The pond, the tortoise and the invaluable lesson

I‘ve said this before about my reflexologist (who I'll call Mrs R) but she’s a complete hoot and I thoroughly enjoy the hour I spend in her company each month.

She often says the most randomly eccentric things with a straight face, making me giggle to distract me during the painful bits. For instance, this week she told me she’d asked her husband to get her a pond for their 22^nd wedding anniversary – but then she changed her mind when she realised her tortoise might drown in it.

But she also inadvertently comes out with really valuable nuggets of wisdom. I was talking to her this week about our struggle to find a house and how it’s-really-getting-us-down-because-where-we-live-at-the-moment-was-only-meant-to-be-temporary-but-it’s-been-two-years-now-and-it’s-small-and-cramped-and-drafty-and-we-have-noisy-neighbours-and-a-second-bedroom-full-of-boxes-and-even-if-I-did-get-pregnant-how-would-we-fit-in-a-baby-and... At that point Mrs R stopped me with a loud ‘Hold on a second missy!’ which was probably just as well as I’d forgotten to breathe for a while.

She then sternly told me that I must NEVER have anything in my head that could possibly be a reason for not getting pregnant. Instead, she told me to mentally remove those boxes from the second bedroom, give it a jolly good theoretical clean-out, and then start visualising how I’d decorate it as a nursery for my baby.

I know about visualising and thinking positively and I do try to do both but I have to admit, when it’s about me, I don’t find it particularly easy. I don’t have a huge amount of confidence in myself at the best of times, let alone when my body isn’t even able to do what should come most naturally.

But, somehow, what Mrs R said about the second bedroom really hit a nerve. There’s definitely a part of me that thinks that while we’re in this flat, we can’t possibly be ready to have a baby - that we’re still playing at being married and that until we move to our three-bed semi in suburbia with a through lounge and an apple tree in the garden, we’re not truly grown up enough to have a baby.

I thought about this a lot after the reflexology session and something dawned on me – home is where me and The Husband are. And if I’m lucky enough to get pregnant in the near future and we haven’t found our dream home, then clear out those boxes is what we’ll do. And we’ll make a bloody gorgeous nursery in that second bedroom and it will be home for our baby and we’ll be a grown-up family in a small, drafty, noisy two-bed flat - and we’ll be happy.

So now, every night before I go to sleep, I visualise transforming that second bedroom into the perfect nursery for our baby – it’s got a thick, warm carpet , a cosy little crib, shelves filled with Beatrix Potter books and teddy bears, and a comfy rocking chair where I’d cuddle my baby all day if I could.

And I now know that it’s all I’d need.

So thank you, Mrs R, for making me realise this – it was an unintentional but very valuable lesson.

Until next time.

Juno ☺