Today I begin a new kind of journey. An emotional one for sure, and a physical one. One that I'm sure will be full of surprises, surely full of hopes and dreams and ultimately I'd love for it to end with the best gift of all gifts: Life.
Chris and I have been together for going on 5 years now. Many people in my life are familiar with our story - of our age difference - me being quite a few years older than him. What we both knew from the beginning was that we wanted a family and a big one. We both LOVE children and are enamored by every little thing about them. Growing up when people would ask me what I wanted to be, I would always say "A mom to 10 kids" and at that time, I meant it. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I become a different person around children. I become one of them and they literally light me up from the inside/out.
There's nothing I've ever wanted in my life more than I've wanted to have children. And to share that love of children with your partner is such a beautiful thing.
To have a doctor sit in front of us and say "there's a 1 in 100,000 chance that you'll become pregnant together" was literally a nightmare of a sentence for us to hear. We had gone in to see a fertility specialist thinking that we would be proactive and create embryos since I was nearing 37 at the time and we wanted to buy a couple of years before pregnancy. Plus, it would safeguard against any fertility issues in the future.
This was our "back up" plan in case we had issues getting pregnant on our own. We never considered that it would be our only plan. But here we are, and there it is. Thankfully, there IS such a thing as IVF treatment. Thankfully, there are doctors who have spent years testing, training and treating couples who cannot bear children naturally. Thankfully, there are options for us and thankfully, we are capable of using those options.
Its been something that only a handful of people know that we're going through because its a hard thing to talk about. Its a hard thing to accept. I haven't wanted to say it out loud, for fear that it might actually be true.
However, what I've known to be the most true thing in my life is that I couldn't have gotten through some of the hardest and most challenging moments of my life without the support and love of my friends and family surrounding me. So its time to talk about it and share it with you. I know I'm not alone and I know that there are SO many couples who have gone through this before me and have had successful pregnancies and now have beautiful families from this process. And maybe in my sharing my story with you, if you ever go through this, you will know you are not alone too.
So, today, we begin. We both have no idea where this journey will lead us. We are taking many steps of faith and trust and hope. But mostly….and above all, one of Love.
