peace

So, the twins officially turned one last week.  One.  It's been a whole year since I nuzzled them inside, since I was the only one who felt their every kick and squirm.  To be honest, in the days leading up to their birthday, I got nervous.  Nervous that they were growing to fast, of course, but also nervous about the franticness I was beginning to feel.  As their birthday loomed, my desire to have another biological child, to be pregnant again, started eating away at me.  I could feel the obsession coming back.  The compulsive behaviors, the thoughts from which I never seemed to get a break.  I was afraid that once this huge milestone passed, these feelings would only get worse.

But then I did something I haven't done since the twins were tiny. I took a drive during nap time.  I loaded my son and daughter in the backseat, and while they slept peacefully, I drove and listened to their lullabies.  I drove through the beautiful sunshine; past cornfields and soybeans, sustenance growing from the ground; past windmills, energy being created before my eyes.  And I found it.  I found peace.  I was finally able to say to myself that if we never have another biological child, that is okay.  If I never feel a little one kick in my womb again, that is okay.

I feel selfish even writing this...I have a son and a daughter, how much more could I want?  But a big family has always been the plan.  And when infertility wreaked havoc on that plan, it was devastating.  Further, I would love to have a more traditional birth experience.  I still grieve the twins' birthday in the sense that I didn't get to hold them.  In fact, I didn't even get to touch them in the delivery room.  No kiss.  No nuzzle.  No physical contact.

So we will do a frozen cycle with our one remaining embryo.  And we will fervently pray that he or she makes his way to us.  But I am thankful to be moving towards a place where the alternative to a positive FET is somewhat less scary.

hope????

Hope.  It's a funny, persistent little thing.  It's something with which that those of us who struggle to build a family often have a love/hate relationship.  Yes, we must maintain hope that some day our prayers will be fulfilled and we will cradle our child in our arms.  Without that hope, the waiting and treatments and pain and losses would be unbearable.  Yet this same hope that powers us forward can make each setback that much more disappointing.  When we hope, we allow ourselves to dream.  And when those dreams don't come true, the shock can be devastating.

I stopped nursing the twins over 9 weeks ago.  For two months I have not pumped, yet my body has failed to "restart."  No pumping, but no period.  Of course my initial reaction was fear--another reproductive issue.  But my second reaction was irrational hope.  Hope that somehow I was your cousin's mailman's sister's best friend who got pregnant on her own immediately after her IVF twins.  I am not pregnant...I never really thought I could be.  But I was still sad staring at that single line on the stick.*

Silly, silly hope.  I sometimes loathe you.  Yet I wouldn't get rid of you even if I could.

*Please know that I am in no way comparing this sadness to those of you who get negative tests after trying for months or doing any treatments, of to the sadness of those who don't have any children yet.