The secret is out…baby Lawler is due in February, 2023! I honestly never thought I would be saying those words or writing this post. It has been quite a journey, complete with ups, downs, and everything in between. I’ve kept most of our journey off of social media because I just wasn’t really ready or comfortable with sharing, until now. We seriously couldn’t be more happy with where we are now and we can’t wait to meet our little sweet pea!
OUR JOURNEY
Our journey starts back when Eric and I met in 2006. We were both still in college and had so much to accomplish before we even started thinking about getting married, buying a house and having a family. Some of you may already know our background story, but for those of you who are new here or who need a refresher, I’ll give you the abridged version. Eric and I met when we were in our early 20’s. After we graduated from college, Eric started working and I immediately went to law school and then started working in NYC once I graduated. For the bulk of our dating relationship, we lived more than an hour from each other and mostly saw each other on weekends. We got engaged after about 5 1/2 years of dating and then got married on our 7 year anniversary. From there, we bought and renovated a home and have been content with our lives ever since. You can read more here and here.
When we first were dating, we were so young that we didn’t really talk about having kids in any real sense. We kind of said, “yea, we’ll have them someday” and sort of left it at that. After we got married, we had so much fun together and enjoyed traveling, hanging out with our friends, exploring new places and having adventures together that having a family sort of floated to the bottom of our to-do list. The longer we waited, the more we started to think that maybe we didn’t want or need to have kids after all.
It really wasn’t until our friends started having kids that Eric and I started contemplating our future family again. It’s not to say that we decided to have kids just because everyone else was, but we started to see what it would be like to have them by observing our friends. Part of our original hesitancy was just fear of the unknown, which is totally normal and understandable. Would having kids change our lives? The obvious answer is yes, but for some reason, we were always thinking that they would change our lives in a “negative” way, meaning less freedom. What we failed to realize at the time was that having a family could also change our lives in the best way! Now, having spent so much more time with all of the kids in our lives, that fear of the unknown kept shrinking until we finally felt like we could do it! I will say that I definitely got there before Eric did. He was still scared of change and couldn’t understand why I wanted to upend our lives in such a huge and permanent way. There were definitely a lot of long talks, tears and not seeing eye-to-eye, all of which lasted a lot longer than I would have liked, but in the end we love each other, communicated openly about our feelings and fears and eventually found our path forward.
I never really hear people talk honestly about not wanting or hesitating to have kids and I am here to tell you that it is totally normal! It’s also totally normal for you and your significant other not to be totally on the same page at the exact same time. What I will say is that communication is key in this type of situation. Even though Eric and I weren’t on the same page for the better part of two years, it didn’t mean we didn’t love each other. We could both see each others perspectives and we had compassion, sympathy and respect for those perspectives. Making the decision to have kids is not as easy as some make it sound. We truly thought through all of the changes having a baby would bring to our lives, finances, jobs, and our relationship before making a decision and finding the right time. It’s a totally normal and natural process to go through!
I’ll just come right out and say it, we conceived through IVF. We tried for a few months, but since we are in our mid-30’s, we also decided to do some fertility testing simultaneously. For the most part, there wasn’t anything extremely wrong with us, but we figured that it couldn’t hurt to do a retrieval so that we could generate and preserve some embryo’s sooner rather than later. I plan to write a full blog post about our IVF journey…the good, the bad and the ugly. For now, let’s just say that while our overall experience wasn’t super smooth, it ultimately resulted in the outcome we hoped for…a pregnancy!
I will share periodic updates on the blog, including first, second and third trimester posts, products I am using, etc. so stay tuned!
Thank you so much for stopping by! We are so excited that you are on this journey with us!
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