Roundup Time!

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

...And Life Afterwards

This whole thing is so strange. So wonderfully strange.

I read your blogs and sometimes I'm happy with you. Sometimes I'm sad with you. Sometimes I laugh and sometimes I honestly do cry. I hope, but I remember the problem with hope.

I know that my blog maybe seems outdated. The title seems meaningless. The Problem With Hope? With a pregnancy and new baby? Puh-lease, you all must be saying. Today I sat here thinking about a post and I looked at the title. It's a title I hold so dear. But I am living in "life afterwards." I have left behind so many wonderful women (and men)....and each of you who are there still deserve this as much (or more) than I do. I'm just one of the lucky ones right now.

The truth is that I am infertile. Or my husband and I are. SOMEONE is, or we just are together. Hard to say since nothing is "wrong" with us. But we still are. Infertile. I still feel like it's part of who I am. Not WHO I am, but PART. And as you know, it sucks. But in the end, the payoff is so beautiful.

Every day I am amazed by our baby girl. She is ours. Someone else carried her and she is also theirs, but she is our daughter, too. We are her parents. It's so surreal. She smiles for us, coos at us, and we comfort her. If we hadn't been infertile, if this had come easily, we wouldn't have Ava.

I am grateful to be pregnant. I can barely believe that I am, that I could ever give birth, that things could ever work out, but things seem to be working out. Monday is our 20-week "big" ultrasound and I'm hopeful that things still look wonderful. I can almost imagine things being ok now, but not JUST yet. I still have an infertile heart, I guess, and hate to hope.

Life Afterwards is so strange. I am 110% thankful to get to even say that. I know that adoption isn't simple and there is a lifetime of questions to be answered and hurdles to cross. I know that things will be hard with two babies. I know that when/if we want to try again, things could be hard again. I know that infertility doesn't go away, and it breeds fear and distrust of one's body. But I also know that infertility isn't everything and that really, truly, my three years lost is nothing. I don't think I learned a magic lesson or that there was necessarily some great plan, but in the end, I'm thankful for what I have, for what God has given me, infertility or no.

I want so badly for those of you who are still in "life before" to have this. It's worth it, it really is. I promise. And when it's over, even if it's a long time, it will be ok. Not gone, but ok.