Thursday, March 14, 2013

First Trimester in Review


Well I made it; I'm successfully in my second Trimester! 

I have been thinking about the last several months and how much my life has changed. I moved to a new place, couldn't find a job, found out about the pregnancy, adjusted to the news of the pregnancy and spent most of January sick and exhausted. Now that I am in my second trimester I am finally feeling better and I'm starting to have more energy. On a side note I'm finally starting to show a little bit!

I have been having quite the internal struggle as far as my employment goes. Ever since I was 16 I have had some type of job. I have always prided myself on being an independent woman who can take care of herself, on being on equal footing with my husband in all aspects of life (including financially). Now I have been transitioning to a different role; when we moved and my husband started grad school I figured I could easily transition to a RN job in this area:

well there were no jobs...

then I found out I was knocked up...

This caused me to start thinking about my life in a different way. For the last 10 years I have either been in school full time or working full time or some combination of the two. For the last 4 years my husband and I have enjoyed being husband and wife, but we also were both working full time and went through 2 deployments (over a year of separation total over that 4 year period) so we didn't see as much of each other as we wanted to. Kyle would have duty on the ship once a week and wouldn't be able to come home, and when I worked I didn't get home until after 8pm.  Then he would be at sea for weeks (or months) at a time. Now he's a full time student; he comes home every day; we have dinner every night, we spend every weekend together exploring our new town and we get to just enjoy each other's company. To be completely honest it's like we get a second honeymoon period, it's been such a relaxing break from our 100 MPH life in San Diego.

So naturally I started panicking

I should be working, I should be contributing to the family. I don't deserve to just kick back and do what I want all day long, I should should should....

The funny thing was that I was the only one saying these things to me, so I kept looking for work and was only coming up with full time night positions that would mean I would spend less time with Kyle than when we were in San Diego, not an option. Plus oh yeah, I have a baby on the way.

My mother said something that really got under my skin the other day. She told me "I think one of the reasons you're doing this to yourself is that you're enjoying yourself and you're feeling guilty about it." Once I herd her say that I realized that she was 100% right. I was feeling guilty about how happy I was feeling. I have been able to cook all the meals I have been cataloging for years, I get to workout 6 days a week, I'm eating really healthy and I have the time to take care of my body and the baby growing inside me. I guess being so happy kinda scared the s*it out of me.

I guess for me my first trimester was just as much about self discovery as it was about morning sickness. I am still in the "transition" period but as my belly gets bigger I think I will feel better about my decision to put my career on hold and to focus on my family. I know that in three years when Kyle is a department head and is working 14 hour days and is at sea all the time I will look back at this period in our married life and be thankful that I took full advantage of this time.



Ok enough of my babbling

14 weeks down, only 26 more to go........

1 comment:

  1. Relax! Enjoy this time... and I can't wait to see you at the end of the month!

    ReplyDelete