Letting Go.

First it is summer.  We are finally sleeping at night, we have time for us, we are in a routine.  Our babies are toddlers, and they are delightful.  We are the small family we always wanted to be.

In creeps this unfinished business.  Suddenly I feel like this IUD is exactly what it is - birth CONTROL.  I can't escape the thought that infertility taught me to let go and yet inside my body is something with CONTROL in the title.  I need to face the unknown.  Need to face possibility.  Need to test my strength now that I am where I wanted to be.

We talk.  We discuss.  Do we want to open ourselves to possibility?  We feel pretty balanced as we are.  Kyle worries I will end up where I once was.  Heartbroken.  Depressed.  Disappointed.  Desperate.  And I say, therapeutically, I need this.  I remind him that it wouldn't be about trying for a baby, but to just let life happen.  He listens. 

We decide together.  Ditch the IUD. 

I feel free.

We move on.

Within a month I am disappointed in myself.

I suddenly don't want to nurse the babies anymore.  Could I be pregnant?

A week later.  I still don't want to nurse.  I feel tired.  Am I?

I start craving spice.  I describe my favorite Vietnamese and Thai foods to friends and feel like crying in my desperation to eat it all, now.

I have a talk with myself.  You don't even want to be pregnant right now.  It terrifies you.  You're back at your old tricks...one sleepy afternoon and it MUST be pregnancy, huh?  You're psychotic.  You made a mistake, removing that IUD.  You weren't ready for the unknown.  Don't let Kyle know you're obsessing over this.  Just don't.  You promised him you wouldn't go back there. 

I decide I will take a test on the sly.  Clear the slate.  Confirm what I know must be true.  I am not pregnant but I am insane.  Move on. 

I don't buy a test.  There's no good time.  No good time?

I am tired.  I want spice.  I am peeing awfully frequently.

I fess up to Kyle, sheepish.  I am obsessed with this idea that I'm pregnant.  I can't shake it.  I'm so embarrassed.  I need to take a test, and then I will move on.

I have no idea what he thinks. 

He buys a test on his way home from work. 

Seven weeks have passed since my IUD was removed.

I tear off the cellophane wrapper and run into the bathroom.

I look forward to breathing again.

I pee.

I start to set the test on the counter when I see the blue plus sign.

A blue plus sign.

A blue plus sign.

A blue plus sign.

The symbol I dreamed about through three years of infertility.  The moment I coveted with every desperate cell of my being - casually taking a test, only to find that, indeed, I am pregnant.

Four.

We have four frozen embryos.

The leftovers.

The ones that weren't chosen. If the doctors had chosen differently, Rhys or Quin could be neatly preserved in a medical freezer in Boston right now, instead of playing happily on our living room floor.

At first I was thrilled with our four frozen embryos. I felt so lucky - to suddenly be pregnant with twins AND have four more embryos sitting quietly in wait should we need them.

And now the thought sickens me. Haunts me.

My four little embryos. Waiting. With uncertain futures.

I am a card holding member of the National Organization for Women. I will always stand up for, support, and believe in a woman's right to choose. I hate the way pro-lifers make the right to choose about something other than a most basic human right. They make it about "when life begins" and the "rights" of a fetus. Or an embryo.

It's not the pro-lifers who have gotten to me. I don't care what they think about infertility or infertility treatments or frozen embryos. But I have gotten to me. The mother that I have become has gotten to me.

When we chose to freeze them - or back this up even more - when we chose to create them or maybe have them created for us, I understood what we were doing. What I didn't understand was how it feels to be a mother, or the painful pull of the love I would feel for my children.

I feel that painful pull for our embryos.

I let my mind go all of the places that logic tells me not to go. I wonder about the children they might be. Would they coo like Quin? Give big open mouthed kisses like Rhys? Or have their own endearing traits to make me fall helplessly in love? Do they have souls yet? When does that happen, that an embryo, a fetus, a baby grows a soul? Why do I sound like I should be standing outside of an abortion clinic thumping my bible?

We don't know if we want any more children.

And if we do want more children, maybe we would want to see if it could happen without medical intervention this time.

But what about our embryos?

I consider donating them to "the right" couple. And believe almost immediately that I love them too much to chance that. To chance that they wouldn't be loved enough, or that I couldn't live knowing they were out there, mine but not mine.

I consider how selfish it would be to try and have a baby "naturally" when we have four we already started just sitting there waiting for us. I consider what that would say to Rhys and Quin about how they came into this world.

I watch Rhys and Quin play. I listen to them babble together. I look into their big blue eyes and am awed by their simple innocence. Behind the love is a layer of guilt.

Four embryos, waiting.

six months

My babies turn six months old today.

Now that I have two babies, people often ask me, "Isn't it hard to remember life without them?"

And for a second I feel bad, and uncomfortable, and unsure how to answer. For me, it's not hard. I remember very clearly my life before babies.

I remember desperately wanting to be a mother. To know what it would feel like to be pregnant, to breastfeed. To create a human being with the person that I love. I remember feeling like I would suffocate under the astounding and oppressive unknown. I remember bitterly hating the cruel unfairness that is infertility.

I remember trying to explain to people that I was not unhappy in my life. But that with my happiness, with my love for my husband and my love for life, I carried the weight of a sadness I didn't know how to handle.

There is not a day that goes by where I forget any of that.

Words seem petty and foolish when I try to use them to describe my love for our babies. Words like "amazing" and "incredible" only frustrate me for their weakness.

Little details blow me away. Like the golden wisps on top of Rhys' head. Or the way Quin coos when he catches me smiling at him. The fact that my babies have these perfect tiny little hands, hands that curl around my finger in the middle of the night, clenching and unclenching as they nurse off to sleep.

This too feels unbelievably unfair. The tables have turned and I have an amazing and terrifying abundance.

I remember life before. I choose this. Again and again, I choose this.

to capture it.

It was a year ago yesterday that we learned we were finally going to have a baby. So much was wrapped into the emotion of that day. The end of a journey. The start of a journey.

Life really is beautiful.

(Thank you, Jill, for the beautiful belly pictures)

Fertile-Myrtle

I woke up nice and late a few Saturdays ago to a disappointing reality: I had broken a finger in my sleep. Sleepy and perplexed, I tried to rummage through the prior night's dreams to see what possibly could have led to such physical duress. Coming up blank, I glanced down to look at the injury, only to realize that the finger in question was not broken at all. It was suffocating.

Overnight, my once slender ring finger had turned into a grotesque purplish sausage. So I did what any normal hysterical pregnant woman would do and quickly scoured my house for every possible lubricating product on hand. I plopped myself down at the dining room table, applied enough lotion to cure an elephant with dermatitis, and after a few minutes of panicked claustrophobia, the finger was freed.

As my wedding band and engagement ring sat on the table in a slippery puddle, I massaged my throbbing finger and weighed my options. It took me seven years to get those rings on my finger, and I wasn't sure how I felt about parting with them so quickly. For goodness' sake, people might look at my big belly and then at my bare finger and start to make judgements. (You've done it. The belly-finger compare. Admit it.)

And then it occurred to me. This may be the perfect therapy for a former infertile. Because there's something about knowing that I got knocked up with a plastic catheter in an operating room that kind of weighs on me. I can (and will, as a matter of fact) argue that getting pregnant through assisted reproduction can be much more a labor of love and partnership than a regular old roll in the hay, but still. Sometimes I just want people to look at my pregnant belly and think, "oh. She must have had sex." If this seems odd, please consider how many times people have learned I'm having twins and commented, "oh. Did you take fertility drugs?" (Next time I'm asked this rudely probing question, I think I will respond: "yes, I did, because they're delicious and taste like Skittles).

So the idea of my newly ring-less finger FAILING The belly-finger compare is sort of totally appealing. People may think that I got pregnant ACCIDENTALLY! And that would mean I'm a fertile myrtle, here with my doubly pregnant belly and not even attached!

Let's just say I scooped those rings up, dried them off, and put them away in a nice, safe place.