Once upon a time: In the beginning and a bit of history...

DH and I met at a college bar called "The Mill". We've told the story a million times. Every time little things about it change. Who said what, who made which move, when we saw each other next, etc. etc. blah blah blah. What has stayed exactly the same, what was true then, and remains true today, 15 years later, is that my heart recognized that DH was the man God had formed just for me. That sounds ridiculous, I know it, I was 20, what the **** did I know? I think that my age, and the simplicity of my life during that season, the way I lived out loud, purely by feeling, is the exact reason why when I met this man, when his face became etched in the deepest parts of my heart, I didn't have any guile in me to refute it. It was the most real confirmation to any course of action in my life. It had to have been the sovereign hand of someone who knows and loves me better than anyone, my Jesus. Here is a pic of the napkin that started it all, yes we met before you just saved your digits in some else's phone (circa 1999) !

I had rules about giving out my #...so I got his.
Control issues? Um yes.

We got married on June 18, 2004.  And were open to the idea of parenthood from the get-go!

I can still remember that feeling of total hope and trust. Like a new world of submitting to God's plan for our family really felt like freedom to me.  I could see my life so clearly.  I had such certainty in my heart for what God was promising us.  I remember the beginning when I was nervous with anticipation that it could happen at any time!  I remember thinking those first two years, "It'll happen! We have plenty of time!  We are so young!" and "We aren't quite perfectly ready yet anyway..." (hilarious....who is ever perfectly ready?!?).  Now, almost ten years later, I reserve the right to kick anyone directly in the shins who dares spout off one of the above platitudes. Those and the hated "just relax, go on vacation".  Those people are in real danger.

Little did I know that our road to parenthood would be paved with more downs than ups...more blood, sweat and tears than "baby" steps forward...more loneliness and isolation than the feeling of building a family through the foundation of our love of God and each other.    

So here I sit, on my heating pad, at the end of 3 days of bed rest post our second three day transfer. I'm 35, and under my belt, literally, I know of 6 babies that DH and I have loved and lost.  One angel baby got to live under my heart for 9 weeks, and now rests near my grandfather at Calvary Catholic Cemetery   We lost two others at 7 weeks on July 15th, 2013.  We named these two Melanie and Max after the two children that Mary appeared to in La Salette France hundreds of years ago.  Another name for Mary is "Our Lady of La Salette" or "Our Lady of Sorrows".  After losing them to an ectopic (the end of my first IVF cycle) Mary became a great comfort to me.  During the first IVF, two babies didn't make it to blast/refreeze.  This made me so sad, to think of them never spending a moment under my heart.  My niece named these two angels Simon and Peter.  With each loss we struggle to find ways to remember those we have lost.  I want their little lives to mean something, and I want to hold onto the joy and the hope that I had when I held them, in the only way that I have ever been able to.  Still waiting for the day that this journey toward parenthood actually ends in the weight of a sweet little one in our arms.

Our first angel baby, buried in a special site for miscarried and aborted babies.  Gabriel was named after the angel Gabriel, who first let Mary know she was pregnant with baby Jesus.  Gabriel taught me that I could get pregnant, so the name made sense.

After the first IVF, we thought this would be a good way to remember those we had lost, there is a stone for each little one from left to right: Gabriel, Simon, Peter, Melanie, and Max.  Pretty huh?  The metal is real, but the stones are not.  Please, friends, we are way in debt with all these fertility treatments.  The stones are as real as they need to be to sparkle in the sunlight, just like the eyes of a child filled with laughter and play.