We had a really rough time before having our baby girl. It was a six year process, involving reoccurring miscarriages, lots of doctor, and hospital and consultant appointments, and more disappointment than I could ever clearly express.
OK…. Talk about misleading
I hear you, the title is a little off the initial topic BUT I swear it is all in the spirit of context!
I doubt I will ever even try to document the long road that we have been on trying to have Ava. It is painful, it makes me feel sad but more importantly it doesn’t bring me anything positive when I think about it anymore. I have learned all I can from that part of my life. It is now behind me.
I guess this is the type of event that people refer to as closing a chapter in their books. Its definitely part of my story, I learned a lot about myself during that six years. I learned how strong I can be when I have to. I showed up on days when I could have stayed under my duvet. I could have stayed there forever some days but instead I got promotions and ran my house. I kept it together. Not always well, and looking back I am not always proud of who I was, things I done and words I said, but I survived a journey that could have broken me and my family and we got through it. We gave ourselves one last try six years after our last loss and it resulted in us having our beautiful healthy baby girl.
Ava is our miracle… No two ways about it…
The doctors told me Ava’s due date was the 22nd of March. Ava’s due date was the 23rd of March. I knew it and I told everyone so…
As if by her own choice or maybe even mine, there she was. Born into the world, Ava Rae McTeggart, 23.23pm on the 23rd of March. 
This little lady arrived right when she was supposed to. I don’t know what higher power I believe in but whatever or whoever is up there gave us our baby girl right when we were supposed to have her and I can’t feel too bad about how we got here now she is here.
My family is complete and now I am going to get back to my point. We suffered our last loss and found our dream house almost straight after. It was serendipitous timing and people might not understand how bricks and mortar would be a comfort with the losses we faced but it gave me an outlet and a project and something to put all my energy into that wasn’t having a baby. This house became my world.
My new world…
A world I was swiftly kept away from, like I was actually banned from visiting my own house for 4 months because apparently you can not annoy the trades men about keeping to a tightly crafted programme of works when they are working for pizza and beer – really our friends and family are that good!!
Oops… My bad…
I was told that there was threat of industrial strike action from Marks mates if I didn’t stay away and keep quiet. I protested but I stayed away.
The house its self was in a shit state when we bought it. Built in 1896, it was a four bed detached sandstone property sat in half an acre of land. There was no way we could afford it. Or sorry there was no way we could afford it, if it didn’t need new ceilings and floors and kitchen and floor joists – you know the bits under the floor that hold your house up?? Yeah we needed new ones of those!!
Some people really really got behind us. My cousin Craig is a joiner and all credit to him. We could never have achieved or afforded the level of work and quality of work he churned out for us month after month when we bought this house.
Will it ever be finished…
It hasn’t been the quickest process. We had to move back in with my parents for 10 months. We purchased a caravan for the side of their house, which my brother moved into so we could have his bedroom. We were a family of four staying in one bedroom, with all our stuff piled everywhere and when we weren’t working on our day jobs, we were working to push on this renovation project.
It was fraught at times… It was really really fucken fraught at others but we made progress… Slowly but surely.
My Families safe place…
After 10 months we moved in. The boys slept on a mattress in the dining room for a year. We had no kitchen floor tiles for a good 18 months and no doors in the rooms downstairs for 2 and a half years. We’ve still got a bathroom to be installed up the stairs, but as I discovered on this renovation journey. You can only have as much as the wages will support and I like holidays so it has taken sometime.
Hopefully you can see how far we have come.
The Beeches has went from a dream drafted on paper to my perfect family home… It is my families safe place.
It finally happened…
Anyway this weekend really has put the cherry on my already well decorated cake! This week seen something happen in this house that I have been waiting on for years.
I got my baby girls room. I got to turn a room in this house into a room for a baby. The house that we bought when my heart was broken. The house that took all my focus now has a baby room in it with a real life actual bouncing baby girl to go live in it. The pictures below will give you a taste of what we have done but please check out my next blog which details the room from conceptual vision board to completed design.
It really is hard to explain why having Ava’s room decorated has made me so happy. I am sure many people will struggle to understand how a house can be so tightly wound together with my journey to have a baby but they don’t have too. 
Parts of my world were falling to bits as others were just beginning and now this year they have all finally come together and it all makes a bit more sense to me…
Maybe things do work out alright if you believe in them enough…
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