Time Marches On, and I'm Standing Still

Have you ever noticed how life moves us along in stages?

Going to high school.
Going to college.
Starting a career.
Being young and partying.
Dating.
Dating the one.
Living together.
Being engaged.
Getting married.
Deciding to start a family or not.
Trying to get pregnant.
Being pregnant.
Raising children.

It's great. It's these stages that make up our lives.

What if one of them stalls out on you? What if everybody else moves onto the next stage but you?

It struck me the other day that I'm stuck in this in between. There is nothing to go back to and I literally can't move forward. Once I hit the year mark, I was faced a lot of repeat events and times where I was now not pregnant or didn't have a baby AGAIN. And I watch as other people move along and I'm nowhere near catching up.

It really hit me earlier this week when two friends were talking about going to the local JBF sale. They went together last year when one had a five-month-old and the other was about seven months pregnant. At the time, only not quite six months into TTC, it killed me listening to them make plans that I could have no part of. It wasn't jealousy. It was a feeling of being left out and left behind. They didn't make me feel this way. It wasn't their fault.

That's the life stages they were in.

Now, a year later, they are preparing to sell baby items they no longer need and the subject of shopping the sale came up. It was something I hadn't thought about in the last year because I don't really think about getting left behind. That boat sailed a long time ago. But, here I was thinking that I couldn't go last Winter/Spring because I wasn't pregnant. Then again in the Fall. And, now, Winter/Spring again.

And these friends now have a 17-month-old and 10-month-old.

As I was processing those thoughts, something happened on the TTGP message board today. One of my favorite Bumpies re-introduced herself saying that she and her hubby plan to start trying again end of Summer/Fall. Her sweet little girl is two months old. We had been trying the same amount of time when she got pregnant on Cycle 8.

Two girls at work have gotten pregnant and given birth in the time I've been trying.

I don't really know if I have much of a point here.

I'm not sad, really. 

I think sometimes, I just don't realize what's happening. It doesn't feel like 17 months to me. It's like my world has stopped and everybody else's has just moved on.