When you are going to have a baby, it is like you are planning a holiday in Italy. You are excited – you get a lot of guidebooks and you learn a few phrases in Italian so you can get around. When the time comes, you pack your bags and head for the airport to catch your flight to Italy. Only when you land and the stewardess says ‘welcome to Holland’ do you look at one another in disbelief and shock and say ‘Holland’ what are you talking about? I booked for Italy.
Then they explain that there has been a change of plans and you have landed in Holland where you have to stay ‘But I don’t know anything about Holland!’ you say, ‘I don’t want to stay’. But you do – you go out and meet some new people. The important thing is that you are not in a filthy, plague infested slum full of pestilence and famine. You are simply in a different place from the one you had planned. It is slower paced than Italy and less flashy, but after you have been there a while and you have had a chance to catch your breath, you begin to discover that Holland has windmills, tulips and Rembrandts!!!
Of course everyone you know is busy coming and going to Italy. They are all bragging about what a great time they had there and for the rest of your life you will say ‘Yes, that’s where I was going. That’s what I planned!’ The pain of that will never ever go away. You have to accept that pain because the loss of that dream, the loss of that plan, is a very, very significant loss. But if you spend your life mourning the fact hat you did not get to Italy, you will never be free to enjoy the very special the very lovely things about Holland.