Hey, old friends and those of you who weren’t even thinking about having babies the last time I showed my face around here much! For those of you that don’t know me or have missed me or who were glad I’m gone but will quietly put up with my return, I promise I’ve had a million good reasons to be absent. Most of all, I was surviving three kids under two . . . and then three kids under three. Now, we’re to the practically relaxing three kids three and under stage, which is basically like a walk in the park if the park contained fit-throwing hyenas that could only obtain their sole source of life from mythical unbroken banana that no parent has ever actually encountered. So, yeah, it’s breezy over here. But, look how cute my little hyenas are and how much they don’t look like babies anymore.

IMG_5445Crazy hair day at school.  We bring the crazy part everyday, though.

Seriously, though, the last two years have been a little insane. I went from working outside-the-home full time to staying home full time in September 2014. G-man joined the crew in January 2015. In August 2015, I started working part-time from home. In January 2016, I went back to work part-time in an office setting, and in May 2016, I started taking some classes on top of it all, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

So, what has brought me out of my hole, you say? Well, considering my history, I think I should get the most obvious guess out of the way. . . there is not a baby in my uterus. My New Year’s Resolution in 2016 was to not get pregnant.  Seven months in, and I’m nailing that one so far. 2016 has brought some other new things into our lives, though, and that’s what I want to talk with you about. I’m 34 years old. I’m on my second career. I have a bachelor’s degree and a law degree. And until recently, I still had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. I had decided I just wasn’t the kind of person that ever really had a deep-seeded ambition or dream when it came to a career. That’s just fine, except some part of me still felt like I was missing something obvious but I couldn’t quite figure out what it was.

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Several months ago, I started talking to a friend who is in school to become a family nurse practitioner. Mr. Blue had been telling her he always thought I would be a good nurse, and we started talking about it. I explained that while we had considered me going back to school a few times, I wasn’t sure if I would love it and I didn’t know if I would be happy doing that forever. She knows me well and her personality is similar to mine, and she started talking to me about the idea of going to nursing school and then nurse practitioner school after a few years of nursing. That sort of stuck with me as something I could see myself doing long term, but I was still hesitant. I had no desire to go back to school and jump into another career without knowing if was a field I could stay in until I retire.

I started volunteering at an amazing free clinic where we live, and I fell in love with it. Sure, it’s tiring and some days are chaotic, but I felt like what I was doing mattered and was making a direct impact on the quality of life of our patients. The more I was in that setting, the more I felt like maybe that was the right direction for me. I felt more at home there than at any job I had ever had. I’d done research on local programs, worked out timelines, cost, etc., but I was still hesitant about yet another career change at my age, especially one in which I would have to go all the way back to the beginning and get another bachelor’s degree. Mr. Blue generously told me that even if I didn’t finish everything until I’m 40, I’m welcome to work another 25+ years after that. Thanks for that, dear.

A friend who is an anesthesiologist offered to let me come observe in the OR with her. I jumped at the chance, went through a million hoops to get clearance from the hospital, and before I knew it, I was in scrubs, walking into an operating room.

And guys. Guys. This is going to sound so cheesy, but it was the first time in my entire life that I felt like I found my place in the world. I loved everything about it. I loved the way the whole team worked together. I loved seeing the actual surgery, whether it was an appendectomy or open-heart surgery (and for the record, with the exception of the birth of my children, seeing a heart beating in an open chest cavity was the coolest moment of my life. Incredible!). I was able to observe numerous surgeries over a couple days but from the moment I started watching the first surgery, I never looked back. I had to have this in my life. Somehow, this world had to become mine.

With my personality, my first thought was to scrap everything else and figure out a way to go to med school, do really well, and spend the rest of my life operating on people. I’m a little obsessive and crazy like that. Reality, however, soon set in. Though one surgeon I met told me there were a couple of ex-lawyers in his class that were about my age-ish so I certainly wasn’t too old to do it, my age and status as a parent have to be factored in to any decision I make.

Sure, if I were 10 years younger or didn’t have a million kids, I would jump at the chance. I know it’s assuming a lot to think I could (a) get in, (b) do well enough to get a good surgical residency, (c) survive a surgical residency, and (d) still like the OR at the end of it all. But for the sake of this post, let’s just assume all those things could happen. I still run squarely into a wall.

How do you balance a dream that would take considerable money and more than a decade to finish against the reality that I have three little kids, who often make me crazy but that I love with abandon and don’t want to miss as much of their growing up years as I think would be required during med school and residency? And it’s not for a year or two, either. In my head, I wrestled it over and over. I wanted to be in an OR so badly, but I knew in my heart that med school just wasn’t something I could let myself consider. My personality is pretty all or nothing, and balance isn’t my forte. There’s no way I could do a good job even attempting to balance med school and being a mom. Some women do it, do it well, and they blow me away because I’m pretty sure I would miserably fail at one job or the other. I had a few good cries about that dream, kicked myself for not figuring out what I wanted to be when I was 20 instead of mid-30s, and stopped thinking about it (mostly). While my decision wouldn’t be right for everyone, I felt like that this particular little dream I needed to sacrifice for the life I want as a mama.

The good news is that there were still options that I was excited to consider. My anesthesiologist buddy started talking to me early on about going the CRNA route and becoming an anesthetist, while my other friend still reminds me that we could have a lot of fun being nurse practitioners together. The reality is that either of those options are a long time away, and I have time to see what direction seems best when I have school done and get some experience under my belt.

Everything that has happened in the last few months has given me clarity that I absolutely want to go forward with school. There are a lot of good programs out there, but the one that fits best with our life is an accelerated one-year second degree BSN program. Nursing school will be hard on my family no matter when I do it, so I feel like it’s better to have a horribly intense year and “get it over with,” so to speak. It only starts in January, and there were numerous prerequisites I needed to obtain before I could apply. I knocked out 7 hours I needed in a terribly busy 5-week term this summer, and I’ll keep taking a couple of classes a semester for the next year. Then, I’ll be ready to apply for a January 2018 start.

But there’s just one more problem. I’ve previously referenced that we’re crazy . . . and we’re not sure if we’re done having kids. We’ve always thought we would probably have one more, and stop on a solid even number. When I first started thinking about all this, I decided I was done with kids. I was really excited about the future, and I wanted to just jump in to it. After a few months, though, that feeling of our family not quite being complete, that maybe there is still someone missing, has crept back in to our minds.

In all candor, the timing sucks. I’m 34. I’m planning on starting nursing school in a year and a half. We want a hypothetical #4 to be relatively close in age to the other three if we’re going to have a hypothetical #4. Do I get pregnant asap and plan on starting an intense accelerated program with a 6-month old? Do I put off starting nursing school until a baby #4 is 1 1/2 years old, which would probably be “easier” but also means it’s that much longer before I can really jump into what I’ve been dreaming of doing? Do I wait to have another one until after nursing school, making a 5-year gap between kid 3 and kid 4?

Then, because I can’t help myself, I jump into the next stage and start worrying about that. If I go to CRNA school, I have to move a minimum of 6 hours away. My oldest kids would be 7 or 8 at the time I started. Is that fair to move them for 2-3 years only to move them somewhere else? Should I just go the nurse practitioner route, so I can stay right here and not be in quite as an intense school as CRNA school? And off my mind goes again trying to balance my family and my desires as a mama with my desires for me personally.

IMG_5457Y’all, no joke, I gave birth to Christopher Robin.  Who wouldn’t want another Christopher Robin?

I was talking to a different friend recently, and she was encouraging me to consider putting school off entirely for a few years. While she made some excellent points and was truly trying to help me evaluate options to reduce some stress in our lives right now, the thought of giving that up even for a few years made me feel sick to my stomach.

IMG_5321An updated picture of the original Babies Blue is your reward for having read all of that.

The reality is sometimes being a parent and being a person feel like they’re in direct conflict. I don’t want to sacrifice my kids’ childhoods, miss the big moments, or skip the whispered secrets at bedtime. In ten years, I don’t want to regret not having another kid or feeling like we’re still missing someone. On the other hand, for a while during my time staying home, I felt like I was at risk of losing myself, of not ever being able to find me again. Maybe that was just the result of a lot of life changes at one time and a whole lot of little people who needed me, but it shook me up and scared me a little. I want to be a great mama to my boys because they’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me and because they deserve the best mama in the world. But, I don’t think that has to be mutually exclusive with having my own dreams and following them. I want my boys to learn it’s never to late to fight for a dream you have, I want them to see me loving what I do, and making a difference in the world. I think I can be a good mama and pursue my own dreams, too. I’m just not sure exactly how to make it all work yet.

So, tell me, old and new friends, what are your thoughts on balancing your personal dreams and ambitions with being the kind of parent you want to be for your littles? Thoughts, personal experiences, and useful or useless advice are all welcome! Or just weigh in and cast your vote about whether a Baby Blue 4.0 should make an appearance. I’ll feel free to ignore it in our actual decision making, but at least we’ll all know if you’re the type to embrace the crazy or whether you make good, logical life choices.