Moving Forward

I feel a little like I've attempted to run an emotional marathon and hit the wall before the finish line.

I'm tired.  I hurt.  The course to the finish line has blurred as tears fill my eyes far more than anybody sees.

Sometimes as I look at my 3 year old daughter the emotions overwhelm me and it'll happen without warning.  I can be sitting across from her at dinner and realize tears are welling up.

My three year old isn't my only child; I have a 7 year old daughter as well.  However, my three year old is my rainbow baby.  She is the baby that came to me after my first loss, after 3 years of trying to conceive, and at a time when our future was in limbo.  By the time the day of her birth arrived, life was so different than it had been 9 months before.

I glance at her and realize just how truly blessed I am to have her in my life.  She talks in paragraphs, colors detailed pictures of events she's witnessed or wants to be apart of, asks intelligent and thoughtful questions, and cries when she sees me crying.

My lmp before she was conceived arrived on September 23rd, 2009.  Her sister was also conceived 4 years prior in early October.

I remember thinking shortly after she was born that I never wanted a gap that big between my children again but now there is no helping it: the next gap, if another baby ever joins our family, will be bigger than the first.

In all honesty, I know I shouldn't worry about this.  I'm not old by any stretch and should have a good 10 years of child-bearing ahead of me.  But with the women in my family having such short lifespans, I feel horribly pressured to hurry things along.

Last month I had 4 mature follicles during my ultrasound.  They ranged in size from 19mm up to 26mm.  I almost laughed when the doctor had to ask me if I'd be willing to do a reduction in the unlikely event that all 4 implanted.

None of them did.  I have one more round of meds to try before we move to something more high tech.

So now I am in a new kind of tww: the tww before my RE and I make a plan for the New Year, new insurance, and I begin kissing my money goodbye in the hopes of saying hello to a son or daughter.