NEW YEAR. NEW BABY. NEW JOY.

🌷Mom win for the week: I took Evie to Target for the first time. Like her mom, she enjoyed every minute; Target told her everything she needed to moment she cruised into the store.

Embarking on 2024 was terrifying, unsettling, unnerving, and uncertain. I was on crutches, hoping that my stress fracture was only that (and not an injury requiring major surgery and an 18-month recovery,) looking for a new job, embarking on our second round of IVF, and Kimmy was just starting a new protocol to prepare for a third (and final) embryo transfer in March.

This year, we were able to approach 2025 with a completely different mindset.

Joy.

Our family celebrated a late Christmas with my cousins and all their families and children (and a Santa), I met with a new group of mom friends, (women who had recently had their first child within the last couple months,) and Phil, Darla, and I got to ring in the new year. We didn’t make it to midnight, but we certainly felt the excitement of starting our first full year together as a family of four.

It is difficult to think back to what last year felt like. I was despondent, hopeless. I had a complete mental breakdown - the pain and sadness of the past years fully taking their toll, and I was completely unable to handle the weight of it all. I began seeing my therapist weekly. I joined a gym with a pool, so I could move my body. I applied for [what felt like] hundreds of jobs. I stayed physically healthy (mentally, not so much) for the embryos I was hoping to create.

I was trying so hard to make everything okay. But the one thing I had no control over was whether we would get pregnant. The thing I wanted more than anything - more than the ability to run, more than a new job, more than the creation of many, many embryos - was a positive pregnancy test in March. 

My leg healed, we created more embryos, I got a new job. What if all this was true (it was,) but the pregnancy was not. What would that experience have looked like? The only thing that really mattered to me last year was created a baby and getting her here healthy. And we did it. However, it is never lost on me how close we came to this not being our reality.

I try not to dwell on the “what ifs”. However, reflecting on what the precipice of 2025 could have looked like had Evie not arrived, makes me so, SO grateful for the life we have and so proud of how hard we fought. All of the pain, all of the money, all of the hardships, even all of the losses, are worth it because we got little Evie.

I still remember being in the pool at the YMCA last January, fantasizing about what a day in March could possibly look like - a job offer, healthy legs, multiple embryos, AND a pregnancy. Imagining that future pushed me to keep fighting through the hell of life at that time.

For as much as I avoid “what ifs”, maybe there is something to be said for envisioning “what could be…” when times are at their worst*.

*Currently, I am imaging “what could it be like to have a baby that sleeps 7 hours straight…..?”🌷