Today

April 14.

This is an important day in my life.  For one, it’s the day I was born.  Today I turn 33 years old.  I cycle through another year of my life, and realize just how very very happy I am.  I have everything I have ever dreamed of having; a loving husband and two beautiful children.  We even have the dog J 

Last year, on my 32^nd birthday, we took a leap.  Last year on my birthday, sometime around 10:00 in the evening, our last fresh cycle of IVF became a reality as K gave me my trigger shot.  It was our last attempt at having a child that is biologically both of ours.  We were hopeful, scared, excited and nervous. Our prior attempts at IVF had gone over so poorly that neither one of us were really sure that it could work.  We wanted it to so bad, bad enough that we were willing to try one last time even though the hope we had was very cautious hope.   Up until the trigger shot it wasn’t as real, it could have been cancelled as so many times before, it could have been stopped and we could have moved on as if it never was.

But we didn’t.  We took a deep collective breath, and took the leap.

And on my 32^nd birthday, we became parents again. 

I know, nothing was fertilized yet, but it was the big leap in the process that gave us our precious little boy.  We were parents multiple times over at this point, but only to 1 living child.  This was the day that the wild crazy ride really really began of being parents to 2 living children.

K and I struggled with some relationship issues this past year.  They were very difficult, and potentially marriage ending.  But we got counseling and worked through it.  We both made the decision that we WANTED it to work.  That we needed each other, and that we wanted nothing to come to an end.  It was tough times, but we made it through to the other side. 

So I say Goodbye to 32 with happiness as well as sadness.  But I say Hello to 33 with love and excitement as I know that I have the family I have always wanted.  That while IF will always hold a part of my heart and soul in its nasty vice grip, that I will never have to confront it in the same way again; I will never have to fight to overcome it in order to expand my family.  Instead I can (attempt) to gracefully accept that it is and was, and look at the two beautiful children I gained out of it, and remember how much I love them, and how much more I appreciate them because I had to fight so hard to get them.  I had to put on my armor and fight infertility as well as the marriage separation and almost divorce that stemmed from infertility 4 years ago, but we are now long past that. We are renewed, in our hope, in our faith, in ourselves and each other.

I turn 33 where I thought I would be years ago, but that no longer matters.  Because as I turn 33, I am right where I want to be, with everything I could dream of having.

Welcome to the rest of our lives.