This Wasn’t Our “Plan”

First of all, I want to send out a huge thank you to everyone who has been reading the past few weeks… I am blown away at how many of you have reached out to me personally to share your own journeys with infertility. Thank you for being brave enough to share, for referring those who are struggling, and sending such encouraging words over the past few weeks. I SO appreciate it, and hope that these blogs are truly helping to bring comfort to others who are suffering, and awareness to those that didn’t realize this terrible disease even existed ❤

Today is a big day. As of today, any (hopeful) future pregnancy will be considered geriatric, or higher risk for complications. Today is my 35th birthday; and although I thought by now that my husband and I would for sure have our rainbow baby, I couldn’t have been more far off from reality. This day has been creeping up slowly, and I’ve always swept the idea under the rug and tried to ignore it because “surely it will happen by then”. So for the past 3 years since our wedding, I’ve packed it away…you know, in that box of clutter in the back of the closet, the one we all have and never intend to open. Well today, that box fell out of the closet and spilled at my feet. It’s been packed in there for years, just looming, somedays shooting thoughts into my head like “I could be considered a high risk pregnancy if it doesn’t happen soon” or “If we get pregnant now, I’ll be 50 years old when our kids are only 15”. Well, I’ve suppressed those thoughts and that box for 3 years now, yet here we are… it definitely did NOT happen like we had “planned”.

That’s a funny word… “planned”. If any of you have truly been blessed enough to “plan” your pregnancy as it is convenient for the season of your life, I am jealous beyond belief and you are one of the few lucky ones. And if you are one of the many that have gotten pregnant and “weren’t even trying”, don’t take this the wrong way… but I don’t want to hear it.

Our first inkling of “planning” to grow our family was when we decided to wait a few months after our July 2018 wedding to start trying. My baby sister Caitlin was getting married to Dylan, the love of her life, about 1 year after our wedding. I absolutely could NOT even entertain the idea of missing it. It was out of the question. For those of you that know our family, you know that we are inseparable (even though Josh and I are over 1600 miles away in Colorado). We don’t get sick of each other, and literally will just sit at my parents house for days and are perfectly content spending time together (this is usually what happens when we visit VA; we even joke about it); We fly back to VA for birthdays, baby showers, bridal showers, holidays, vacations, and just because… so the idea of missing my baby sisters August wedding because I may be pregnant; OMG get out of here! This caused a few tiffs with Josh and I, but we came to an agreement. We decided we’d start trying in February… that way if we did get pregnant, it would still be safe to fly early, or drive if we had to (6 months or less) into my pregnancy. This was in 2019. 

Our “plan” was not to face the struggles and heartache we’ve had to endure. We didn’t “plan” to have a miscarriage. We didn’t “plan” on seeing dozens of pregnancy tests with only 1 pink line, or even worse… the ones that say “not pregnant. We didn’t “plan” on sobbing in each others’ arms every month when my period showed up. We didn’t “plan” to have 3 failed IUIs. We didn’t “plan” to have a failed embryo transfer. We didn’t “plan” to have an ectopic pregnancy. And we certainly didn’t “plan” on one of my fallopian tubes being removed. I also didn’t “plan” to be diagnosed with ‘presumed’ endometriosis during surgery, but at the same time am grateful it was found so it can be treated in our future attempts to become pregnant. All of these unplanned curveballs have led us here…we are officially members of the “geriatric” club. Granted, I know that many women have healthy pregnancies well over the age of 35, but time keeps on ticking people and here we are, still empty nesters!