in August, when I shoved my cats into carriers under seats on an airplane and made the leap into civilian/corporate life.

I was actually offered a job yesterday to continue working with this group full-time, and it was a serious struggle in my mind to say no. I mean, at this point I know what I'm doing with this category, I know the players, the business strategy, etc., but am I happy doing it? Enh. Not really, especially knowing that this project will continue to be a disaster for the next year or so. Is that something I want to sign up for? But going back to my old job...the one I had just barely gotten my teeth sunk into...for some reason that makes my stomach flip in uneasiness. The good news is that by all indications my old team is really looking forward to my return and that there is already work on my desk waiting for me (insert very sarcastic "Great!" here). My boss has mentioned several times that she intends to rely heavily on me in the coming months...all those have to be good signs, right?

Why doesn't my success here, on this gruelling project, give me the confidence to go forth and conquer? Granted, I had a specific, defined task on this project and my old position is a bit nebulous. I'll be more like a regional manager, responsible for all activites within a certain arena. The scope is a whole lot bigger than the data analysis I've been doing, that's for sure, and the structure of who to go to for what is much less defined.

I hate not having a yardstick by which to gague my progress. Tell me what you want and I'll give you that plus some, but when I'm not sure what is needed I have a tendency to, well, procrastinate, surf the web, write blogs...you know, generally screw around. I wish I had a tighter reign on myself sometimes. I wish I'd found something to be driven about--something intrinsically rewarding about my job, versus responding to external deadlines and such.

The more I think about it, the more I'm really interested in becoming a Pilates instructor. I love Pilates and think it would be so rewarding to help people in that way. I need to find some time to actually work out a plan of how exactly I'm going to accomplish this and be successful, without putting us in over our heads at home.

It may end up being a several year project, but in this, I have faith in myself. I'm confident I'd make a good Pilates teacher and it makes me smile to think about it.

Do you think that should be my first clue about what I should be doing?