RMNL (And Nuchal Tranlucency)

Living and working in a place where acronyms abound, my husband came up with a new initiative and ascribed it an appropriate epitaph: Running Mama's New Life (RMNL). The goal of this initiative is to help me find myself again. Over the past several years as infertility and getting pregnant has been the primary focus of my life, I find that who I am and what I want out of life have become obsolete questions. Besides getting pregnant and having another child, I'm not sure what I want to do with my life. I don't particularly enjoy my job, even though it is an AMAZING work environment for working moms. I spent much of the past year and a half just wanting to be happy and vowing that if I ever made it out of this IF experience that I would make sure my life had meaning. So much of what I do at work feels pointless and irrelevant...but perhaps that is the knowledge workers plight. So, the RMNL initiative is supposed to help me find myself again.

Current Goals of RMNL:
--Take career aptitude test (not just my perceptions of what I want in a job, but my ACTUAL abilities) and work with career counselor about what to do with my life;
--Get back in shape (as much as possible)
--Reconnect with my friends
--Travel!!!
--Work on self presentation: grow out hair, learn how to do hair, learn how to put on make-up, pay more attention to fashion (I'm not an UN-fashionable person, but it is usually an after-thought for me. I am too busy in the morning to actually put on make-up and do my hair and I'd like to take a little more care and consideration to my appearance so I don't end up looking like a frazzled mom that walks around in yoga clothes all the time)
--Take 2nd half of photography course and save up for a new camera

I know some of these are superficial, but maybe I've watched too many HGTV shows on how changing the external can impact our self-perception.

And.....

I had my nuchal tranlucency today. Baby was ROCKING out!!! The baby was JUMPING up and down and we had a wait a few minutes for the baby to calm down before we could do measurements. My downs and trisomy risks were that of a 20-year old...but after falling on the short side of statistics for too long...I could help but feel that a 1 in 6,185 risk for downs to be...a little low for my comfort. Maybe nothing can comfort me now.

But, slowly, I am feeling hope creep in.

My mother insists that it is time that I start telling family and friends that I am pregnant. But, I am not ready. I keep pushing back the deadline...maybe now I should wait until the baby is 24 weeks (viability). She says I am being "selfish" and that I need to share this joy with others in my family. She says my family has always been there for me (really? were they? I don't remember getting much support from anyone other than my mother and father) even if they didn't call. RIGHT. I have got to promise myself that I won't use guilt to manipulate when I am a mother!