Now that Bear’s landed this new sweet gig, we’re finding out all the fine details and making all the appropriate plans. What will his hours be? How long will the commute be? Do we need a second car now? How fast can I spend all this new money?
And of course, the thing I’ve been waiting for for three years now….Health Benefits.
Unlike the company Bear currently works for, which gives their executives insurance starting day 1, this company makes you wait 90 days. Which is pretty standard, I realize, but with the start date still two months away, that means that I have 120 days left to be disabled.
The relief of the new job didn’t last very long, now to be replaced with the ungrateful depressed funk.
We were hanging out with our Canadian friends today for the holiday, and girl Canadian, who I love because she’s so cute and sensitive and can’t say the “Bitch” word, but will talk about her hymen without batting an eyelash, was asking about our IVF plans.
When a job was still some speculative obtuse thing, we planned on doing IVF in a year. Thanks to Bears grandma, we’ve got the money saved up. So now we just need health insurance to get my endo treated, and to properly take care of the child should I get knocked up according to plan.
But as I was reviewing the timeline now that I have an actual start date, I realized something pretty petty and stupid in the grand scheme of things that actually really bothers me.
Mormons as a community are really tight. And we say that anywhere in the world you go you’ll have a family if you have a ward (which is like a congregation). We even refer to our congregation as “our ward family” to emphasize the unity we have together. My current ward really does feel like a family. They all know me and love me and know my history and are pulling for me. Just Friday night I met a woman who knew of me and she immediately started telling me all about her fertility history to give me hope and let me know she was with me.
When my kid finally gets around to coming, it’s this environment I want to bring it into. Of course I’ll need the help and support, but more importantly, I want to be surrounded by people who recognize the miracle.
According to our current timeline there’s no way I could get insurance, get a surgery, recover, go through all the IVF rigamarole, get pregnant, stay pregnant, for 9 whole months, and give birth, all before Bear’s training is complete and we’re shipped off somewhere else.
When I realized this, I burst into tears. I’m sure that wherever we’re sent I’ll find new people to bond with and who will support me, but this just struck me as yet another disappointment an an epic series of disappointments, reminding me that I can have NOTHING the way I envision it.