Hey, and welcome to episode 30. I am so excited to be here with you, and I think about you as I talk into my microphone alone in my office.

I. Um, I’m recording this one late at night after the kids are in bed, but I’m always thinking of you guys. So if there’s anything you wanna hear about, you gotta send me an email or hit me up on Instagram. Um, I love to take your ideas, your problems, things you need help with, and it’s been a while, but did you guys know that?

I love to hear stories about your babies and what your babies taught you, and a little bit about their lives, because a lot of times we don’t get to talk about that. So, You are welcome to go on my Instagram at the link in my bio. You can submit a story for the podcast or just go on my website. There’s a button there that will take you right to the form to submit a story and I will read it on the podcast.

So I love to do that and I’m really excited because the sweetest friend of mine, Cammy has. Shared her story in her heart with us today, and so I’m honored to read about her little baby boy She says. Our little George came to us at 20 weeks early, but was perfect in every way. His short life has changed, my husband and I in many ways, and it was not until maybe the last year that I’ve been able to see the good and appreciate those changes, and truthfully, most credit is due to my friend Amy.

Listening to Amy’s perspective through this podcast has helped me move forward with a positive heart. I like. To use a phrase, move forward because move on makes me cringe. I never want to move on from my loss and the joy that he brought to us. I would much rather move forward while remembering little Jordan and keeping him close to my heart.

We traveled to St. George for Dixie State College homecoming weekend. My niece was on the dance team at Dixie State at the time, and I was a cheerleader there while my husband Jordan and I were dating. We went to the carnival, watched a football game, and went to some of our favorite places to eat while we were there.

On the way home, I got extremely sick to my stomach and actually had to make Jordan pull over so I could throw up. I seriously hate throwing up and before my pregnancy could count on one hand the number of times I remember ever being willing to actually do so. So this was really weird for me, but after the rest of the two hour drive home, I realized I hadn’t really had a period for a while, but wasn’t sure what the norm would be because I had had endometriosis burned off and a large sister removed four weeks prior.

I brushed it off for another day or two and finally gave in to buying a pregnancy test. Something I told myself I would not do again. After six years in several rounds of failed I V F, we had decided to take a break and work on us. So there I was buying yet another pregnancy test that I was almost certain would be our millionth negative.

But I went along with it anyway, and then there was a positive test. I honestly thought I had taken it wrong, so I took another, and then a third. Of course, Jordan had left to go out of the state hunting. He had no cell service and I was dying to tell him, but this gave me an opportunity to come up with a fun way to tell him.

I let a few of our friends in on my secret and drafted them into my plan. It was Halloween, 2017. I bought some baby items as well as my positive tests and put them into a gift bag and bought a large white sheet and wrote in big letters. Holy Sheet Baby Dew. Our friends brought the gift bag over dressed as a ghost in the sheet I had crafted.

Jordan only had to read it three times to catch on. We were over the moon. Other than extreme nausea and vomiting, my pregnancy did not have any complications and everything was on track for our son’s. July 1st birthday, he hated Pepsi, which was hard for me because I used to drink way too much. He like his daddy, preferred a Dr.

Pepper. This has always been beyond me, but I crave tomatoes, which I’ve always loved, but he hated them, and when I would succumb to my craving, I was miserably sick for it. He liked moving the most when I’d lay down after work all day, but working had its perks too. I am an ultrasound technician, so of course I’d sneak a peek at my babe when I’d get the chance.

We found out that it was a boy and told everybody at Christmas. Little George got excited and decided to meet his mom and dad a little too early. I went into labor on February 6th, 2018. We had made plans that if the contractions would stop, that we could place a circlage, a procedure where they sow the surface shut on the morning of February 7th.

Somehow, with a little bit of luck, every my every two minute contractions faded, slowed, and eventually stopped by midnight. We only had to make it to 6:00 AM to be able to get the cerclage placed. I felt a gush of fluid around 4:00 AM called for my nurse. She tested the fluid and it came back as amniotic fluid.

Our world shattered. Our options were limited and there truly was not a safe option to keep him here. We made the choice to continue with labor and deliver our son and spend the time we could with him. 13 hours later, he was here. He was perfect. He was my miracle baby. He had the most precious little feet and toes, and as he passed in my arms, his left hand curled into the love symbol in sign language.

I thoughtfully named him after the two most important men in my life. His daddy, Jordan, and my late father Neil, who passed away in October of 2012. She parents of Utah were able to come from the Salt Lake Valley to Nephi to serve my family. I will forever be so grateful for those women in that program.

His hand and feet ceramics are my most prized possessions. I was even able to use the footprints they did to have them tattooed on my ankle. He will always be a huge part of me and a huge part of our story. He has made me a better person because of my son. I left a job I was miserable at. To finding my place at the current hospital, which did wonders for my anxiety and depression, I have gained so much compassion and truly live by being kind and choosing my words wisely because you’ll never honestly know what someone is dealing with.

He has made me stronger as an individual coming back from something that literally broke me, picking up what pieces I had left of myself, and somehow putting it all back together. I can honestly say I love the new me. I love this person that my son made me definitely flawed, but somehow better. It has made my relationship with my husband so strong.

I really never thought I could love him like I do now, but I know without any doubt that he is my person. We have had several friends and family comment on how we’re doing as a couple, usually being referred to as a power couple, or simply how strong we are setting the record straight. We are far from strong.

We are broken. We had our hearts torn into, and our world shattered, but together we make each other whole. I am so grateful for him. Our son is a light of our lives and we love remembering him. Aw, Cammy, that is so beautiful. I, yeah, I love your story and I love your heart. Cammy is one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met, so thank you for sharing Jordan with us.

I think we have the perfect topic to go with that story because Cammy and her husband are super outdoorsy and. I have to tell you guys about what’s going on here now. We passed the 4th of July weekend recently, and because of Corona and just life in general, I think a lot of people love going camping, and I.

Growing up, I loved going camping too. I dunno how my mom did it. She was a single mom and she would take us camping. I remember tons of camping trips. We’d always go to a lake or near a river, and we had just all kind of memories. As with my church group, I went camping, I went to summer camps, always loved camping.

And so as I grew older and I was. Wondering who I was gonna marry. I always thought, I’ve gotta pick a guy that loves the outdoors as much as I do and loves camping. And I was lucky enough to find that guy. He always went camping with his family growing up, and he was. Really good at everything outdoors.

And so I was just really excited. When we were dating, we went camping with friends and when we were newlyweds, we went camping a lot. And even when we had our first baby, we would take her camping and I have the cutest pictures of this little tiny baby out there and in our tent camping, but about, I think the time our second baby came along, I remember that.

Camping with kids started to get a little more challenging. Um, if you’ve ever tried it, I would be nursing a baby on the floor in the dark in a tent, and the toddler is awake because it’s too noisy just moving around in a tent or the wind would be flapping and it would just be a nightmare. Like nobody got any sleep.

I actually remember. A couple of times that we pretty much packed it up at maybe midnight, one in the morning, just saying, this is not gonna work. And that was kinda hard because I had always identified myself as someone who loved camping. But yeah, it just got really challenging and we weren’t going camping as much as we would like to.

Well, a few years passed and my husband came up with a great idea and we decided to. Get a tent trailer or a pop-up trailer, and if any of you guys have been camping, especially with kids, you know that when you go camping, it doesn’t matter if you go for one night or if you go for a month, you pretty much have to take the same amount of stuff with maybe just a little bit more food.

So it was a lot of work to go camping and. We thought, oh, this tent trailer will solve all of that because we can put our stuff in it. It’s got a kitchen, it’s got a table. It’s kind of got all these things we need. We won’t have to sleep on the ground. It’s gonna be awesome. And it was a great idea, but. As of many people find out if you’ve ever shopped for trailers online, we did not use that trailer as much as we wanted to.

We thought we would, but because of our schedules and because of just the realities of camping with kids, it wasn’t happening. And I want to use the story to illustrate something for you because. This is what we do. A lot of times we try to change our circumstances and it’s very common, and we are actually taught this throughout our lives very directly and sometimes indirectly, but.

People will tell us, if you don’t like your job, you should definitely get another job. Or if you don’t like your house, you should just move. Or even in our relationships, right? Sometimes if things aren’t going really well with your husband, maybe you should get a new husband, or maybe you have the wrong husband.

Maybe you should have married that other guy that you used to date. It’s a really, really common. And I want you to take a minute while you’re listening to this and just think of a time where you have tried to change your circumstance even really recently. Like what is something you’ve tried to change so that you could feel better?

And we do it all the time, but the problem is when we do it, We take our brains with us, right? We take our thoughts with us, and so we often end up with the same results. So I’m gonna go through a little model for you guys, and if you’re not familiar with the model, go back and listen to some of my earlier episodes.

But the model is just a tool we use to become more aware of our thoughts and what they’re causing in our lives. So I wish I had a whiteboard for you, but you’ll just have to imagine it. I had this model and my circumstance was a tent, and my thought about it was camping with kids is hard. Now, lots of people would probably agree with that.

I mean, other people would disagree. That’s just a thought that I had, that it was really complicated to camp with kids, little kids, and my feeling was frustrated. I was really frustrated about this. So in my action line, what I was doing was I would snap at people, I would procrastinate, getting ready. I would do the martyr victim thing.

You know, a lot of us are really good at this. It’s like I have to do all the work and I have to do everything. I have to pack everything, and I still have to clean, and the kids are all dirty and all these things, and I don’t even get to sleep in my own bed. Right? I’m tired. Totally be the victim. And my result was that I don’t go camping.

I did not go camping. So what I tried to do, what we tried to do as a couple was change out the tent for the tent trailer because again, we thought that would solve all the problems, but unfortunately I still had that thought in there that camping with kids is hard Sometimes when we do change the circumstance, we end up.

Changing a few things that, so like I wasn’t sleeping on the ground anymore, but there’s always like, now I had to ensure the thing. Now we have to toe something. There’s always gonna be a 50 50 in whatever your circumstance is. And maybe this is easier if you think about somebody in your life that you’ve seen do this, maybe your friend that.

You know, dated a bunch of different guys and always had the same result or, Someone who’s just never happy and always trying to change their outer circumstances to make them feel better. But it’s easy to see it in other people, how it just, it doesn’t work. So if we go back to this model I have about my camp trailer, right?

My result is exactly the same because I have the exact same thought about camping. So it doesn’t matter if it’s a tent or it’s a trailer. If I think that camping with kids is hard, I am not gonna go camping. So I want you guys to be really, really clear on this. The reason why changing our circumstance, Doesn’t work is because our circumstances do not create our feelings, but we think they do.

And that’s where we get really mixed up. But I’m gonna give you three simple steps today to help you know what to do when you want to change your circumstance. So the first thing to recognize is that when we want to change a circumstance, it’s. Because of how we think it will make us feel. Our circumstances never create our emotions.

Our thoughts do our thoughts, create our feelings. And so what is the feeling that you are trying to feel? By changing your circumstance, that’s the first thing you need to recognize is what is that feeling that you are going after? And the next step is to get curious. And that means you are going to stay where you are.

You’re not going to change the circumstance, and you’re just gonna get curious and. Be interested. Ask yourself a lot of questions and write a lot of things down. Really get it out on paper. How could it be possible that you could feel that emotion that you want and stay where you are without changing anything?

How could you create that emotion on purpose? How could you learn to deal with that boss you can’t stand or whatever your problem is that you’re trying to change? Get really curious and give your brain the task of solving this problem because, A lot of times we give our brain the job of noticing all the problems, and it’s gonna tell us that easy way out, right?

Let’s just get out of this discomfort and move on to something new. Let’s get a new cave that’s warmer and drier than the one we’re currently in, and then we’ll be happy. But that really never works, and I’m sure you’ve seen it and you’ve recognized it in your own life and in the life of others. So just.

Play with it and stay there. And so my third tip is give it time. Now, when we talk about changing circumstances, I am not the boss of you. You are welcome to move, change jobs, change spouses, change your hair color, do whatever you want, you. Are allowed to do anything. But learning how to create emotions on purpose without changing your circumstances is such powerful work to do.

And a lot of people wanna know, okay, like I’ll get curious, I’ll play with it, I’ll do this work, but how long? How will I know how much time I have to spend? Before I can change my circumstances, and the answer really is that you have to stay where you are until you can create that feeling on purpose.

Stay in the job until you can find peace and motivation and excitement about it again. Or if you’re struggling in your relationship, you gotta stay in the relationship and work at it until you can come to love. Right, if love is the goal, now love may mean that you love the person and you still say goodbye and you say that that relationship is complete.

But if you leave a relationship in the middle of a whole bunch of negative emotions as a way to escape them, that’s when you’re gonna have problems. So, Just give it time. Give yourself time before you change the circumstance, and it’s always a good idea to sleep on any decision. So at the minimum, give yourself 24 hours before you do anything, but really learning how to do this and recognizing that, changing your circumstance.

Isn’t gonna change how you feel. It’s always going to be your thoughts about it. And so that’s why sometimes when we do move maybe from a teeny tiny apartment into a much bigger house, our thoughts change and that’s why we feel better in the new circumstance. But, It’s also possible to have the same patterns repeat themselves often if we don’t do the work to love our tiny little apartment, but also say goodbye to it and move on to something different, knowing that we create our feelings no matter what.

So if you’ve got something coming up where you. Really wanna change your circumstance and you’re not sure which way to go, definitely reach out to me. I’m on Instagram, Amy dot Smooth Zones coaching, or you can email me on my website anytime. And for us with camping, we actually are just got a trailer that has enough beds and it has a bathroom and it’s gonna fit our family now that we’ve grown our family and.

The difference now is that I have coaching. I didn’t have coaching before, but now that I can manage my mind, I can choose intentionally that this is something my husband and I have chosen to do to make memories with our family. We chose to invest in this trailer. We have chosen to take the time to go out and to really make it a priority.

And so when all those old thoughts start creeping in, because inevitably I know that the kids will be messy and they’re going to not help me pack and all of those things. I choose to love going camping, to think that camping is fun and all of those things. That’s how I’m going to create the emotions and the memories and everything, the results that I want in my family.

So I hope that today was helpful for you and remember, don’t change your circumstance to try to feel better. You have to look at your thoughts. You have to become aware of them. You gotta become aware of what feeling you’re looking for, and then you gotta get curious and give it some time to come to that feeling on your own.

And then if you want to change, you can, if you want. It’s such good work to do. I will talk to you next time. Don’t forget to subscribe, so you never miss an episode.