To Baby or Not to Baby?

That is the question…

My name is Renee Leach and I’m very much country girl at heart, growing up on 100 acres in a small country town, climbing trees, jumping off rocks, riding horses and just generally being a little bit feral at times.

However, I moved to the city for Uni and then travelled overseas and after a failed 5 year relationship at 29, thinking he was…definitely ‘The One’, I moved back home to Australia after 5 years of travel and working on luxury motor yachts…a dream job, I know, but I just got to a point where I wanted to be at home with my family as I was nearly 30 and wanted more out of life…Maybe even a baby and husband one day?

I felt myself heading in a downward spiral in the overseas life and was not happy in my relationship. So, I left him and this incredible job but I still wanted more. Struggling with adapting back into being ‘Australian’ again after living this supposedly ‘glamorous lifestyle of international traveller and jet-setter’.

I was still trying to find ‘the one’ and 5 years after being single in a big city, I finally found him just sitting out the front of my friends house and it was love at first sight (Insert sigh here).

However, I was stuck in a teaching job I hated, got cyber bullied by one of my nasty little students, which shook me to my core, to say the least. So this lead me to desperately want to get out of this hectic city life and to be able to move to the country again, buy a house, get married (he didn’t quite know it yet!), start a family and live happily ever after…because that’s what you do right?

The thing is, I got a great job and we ended up moving down south, back to this beautiful little country town, where we got married, and were about to start a family. But he was working away on the mines for two weeks at a time and we were both working full time to pay off the house. So it’s kind of tricky to fall pregnant when your partner is not around!

To make things worse, I felt terrible because I knew my husband wanted to start a family, as he already had a beautiful daughter, who ended up living with us during her high school years. I still struggled and felt like the whole concept of growing a human inside me was all very bizarre!

But, it just what was expected and so we kind of tried. Surprise, surprise, we fell pregnant 7 months later while on a snowboarding holiday to NZ. I was expecting this almost to happen right away too…and when it did I was all ‘of course, I am such a lucky person’.

All was going well until the 12 week scan. We were there eagerly waiting to see our baby on the scan when the man said…nothing. I looked at him, trying to read his mind and he said ‘ I’m sorry’. At first I did not believe him and looked back at my husband confused…He just nodded his head. I started to tear up, still in shock of what was happening. The worst thing was that the man had to prod my stomach to ‘ show us’ that there was no movement or heartbeat.

We had just been told that this is what was called a ‘missed miscarriage’, which meant that it was not picked up in previous scans and that it stopped growing at about 9–10 weeks. This meant that, among the stress of it all we suddenly had to go to see a doctor and then get an appointment in the hospital the next day to have my baby ‘removed’, (called a D&C) which was the first and foremost horrible experience of my life. I took a week off work and then went back and kept to myself. Just ‘got on with it’ as we do (FYI — if this happened again I would say to myself…go see a psychologist at this point NOW! No option. Just bloody do it).

A year later, we finally fell pregnant again (yay!) and we were so pleased, but, yet again, after our 6 week scan I was told after 2 scans, that I was ‘a ticking time bomb’ by the radiographer and had what was called an ectopic pregnancy. I was suddenly rushed around, getting nurses to check my blood pressure every second and they had to call the ambulance to go to the next major city which was 30 mins away, as they were worried that it could…wait for it…’burst inside me and I could suddenly bleed to death’. I said, ‘Oh really?’ , ‘I feel just fine’.

Still trying to stay positive, I had a great chat to the handsome Gyno Doc who looked like a Ken Doll (no really he did — I was not on drugs at this stage) as he was sitting on my hospital bed, ever so kindly explaining to me that I was about to lose my left fallopian tube. My husband walks in at this point, which was hilarious, and was like ‘well…I see that you’re being looked after?’ I like to see the best in a bad situation…obviously.

Another year on, after no luck, we decided to go see a specialist and at first we took what is called ‘Clomid’ which just increased your egg production but completely messes with your hormones, mental state and being actually any kind of normal. This was so horrible and did not work for us, obviously, so later that year, we began IVF treatments and surprisingly, fell pregnant the second time! We were so pleased and thought that this must be the third time lucky…

Sadly, after 8 weeks another little soul miscarried, and even more sadly, was that the man in my life was up at work this time, (#fifolife) so I tried to stay really strong and hold it together, drove home by myself…but we all know, that dealing with things like that, never works. To those of you who have experienced this, it is really, really hard doing IVF, and for me, still working full time as a teacher, back and forth with appointments, unsupportive bosses/work, 7 hour round trips to the city and being so highly hormonal (but thinking I was normal…No..You Are Not Okay) meant that I was frustrated and angry and so my husband and I would fight like crazy during this difficult time. Plus, at the same time, trying to be a stepmum to a teenager also had its challenges.

Meanwhile, while all this was going on, I spoke to my sister (whom I am very close to) and she was being ‘weird’. I could tell in her voice that she had something to tell me but I was too scared to ask. My beautiful sister fell pregnant just before our IVF started and had her baby in June the following year. Now, don’t get me wrong, I was happy for her, but it was also really really hard to deal with at the same time. I had just had my second (pretty intense) miscarriage (where I nearly died) and was now looking into IVF. This was so terribly difficult to deal with, but I was really trying to be supportive and positive at the same time… (I am now the very, very proud and crazy Aunty Nèe of a gorgeous little boy though, which makes me soooo happy, and he seems to really connect with me too which is amazing).

I found myself on the brink of having a nervous breakdown, so I finally said ‘timeout’. Looking back now, if I kept going at this stage, I am really not sure what would have happened…it’s a scary thought. I was a wreck, but I thought I was fine. After all this, I started drinking too much to numb the pain and not look after myself…I kept looking at all these really ‘unhealthy’ looking parents and thinking ‘why?’ How come they get to have kids and not me? I was doing everything right…I ate well, I exercised and took all the right vitamins and supplements…I got acupuncture and saw a load of naturopaths and homeopaths and oesteopaths…But nothing was working.

I took the rest of the year off and we went on a family holiday. Just the three of us to a little island just off Bali. I took all my essential oils with me as they were such an incredible emotional support during such a difficult time in my life. They were also great for tummy bugs and mosquitoes too which was a bonus.

Then, as if by chance, something pretty incredible happened.

On the last day of the holiday, that’s when I had a thought. ‘What if you could have a product that could allow you diffuse essential oils with you while you travelled?’ We had some bug-repellent plug-in thing filled with toxic chemicals in our room and I was certainly not going to be breathing that in! Yuck!

It was now crystal clear to me, how to get over this horrific baby journey I had been living for the last 4 years. Because I began to see that there has got to more to life that just falling pregnant, and I needed to focus my energies somewhere else instead.

Suddenly, I was totally obsessed with the idea. That’s when I realised that the secret to people living a more emotionally stable, healthy, non-toxic and natural life, at home, in the car or while they travelled, was by using essential oils.

My plan was to start an eco-friendly product that would house essential oils, that people could take with them, where ever they went. So I started with a simple leaf picture. But I didn’t stop there. I then created several version of the design including a USB travel leaf. After that I ended up with a whole range of my products from jewellery to wall plugins. But there was still a problem.

It wasn’t all rainbows and unicorns…I had absolutely no experience in business or had any idea on where or how to get this thing created. Which idea would I start with? And how on earth would I do this? How much would this cost us and could we even afford to do it with me not working now? I created some simple prototypes out of wood & scraps, from the local spotlight store, but this was not enough.

I ended up getting so frustrated that I decided to start with the most basic idea of a car clip on diffuser. I chose to call it ‘aromaLEAF’. I thought if I could create something that would make it possible to diffuse essential oils while people drove their cars each day. I’d be pretty happy with that. After 2 ½ years of product creation, design, several prototypes and…all our savings, while still back working full time, the aromaLEAF eco car diffuser was born!

I can now help others to live a more healthy and natural life by breathing in nature again, not chemicals, and perhaps assisting them emotionally with use of the oils.

After creating aromaLEAF, I have not only been able to transform the lives of others, I’ve also been able to stop putting so much pressure on myself about having kids, because I can now confidently say that I am truly happy in myself and where we are at, in our lives, as a couple. We have now afforded to purchase over 5 acres of land, live in a very rustic, but cute, little shack, with our dog and horse, fur babies and of course, my other baby, the aromaLEAF.

And really, in the end, all of this means I’m now able to live a much simpler, happier and more fulfilling life, spending more time with my husband, my beautiful dog, Chelsea, and ride my horse, Zid, all the time…and just being happy, by living more close to nature.

Isn’t that what life is really about?

I think so.

Renèe

Related posts:

When I was in high school, I had a teacher that told us about a millionaire (possibly billionaire) that filed for bankruptcy multiple times before he struck it rich. I can’t for the life of me…

This week Ludena Protocol announced a partnership with the first of its kind Play To Earn NFT card game. Until now, most card games were bought and sold but never rentable. Also, never in any card…

Begin your journey in #DevOps and Cloud Computing by setting your basics right. These courses help you clear your basics in #Linux, #Networking, #Applications, build and release procedures. The new…