mediocre mommy

This picture was taken in September 2007. We had been trying to have a baby for over three years. After two failed rounds of in-vitro we were told by a highly reputable fertility clinic that it just wasn’t going to happen. We had met with an adoption lawyer, been picked by a birthmother who changed her mind right after she picked us and were waiting for someone else to come along.

My brother-in-law was retiring from the Navy, so we had all traveled to Hawaii for his ceremony. If you ask me now, I would say it was wonderful. But at the time, I was broken. I had spent years being poked and prodded. Had suffered loss after loss. And now here we were…state workers coming in our home judging us, lawyers asking for more and more money and still no guarantee a child was coming. I started to wonder if I really was meant to be a mother or not. I wanted to enjoy all the happy things in my life but sometimes the ache in my heart was simply too much to bear.

Two weeks after we returned home from this trip the lawyer called and said we had been chosen…two weeks after the call we were in the hospital for our son’s birth. Three months later, without any conscience attempt, I was pregnant.

This trip ended up being a glorious babymoon for us, and that’s how I choose to remember it now. The last precious moments of a married couple in love before the chaos of children began.

Life is a series of choices. It can be unfair and daunting at times, but it can also be perfectly lovely. And many times the difference between the two is just in how you look at it.

Thank you Jack and Gigi for teaching me that patience is a virtue and that sometimes the greatest things in life rise from the greatest heartbreak.