Mother-To-Be or Mother-Not-To-Be, that is the question.

our struggles with infertility

December 22, 2005

TWO WEEKS OLD

I've got a much longer post in me, but haven't the time. Probably after the holiday mayhem has passed. In the meantime, enjoy a picture of my two-week old. How has it possibly already been two weeks???

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December 19, 2005

MILESTONES

No, I am not talking about milestones that the baby is making - at 11 days old it is still a bit early for that. I am talking about myself. At 12:21AM today I turned 35.

The age of 35 looms over most women with a haunting sense of dread - "35," after all, is supposedly the age where a woman's fertility takes a sharp nose dive. Having already dealt with three and a half prior years of infertility, this age doesn't pack quite the punch it once had, but it still gives me pause this morning as I keep remembering "oh yeah, its my birthday...oh yeah, I am thirty-freaking-five."

I find it funny how my own self-imposed deadlines have worked out for me. I wanted to be married by the time I was thirty; I was married 3 months before I turned 31. I absolutely wanted to be a mother before I turned thirty-five; I beat that deadline by all of 11 days.

We still look at baby Amanda every day with complete wonder and amazement at how we got here, at how she came into our lives, and we have discussed what a joy it would be to go through these experiences again and again with future children. But the truth is, we probably won't. Amanda is so damn special to us, in part because we waited so long for her, and in part because of her tenaciousness; she wanted to be born as badly as we wanted her to be here. From being the only viable embryo that made it to transfer, from overcoming my RE's enormous odds against implanting, from making it through this summer's horrible car crash without so much as an elevated heartbeat, etc. She is one tough cookie, and she fought as hard to be here as we fought to have her. I whispered to her the other day that if I ever did have another baby it wouldn't be fair to them, because she will always be my favorite. And that is the truth, she is SUCH a miracle that she will always hold a certain place in my heart all to herself.

So, on this, my thirty-fifth birthday, I look back at the journey I have taken in the past ten years, when I officially figured out that this was the life I wanted - husband, baby, etc. I realize that as long and challenging as the road was to get to this point, it HAD TO BE. If we had succeeded at pregnancy at any other time in our lives, we'd have a different baby right now - different sperm, different egg, etc. It took THAT particular egg and THAT particular sperm to make THIS particular person, and right now only this person will do for me. Amanda is my one and only baby, and I have to say she was well worth the wait. I couldn't ask for a better present on what would otherwise have been a very depressing birthday.

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