An oddity.

I talked yesterday with a co-worker about The Room. I think many people have a catch all room where shit gets thrown as guests come over and the door is closed. Coworker said that she'd just added shelves and was excited it was starting to get organized. I laughed and said I hadn't touched it since we just didn't know what to do with it. She asked why and I said, "Well, all the baby stuff is in there. We aren't ready yet to make it a guest room, but well, all the baby stuff is in there."

She nodded, and then offered up a daybed if we are interested in a semi-permanent solution. I'm quite tempted, actually. We're not putting ttc on hold - not officially - but neither are we trying right now. In fact, we've not had sex in over a week due to one thing or another.

I feel so conflicted about that. Not for the reasons I think a lot of people might/do - it doesn't bother me that there is baby stuff in there. I don't actively avoid it, though it's rare for me to go in there. I simply have no reason to - DH changes the cat litter, and there isn't anything in there I need. Most of the baby stuff was purchased well before I was pregnant with Gabe, so it's not attached to him, specifically (thank God).

I haven't really looked at baby stuff in the past year, because doing so was acutely painful.

And yet . . . on a whim, I looked up something on CL tonight. I was there for something else, but I found myself doing a search for a co-sleeper, an item we wanted but never wanted to pay full price for. And then emailing to inquire about one. Maybe because there is no baby on the horizon? Maybe it just feels safe? I ... don't know. Can't quite analyze it. I also looked at the bathtub I wanted and saw an ad for a used PNP in the style we wanted (now discontinued . . . it's so odd that the stuff I looked at gleefully when we'd started ttc and it was all easy and going to happen soon and babies never died - it's almost all discontinued now.)

I also recently looked at cloth diapers of all things.

It feels pang-y. Like returning to a place that used to be familiar, and feeling nostalgia. Not pain, exactly, but looking around with a sad smile at a place that used to be something and isn't the same anymore.

I don't know what I'm doing. Looking for baby items and discussing daybeds. Caught in the middle. I don't feel angst-y about it, I'm not torn up over our decision to ease up on the ttc (in fact, I've been looking ahead to the progress that will be made on the credit card debt with the additional comp I'm getting for the new dept, and hoping it will be extended beyond the initial agreement, because of the possibility of paying off the debt entirely). It's just that . . . we're still in between, a year later. I never expected this. I would have thought we'd be well into a pregnancy now.

But life, well, life's plans have always been different than mine. Maybe I shouldn't examine this too closely. Maybe it simply is. There is a contradiction, and there will always be a contradiction for us, won't there? We're parents without a living child. Maybe this is just the urges that can't be fulfilled running up against the practicality of moving on. A daybed isn't a big investment - and yet.

A year later, and so much has changed. But the complications haven't faded. I've just become used to living them, I suppose. A fractured existence, but one that feels natural to me now. Odd to think this isn't how everyone lives. Or maybe they do, and it's just hidden away. These days, I don't know.