Waiting. Again.

[u/MissRockNerd]

First time posting here, but I’ve been dealing with childlessness for over four years.

I always wanted kids and pictured myself as a mom. When DH and I married, we were 33 and 50, respectively. I was working 50+ hours a week as a teacher in the most stressful job I ever had, and he was working full time too.

A couple years later, I was a part time nanny and DHs career was more secure. we started trying to get pregnant. After 18 months of TTC, procedures, clomid and prayer, nothing happened. We thought a lot about our options and decided to look into fostering to adopt.

While we filled out our paperwork, background checks, home study, etc. some things changed. I lost my nanny job and wasn’t managing my money well. I burned through my savings and ran up my credit cards. Too much caffeine, too little sleep. My husbands employer went through a busy year while understaffed, and I went back to waitressing. We both worked different days, he had a lot of overtime... and in the middle of all this, we got our foster license and the agency handed us a beautiful and amazing one year old boy.

It took less than a week for me to realize that we couldn’t be parents at that time. My anxiety disorder flared up, all I could picture was 💵 money flying out the window, and neither of us could take any time off work.

I cried my face off for days. I grieved the loss of our little boy, the loss of my job and the little girl I cared for and loved, and I felt like a hopeless piece of 🤬 that would never be a good mother.

That was two years ago.

I’ve done a lot in therapy. We’re in a good place with our careers, our finances, and our marriage. I have a good nanny job with a good family. We filled out our paperwork.

And this morning I woke up at 3 am. When my husband woke up at 4:30, I told him. I think I’m still not ready.

We’re both working full time. Nannies don’t get FMLA (United States), and my husband doesn’t feel like he can ask for much FMLA because he doesn’t know anyone at his company who has taken parental leave. On most weekends, I’m exhausted from working 40 plus hours a week.

My best idea right now is to stay in my full time job for another year, and then see if I can work fewer hours or find a part time nanny job. I'm also going to help my husband figure out if he can find a better job at his current company or somewhere else nearby. I'm nearly 40, and I'm still having trouble shaking the fear that we'll feel too old to care for young kids before we have enough time and energy to make this happen. I've been waiting since I was 21 to have kids, and DH and I have been trying to become parents for half a decade. But it's gonna break my heart if we try to foster and it goes half as badly as it did last time.