Book Teaser: Husband, House & Baby

First off, thank YOU so much for all of the amazing feedback and encouragement I've received from the launch of this site. It is truly amazing to see God’s hand at work when you follow His lead. Much of my decision to start writing my book was following that same spiritual nudge. With that, I will be sharing book teasers on here for your viewing pleasure.

The book teasers I post on here will most likely come from right smack in the middle of a chapter. The titles of the chapters you read and even the content are likely to change amongst the madness of editing and rewriting. What you read will be the most current draft. And just clear up any confusion BD is an abbreviation for Baby Daddy. This is addressed early on in the book as the most respectful title I could come up with for the content that follows.

1. Husband, House & Baby

“...First year of marriage the hardest? Maybe. Not sure how much I agree with everyones hurricane warning. For us, we came into marriage with very different levels of sexual experience. This led to some frustration and unmet expectations. I would best describe this perfect storm as The Virgin Mary meets The Central Coast Sampler. This was a communication roadblock for us at times. Since we were so early in our marriage, I assumed that we would have time to work on this. We both appeared to be more than open to improving this area of intimacy. Part of learning the dynamic of marriage is sifting through all of the baggage that is brought to the union. We all have a lot of junk from our past, whether it be past relationships or family issues, it WILL impact how you operate in a marriage.

Back to the flag waving for a moment. I attributed BD’s red flags to immaturity in men before they marry. There are habits and friendships that are not meant for marriage. I’ve seen it before and I am a firm believer that sometimes the love and stability of a good wife is what a man needs to leave his foolish ways behind. Partnered, OF COURSE, with the desire to grow up and move forward in life. The red flags in the marriage were much less. The girl friendships (to my knowledge) were not in the mix. And the drinking rarely struck me as abnormal.

A little before our first year anniversary, I found out I was pregnant! This news came on the exact morning we closed escrow on our house. Woah, woah! Major life changes all at once. Watch out! Now just to be clear, our baby was planned and so was our house (you don’t just accidently sign a million papers in hopes of a 30 year mortgage for the hell of it), but we did not expect to get pregnant the first month we tried. We had a lot of friends and family members who struggled to get pregnant, so we wanted to have realistic expectations. Even though it was abrupt news at first, the only way you can look at the blessing of a child is just that, a complete blessing! We took the birth classes, revamped our 1970’s fixer-upper, and then welcomed our sweet baby girl (after 24 hours of drug-free labor).

Welcoming our daughter into our family unit was such a powerful time in our marriage. The love we had for each other had created another small human being that we were responsible for loving, raising, teaching, and nurturing. Seeing our love for each other multiply into this crazy love we had for our child was such a surreal experience. There is just nothing like the love you have for your child! Words can’t do it justice.

One upside to our growing family was that we agreed on all of the big parenting decisions: sleep training, schedules, discipline techniques, division of labor … you name it! It really eased us into this next stage of our life together.

For most of our marriage, I have extremely fond memories. BD was always putting me first, affirming everything I did for him, feeling very proud that I was his wife, bragging about me to friends and family, writing me sweet notes around the house, and constantly complimenting me (nine months pregnant and two months postpartum). I always felt like we were “that couple.” We had this too good to be true, adorable relationship, where we were always laughing. He was never short on affection. Always trying to sneak a make out sesh in the kitchen or in public or in front of his parents, for that matter! We went on fun dates, vacations and road trips. He was my own personal chef/bartender and I was his cute little homemaker. We loved having date nights in complete with fancy dinners and wine or going out to the latest trendy restaurant. We both felt lucky to have the other. Quite the works in my opinion.

When BD was asked by a co-worker how to describe his spouse, he wrote this:

‘Lauren fits me like a puzzle piece. She’s is the most positive and optimistic person I have ever met. So she makes up for my paranoia and fits of ‘emoness’. She is loving and encouraging, emotionally stable, she thinks critically and always wants to learn. She gives of herself sacrificially, always putting others first, especially me. She lives a perfect definition of love. She has my sense of humor, or what mine would be if I had a filter. We spend most of our time together laughing. And most importantly, we believe the same things. Our philosophies are congruent and we have the same religious views. We go together perfectly.’”

Image by A New Wall