2012. I like the sound of it. Not least because I was eager for 2011 – the year of the arse – to end, but also because 2012 is the year of 18 working days until maternity leave and come March the year of child number two and come July the year of having been with the best man in the world for 10 (!!!!!!!!!!!) years. 2012 is also the year of turning 33 which seem to be old in my book and a little daunting, but by the time it happens (February 27th), I am counting on being so huge I don’t give a damn about my birthday, I just want the baby OUT! NOW!

The kids out there have a yearly tradition with looking back at the year that went and I am thinking “why not?” So here’s 2011 for you:

(Thanks to Sundry for starting the tradition way back)

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?

Drank Veuve Cliquot 1988.  It wasn’t anything special, the wine we had later was way better, but it was still a first for me vintage champagne-wise – and hopefully won’t be my last…

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I’ve never been much of a resolution maker. Every year I want certain things to change, and every year I realise that they won’t – at least not to the extent I want them to – and that I am actually quite happy anyway. 2012 will be the same.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Yes. Two of my closest friends welcomed children. One had a boy last January, the other a girl in June. Other friends gave birth as well (I think, it might have been in 2010), but these two were the best ones.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Thankfully no.

5. What countries did you visit?

Norway, Sweden, Spain.

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?

Less tears and less sleepless nights (because of work that is, because 2012 will have plenty of sleepless nights, I am after all not that naive)

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

24th of December. We had the best Christmas ever and my girl walked around the tree holding her parents’ hands and singing with us, her eyes the size of teacups and totally smiling and beaming.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Keeping my job, becoming pregnant, not going insane, staying together with my husband despite my near-insanity.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Not being able to sleep for so many autumn nights, not being able to calm down, breathe slowly and take everything one step at a time with less worry.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

My back was worse than it has been for years. I know why and unless I want it to be the same in the years to come, I need to make some changes in the coming year.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

I haven’t a clue.

12. Where did most of your money go?

Mortgage.

13. What did you get really excited about?

The prospect of becoming a mother for the second time.

14. What song will always remind you of 2011?

A song our daughter picked up from kids TV, she sings it constantly.

15. Compared to this time last year, are you:

– happier or sadder? I don’t know. I think I was happy this time last year. It wasn’t until mid January that things began to tumble, but I am very happy right now with this second child aboard and only 18 days to go at work.
– thinner or fatter? Fatter. About 13 kilos of baby, but I hope to lose those this spring.
- richer or poorer? Richer – not only money wise, but also just in general.

16. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Been generally happy. Sleep.

17. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Worry. Work when I ought to sleep.

18. How did you spend Christmas?

With my brother, his wife, their two children, my parents, my husband and my daughter. It was the best Christmas I have – perhaps – ever had and I can’t wait to have another one like it. I also can’t wait to welcome a little brother/sister/cousin to my family. There is so much love from both young and old, it would be wasted if we didn’t expand our family.

19. What was your favorite TV programme?

I fell in love with Downton Abbey and continued to love 30Rock. My real love though, the one that just kept on growing this year, is news paper news. Half an hour on the sofa with my paper is worth millions and cannot be beaten by any TV programme however funny or British or new it is. I am old-fashioned (hey, let’s talk epidurals…)

20. What were your favorite books of the year?

Julian Barnes: The Sense of an Ending.

21. What was your favorite music from this year?

Swedish artist Tomas Andersson Wij who was recommended to me by a dear, dear colleague. And then Sinne Eeg and Stacey Kent because those women never seize to amaze me with their voices.

22. What were your favorite films of the year?

Did we go to the cinema? I can’t remember. Yes, we did. I remember. We watched Potiche just after finding out I was pregnant. It was good, but not Ozon as I like him and I sat in the dark longing for the days of Swimming Pool, Huit Femmes and 5×2. Was it this year that we watched The Squid and the Whale on DVD? If it was it was good, but it might have been 2010. We seemed to be watching TV shows rather than films when we watch things.

What I really remember is the meal we ate on our wedding anniversary where I turned down the unpasteurised cheese much to the waiter’s dismay (I only do this when I am pregnant and the comte my husband ate smelled so delicious I can still recall it), but great meals aren’t included on this list.

23. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

32 and I probably had cake. I got a flash for the camera from my husband and though it took me almost a year to start using it, I had loads of fun when I finally did.

24. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Fewer changes at work.

25. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?

I don’t have a personal fashion concept. For the better part of the year I was a jeans and shirt kind of girl, for the last part of it I was a if it fits kind of girl. I am already planning for it to be WAY different when I return from my maternity leave and yet still know that my personal fashion concept of 2024 will be much like it was in the beginning of 2011.

26. What kept you sane?

My husband’s arms around me at night when I couldn’t sleep.

27. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011.

Being a mother and being pregnant with a second child makes the crappiest of situations worth living.

2011 is still a royal pain and I am relieved that 2012 is right around the corner. I don’t want to say much about the past couple of months, but they’ve been tough. The important thing, though, is that I am still married to a wonderful guy and that I am still mother of a wonderful girl (though at the moment too often on the very brink of hysteria). It counts as well that I now know that my last day at work for the better part of 2012 will be January 25th. No need to deny that.

I am still not sure about this blogging business. I really ain’t. But I feel I would be cheating if I didn’t announce the pregnancy here. This is after all the space that has held most of my thoughts about having children the past four years.

If all goes well, come March I will be the mother of two. That makes me very, very happy and FREAKS me out at the same time.

We aren’t going anywhere foreign and exotic this year. We are spending a week by the shore of a lake in a summer-house that belongs to some people who rarely use it themselves in the summer and are very happily letting everybody else use it. Afterwards we are thinking of spending a couple of days by the sea. To some people water is water, I know, but having grown up in a country surrounded by water and having never lived very far from the sea, lakes just aren’t the same thing. I get why they are when the sea is thousands of kilometres away, but in our case it’s not. And since I didn’t dip my body in the sea last year (or the year before, I think), this year I have to (I did dive into the lake last year at the place where we are going this year too, but it doesn’t count. It just doesn’t and it never will. It has to be salt water, sea water).

We have zero plans this summer. No places to be, no people to visit. I like that. As much as I love travelling and planning and wanting to experience things and come home with great memories and great stories to tell, I love having no plans other than to relax and cooking great meals for my family.

My ambition this year is to get some knitting done on the vest for my daughter, to read two books and to look at my husband more than once and smile and burst out “I love you”. And what I hope to accomplish is leaving work miles and miles behind me and not worry one bit about it. Worrying is for August when I come back, not for my weeks off. And if I am allowed more things I really want to accomplish then it’s to get some writing done and to take some photos. And that’s about it. I want to keep things realistic. (My husband will tell you that me not worrying about my job is what makes my list unrealistic, but don’t listen to him, trust me for once, allow me the dream that it is actually possible.) (Please.)

If getting pregnant this time proves as difficult as last time, I think I might have to come out in the open. I can only keep lying for so long, but for now I am hoping things will be different and I get to keep our trying a secret. Telling people “yes, we are” feels a little too much like inviting them to come look for themselves, but that’s probably just me.

Come January we were better. I remember New Year’s Eve and the excitement that “this is it, we’re really doing it”. The months came and went, we tried, I peed on sticks – not because I thought I was pregnant, but because for a while it was the only way to get my period. That’s how wacked my system was. J proposed. I said yes. I had always imagined we would get married when I was heavily pregnant, that we would marry because I was pregnant. We married the way we did (party, lots of people, presents) because I wasn’t pregnant. We married the way we did, because we wanted to, because we had the opportunity, because love is a great reason to throw a party, but we married the way we did because I wasn’t pregnant.

In July 2008, weeks before our wedding, I photographed my belly while we were vacationing at the sea. I felt certain I was pregnant, that it was happening. It wasn’t.

We married and the rain poured. Rain is a sign of fertility, but also a sign of wealth to come. I chose to focus on the latter in my short speech welcoming all our guests.

I can’t remember if I had told J before the wedding or if it wasn’t until after, but around the time of our wedding I told him that if I wasn’t pregnant after the my next cycle, we should get checked out by our doctors. Of course he answered. And then we went on our honeymoon in France.

On October 16th I peed on yet another stick. I was at home from work, I was ill, I was expecting the second line to stay away as so many times before – as every other time before – but it didn’t. The second line appeared within seconds. And so I sat with my trousers down my ankles and cried. I was pregnant. A year and a couple of months from our first try, there she was – the second line that would become our daughter.

***

They say that most couples will conceive within two years of trying. They say you aren’t considered infertile until you have tried that long. And they are probably right, but no one tells you of the journey to get there. No one tells you how awful you feel when friend upon friend upon friend will tell you that she’s expecting and “it just happened so quickly, I am almost not ready”. No one tells you how hurtful “we weren’t trying, it just happened, but now we’ll see where it takes us” is. No one tells you how you feel like screaming from the top of your lungs when you have friends who can magically plan their pregnancies to coincide with holidays and new jobs and the likes of it.

For some months now people have been asking me if we wouldn’t like a second child. I guess I ask people the same thing when I discover they have a 2-year-old – or at least I think it. Don’t think that I am better just because I know how hurtful the question can be.

When we were told about the changes at work and the need to fire people, a colleague of mine (currently on maternity leave) asked me why I didn’t just get try to get pregnant as quickly as possible and leave the chaotic situation to others? I told her what I tell everybody asking me about a second child. I told her that I didn’t really know, and that maybe it would be nice to get the girl out of the bedroom before having another child and ladidadida. Good thing I didn’t tell her “Excellent idea, will do right away”, because here we are. It’s almost six months later and I am nowhere near close to another maternity leave.

A couple of weeks ago I had coffee with another colleague. She has two girls and had no problems conceiving them quickly, but she is an only child and has told me how her parents were told they were incredibly lucky to having conceived her after years and years of trying without luck. When she asked me about more children, my answer was the same vague bedroom one that I give everyone else. Even though she of all people should understand, because infertility deprived her of sisters and brothers – and almost deprived her parents of her. So why couldn’t I, for once, be honest?

***

It’s weird how not being able to conceive is sort of taboo (and how not wanting children at all is as well). And how wanting them and conceiving them are not. It’s weird how I, on one hand, hate when people ask me about more children, but how, on the other hand, I ask other people the exact same question – or at least think about it. Why do I feel like less worthy because I am not pregnant the minute I want it? Why is it so difficult to look people straight in the eye and tell them that “you know what? Conceiving is a bit of a struggle for us, so I don’t really feel like talking about it”?

***

On my desk at work is a picture of my girl and her father. They are peeking out from behind the fall foliage leaves of New England. Her eyes are smiling and her hair is pointing in every possible direction. When I look at that picture my heart skips a beat and I want to leave work and pick her up from daycare immediately. I want to give her brothers and sisters, I want to show her the world, I want to keep her warm and safe and happy and fed. But most of all I want her to know that I love her. No matter what!

Thank God that love is not taboo, that love is something we talk about.

Wow!

We are half way through 2011. Only six more months to make of the year what the first six months didn’t make of it. I will do everything I can. I will run faster, I will jump higher, and I hope, I do, I hope that the rest of 2011 will be great, but I don’t know.

2011 was only 11 days old, so brand new and fresh and unused, when it took its first tumble and from there it walked on rather wobly – in the dark.

I still have hopes for 2011. I still want to read 12 books, I still want our family to grow, but I have decided that if 2011 doesn’t bring these things then I will do my best to leave it all behind on New Year’s Eve. I will do my best to clear my head and jump into 2012 with the same anticipation of great things to come as I had when I jumped into 2011.

But before I get ready for jumping, let’s see what the next six months bring. If life can take a turn to the worse, the unknown, then it ought to be able to take a turn to the better, the wanted. Right?

I want to take more pictures, I want to be happier, cry less. I want to enjoy life with my girl and my husband. I want to travel. I want to read, to cook, to listen to music. I want to make new friends and to cherish those I already have. I want to relax and to do good at work. I want to love and be loved in return.

I want to give the rest of 2011 a fair chance of showing me what good things it’s got.

In vain I have struggled…

Yesterday was an off day and I am determined to make today a better one. Yesterday was a lot of crying, a lot of “I have a beautiful daughter and no matter how much I long for another kid, I have to be happy if our household isn’t meant to hold more than three people”. It was a lot of “why the f***** h*** is it so easy for what seems to be everyone else to conceive”. It was a lot of sad music and sniffing. It was all the things that won’t make it joyous.

My mood lifted as I ate my dinner and stumbled upon Pride and Prejudice among the dvd’s. I love the story, the characters, all the same things that everyone else loves as well. But last night what I loved the most was that it gave me hours on not thinking, of just enjoying a well told story with a heroine that most girls have at some point fallen in love with.

***

June is almost over. I can’t believe July is just around the corner. 2011 hasn’t exactly been my year so far. A rather prominent voice inside my head keeps telling me to just close my eyes and hope the rest of the year will fly by without doing too much damage. Thankfully the nother instinct in me tells me to slow down, to remember that the girl will never be 2 again, and enjoy all the things there is to enjoy even though it’s unavoidable that these will be mixed with tears.

July, August, September, October, November, December. It’s just six months. If the months of 2011 can’t be new beginnings hopefully 2012 can. In that case it’s just 6 months away. If 2011 decides to surprise me and months really can be new beginnings I need look no further than 4 days. I am hoping for the latter.

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(It’s not that I didn’t know already, but loud – LOUD – music and dancing around the living room floor does something to you – something good. Thanks to Sinne Eeg, Abbey Lincoln, Candy Dulfer & Dave Stewart, Fallulah, Gretchen Parlato, Oh Land, Piazzolla, Stan Getz and Fictionplane for putting up with my housewifey and stiff moves last night and this morning.)

(And my deepest apologies to those I forgot. Even though unmentioned you still did a great job at cheering me up.)

I am not doing any of it. I am sitting in the apartment, thinking way too much and reminding myself of the tears I shed last night. I am drinking tea and wondering just how early I can go to bed.

While I wait for my husband and child to come home bringing a few rays of sun, I wish I had a hand to hold and the ability to always look on the bright side.

Two years ago, 12:43, I gave birth to a baby girl. My baby girl. Our baby girl.

Two years ago, 12:43, I set out on a journey. It’s been tough and I have looked back at the days before setting out, but I have never regretted. I have cried and gone away to hide. I have been tired and felt utterly helpless. But I have never regretted.

Two years ago, 12:43, I watch my husband beam with pride and an hour later I heard him tell me her name, the only name suitable for her, the name I chose.

Today, my baby girl is gone. Big girl is here to stay. Opinions are here to stay. Tantrums are here to stay. But so are adventures and wet kisses and the feeling that no matter what I do this girl loves me – endlessly, just as I do her.

Today, I watched my girl at daycare. I watched her friends celebrate her. I watch her eat homebaked bread and strawberries and melon. And I felt her hand holding mine, pinching my arm, as if she couldn’t really believe that it was all about her.

I don’t remember last year, but today feels so very special. Today brings tears to my eyes, today makes me as hormonal as I was in the summer of 2009. Today is my girl’s birthday. Today, my girl turns two. She has so many more birthdays to come, so many more strawberries and songs, but today still feels special.

Today she is two. The terrible twos. But I love her, I love her with all my heart.

Tillykke lille pige!

My body collapsed a fortnight ago so I have been lying down or walking around because of lumbago. Not being able to sit for a fortnight is quite a long time – and it makes working very difficult. I have been there before, but never with a kid. Having a kid and a case of lumbago is not the greatest of combinations.

The girl turns two on Friday. Two! I can’t believe it. She talks, she walks, she sings, she screams. She is the apple of my eye and the thing that exhausts me the most. Two! As for my hope that two as in her age wouldn’t be the only two we were celebrating Friday, it will be. Still no sign of the wanted baby number two. He or she is staying away, probably still wondering whether we are a suitable home and suitable parents. I am trying to calm myself, yelling loudly at desperation whenever it comes near, but it’s difficult.

Job is job. Let’s put it like that for now. Job is job.

So hey you. It’s June. I am here, I never left. What’s up?