Author: forthe

Most couples aren’t effective at communication. Jobs, kids, hobbies take time and focus away from each other. Talking and keeping in touch can fall through the cracks.

We saw this happening to us and decided to do something about in 2012. Starting the first of the year we decided to implement something called daily notes. Each weekday morning either of us starts an email with the day’s date and open the communication pipeline.

What do we talk about?

Our plans for the day, how we feel physically, ongoing concerns, news from the day and much more. It’s become second nature, so a weekday without the daily note feels lonely, mindless.

The daily notes allow us to know what is going on, changes in the day and experiences the other hasn’t shared.

In our 5 years since we started the daily notes we’ve noticed having a running documented history of our marriage is wonderful! We can go back and experience events as they happened.

 

22 years to be exact.

As veterans of a 20 year marriage, we’d never stopped trying to have kids. No protection, no charting ovulation and no worries. Nothing happened and we grew accustomed knowing we’d have a wonderful daughter and that was it for kids. An only child.

Then came the twins.

My sister in law gave birth to adorable, cute twins. My sister and brother in law asked Missy to work as a nanny for the twins and she excitedly took the position. Yes, it only took a few months before we discussed having more children for real.

I heard a commercial on the radio for haveababy.com and we thought we’d go to find out why we never had more children. Dr. Witten was engaging, charming and knowledgeable and within 10 minutes he proclaimed he could get us pregnant if we wanted. Seriously, we were just here to find out why we never had more children and not necessarily to have more children.

Going home we debated for a few hours and had soul heartening discussions. We decided to try to have a baby, but limit it to 3 months. My part was pretty easy during this process, but Missy’s was painful. Daily injections in the abdomen left a bruised smile of marks stretching from left to right.

The first month passed and nothing happened, so I pretty much knew we would never have more children. The second month was the winner. Our second daughter was born and we were now a family of 4.

In the years since our second daughter was born, we resumed the carefree sexual life of a married couple who couldn’t have more kids. Life became an adventure with an adult child and a toddler; things were exciting, fun and new again.

We were on our way home from tennis one night and pulled up to a stop light. We’d taken separate cars since I came from work. Missy rolled down her window and we discussed what to get for dinner. She also mentioned her period was late and I sarcastically suggested getting a pregnancy test. Oh, how we both laughed.

God has a sense of humor or we never fully understood the magic of conception, but that night the pregnancy test was positive and the 3 others I went out and bought all showed positive. Soon after we had our third child, a son. We are now a family of 5.

Just a few months shy of being married 30 years we thought we were pregnant again, alas the test was negative. Still, how many people enjoy such a surprising marriage?

We do.