In the words of Natalie Imbruglia "Illusion never changed, into something real, I'm wide awake and I can see the perfect sky is torn." I'm terrified that that's where I'm at in my life. It's like I sit at home on my days off work and my mind constantly spins with wishful thinking. I've never EVER been the type that wanted to be a stay at home Mom. I just never was. I was career minded, but I definitely wanted kids. I wanted to make something of myself, be someone in my field. I had so many goals for myself career wise. When I got to college I had my mind set on being an Athletic Trainer or Physical Therapist. I was an athlete. I loved sports so obviously that would be the path that I chose for a career. I never wanted to be a coach though. My Dad still thinks it's so weird that I didn't go in to coaching. I just never wanted to and I knew that for sure. I'm a Speech-Language Pathologist. A little background on that; when I was a freshman at ASU, I took an Intro to Communication Disorders class. I was friends with one of the volleyball players and her dad was the Dean of the department and he had recommended it to me. He said just try it out and see how you like it because I just wasn't feeling the athletic training route at that point. The class was so interesting and I had no idea what an SLP was, I had never even heard of it. One of the requirements for that class was to get 15 observation hours in the clinic watching graduate student clinicians in their therapy sessions. I'll never forget the day and the two sessions that spoke to me and I knew immediately that it was my calling. One of them was a teenage boy with Down's syndrome and the other was a stroke patient. I loved both so much and knew that those were populations I wanted to work with. To this day I still feel that strong passion to work with children with disabilities and geriatrics. God works in mysterious ways because I didn't end up choosing anything athletic. When I transferred to Harding, I had an assignment in my Multicultural class around Christmas time that I had to get a person of another race to read T'was the Night Before Christmas and I had to transcribe it the way they read it. At that point Bradley and I sort of knew each other and had talked a couple of times and my teammates were busy that night so I had to call him up to get my assignment finished. Needless to say that was the beginning of something beautiful. Okay, back to the moral of this story.
When I was growing up my Mom couldn't stay at home with my brother and I. I guess that may be why I just never had that vision. When I got pregnant, I knew everything would be alright and I could be a working Mom because I was fortunate enough to work for a company that allowed employee's kids to attend the daycare across the street. I thought I had it all planned out. The closer my due date got the higher my anxiety got about having to put her in a daycare. Fortunately, my Mom no longer works and was able to keep her for us and I was able to take my work package down to 75% and work 3 days. It has been a life saver. Especially for my sanity. I don't have to worry about her while I'm working and I feel like I have the perfect balance of work and Mommy time. That sort of sounds selfish though because it's a Mom's job to be there 100% and that's how I've been feeling. Selfish, because I don't have a stay at home Mommy heart. I've gone back and forth with staying home and we thought that it might actually be an option for me to. But when you have thousands of dollars of loans to pay back for that good education you got, it leaves you in a bind. Now that I know that it isn't an option for me, I'm more sad than ever. I had gotten my mind right and was totally all in to the fact that I would get to be with my baby girl all day everyday. I would get to see all the new little things she would do and I wouldn't have to miss anything. Bradley keeps telling me that that's life and so many people have to put their kids in daycare. I know that but I work in child care. I know that people can't always be trusted and that's the thing, I don't trust anyone with my child. I'm so scared that the plan is when she turns 1 we'll look into her going to daycare. From a therapist perspective, I know that the older she gets the more she needs to be around other children for the social aspect. She's already so interested in other kids when she sees them. She gets so excited and is always reaching for them. She will be 6 months old on Saturday and will be old enough to go to Cradle Roll at church if we're comfortable with it. I think that will help me get ready for it slowly. Hopefully something will work out to where I will be able to work and she can attend the daycare where I work. That would be the best scenario and we all know that we don't always get what we want. So for now I'm praying my heart out that something will come up and that I will be as prepared as I can be to make this transition. Please pray with me and for us. I know it will be a shock to her system as well when she actually starts some where. I'm still going to continue to pray that something might happen to where I will be able to stay home, even though it's a long shot.
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