Our Story: Part 2
Part 2 of “Our Story.” Based on the comments on the first half, I must ask all of you to read this with an open mind. Please also note that is ONLY our experience and we are not recommending anything to anyone else. We welcome honest questions and differing opinions, but please refrains from insults and personal attacks. We are all adults here (I hope) and need to behave as such. Thanks!
I left the end of part 1 of our story with our wedding date: July 29th, 2006. But I did skip a lot of parts of our dating experience, and haven’t talked at all about our early marriage experience. I’m going to get to that now.
Ben and I talked a LOT when we were dating. It was partially because we lived two hours apart and most days didn’t see each other. But it was also because we both love to think, analyze, and discuss things to death. So much so that my mother once told me I shouldn’t marry him because we were acting like it was “business transaction” instead of a relationship (we didn’t feel that way though!). We are just very intense, analytical people. Truly so much that by the time we got to our premarital counseling, we had already thoroughly discussed most of the issues they threw at us.
We knew exactly what we wanted from life: where we wanted to live, who would work and doing what, how many kids we wanted and when, and lots more.
I remember one day we were discussing having kids. We’d talked about it quite a lot already, but we were driving up to an outdoor concert in Cleveland (Cincinnati Pops play John Williams, if you’re interested) and we talked about it most of the way there. I said I had always wanted 4: two boys and two girls (as if I get to pick). Ben said he thought 5 was a good number. I said, okay, that sounds good. There was a lot more to it than that, but I can’t recall remember all the details of the situation anymore. But we were sure.
So then we got married. We went to Disney World for our honeymoon at the end of July and beginning of August. We only had three days because Ben had just started a new job (the one he has now) and didn’t really have any vacation time. I was still in college then, slated to graduate the following spring. I said to him, “You know, we could try for a baby in September and I could finish most of school, then go back when the baby is a few months old.” He said NO. At that time we were using birth control. Our parents knew how eager we were to have children, and advised us to wait to even try until I was completely finished with college.
Well, it ended up that I was going to finish everything November 2007. So in February we sat down and I said, “This is the first month we could try and I could still finish school.” So we decided to see what would happen. I haven’t taken any birth control since that time. It only took us until May, when we conceived Bekah. It was a hot, hot summer and I was nauseous and tired and our central air broke…rather miserable first trimester.
The pregnancy and other details aren’t really important. We were thrilled — and terrified — to become parents. Ben couldn’t really relate at all because he had no idea what to expect. He was supportive but generally uninterested in the details of pregnancy because it just wasn’t real to him (it became real VERY FAST after Bekah came and the second time wasn’t like that at all).
A truly important part of our marriage was December, 2007. Bekah was due the following month and Ben had saved up his vacation all year, and he took nearly the entire month off. We spent lazy days sitting together, talking, reconnecting after all the busy-ness of our lives. This time we had really changed us and brought us closer together — just in time for Bekah to arrive!
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