Here we go again

Part of me debated if I would write this post. It's been almost six months since we gave birth and it's been more than a year since we got our positive pregnancy test that lead us to that glorious moment when we became parents. For three years our worlds revolved around getting pregnant and staying pregnant. Finally on August 3, 2011, we were blessed with a baby. Our prayers were answered.

It might not seem like it took that long for those who haven't lived their life broken into manageable portions-- 36 months of wondering if I was pregnant. In each of those 36 months, spending fourteen days, count them with me--one, two three, waiting to ovulate, and then fourteen more days I waited to take a pregnancy test...do you know how much of our budget was spent on ovulation kits and pregnancy tests that didn't matter? I was literally pissing our money away. My life, our life, revolved around peeing on a stick. At some point, I remember Duane being so frustrated with me that he left me on the couch crying so he could go chop wood.

This is not because he is evil or mean, but at some point, my emotions got the best of both of us. Every month. Every month we would climb through those 14 days until we could try and get pregnant. Then we waited. Tapping our fingers through the next 14 days. We waited. And every month was the same. I would cry and look at facebook with a jealous eye, sometimes never telling Duane who was pregnant this month.

 We scoured babycenter.com for new ways to get pregnant. We tried it all, by the way--cough medicine, rituals, praying, clomid from Mexico, ovulation kits, you name it, we tried it. One fertility clinic and two miscarriages later and the Kings get their third positive pregnancy test. It worked.

The pregnancy was textbook. The birth was easy. Some might have thought we should be content with having our little sugarplum. Some might wonder why we are venturing down that road. Again.  Just let it happen. It will happen when you least expect it is what people who haven't been through all of this tell us.  And everyone knows the couple who tried and tried for years, and then adopted, and then got pregnant without even trying.  Just relax, they say.  If i had a nickel for every time I heard those things....

The other part of me isn't sure how to tell the world while trying to assure myself I shouldn't care. Every mom I know keeps telling me how tired I should be with an infant. A large part of me is ashamed that I'm ready for another baby--have I enjoyed August like I should? Am i trying to rush this?  I'm so used to women telling me how miserable I should be or should have been while pregnant. I never did feel miserable.  And I suspect it has something to do with the fact that everything we've been through makes all of this so much sweeter.

We want another baby. And not because August isn't enough. She's absolutely perfect in every way. She's beautiful, smart and funny. She's a strong little girl who can melt a million strangers' hearts. But we want more and we don't want to wait.  We want a big family.  Frankly, we don't have time to wait either.  I'll be 37 this year, so now it's a race against the clock in a way--no pressure or anything.  People also tell me that women are having babies in the forties and fifties.  It hit me the other day that if August waits until she is 35 to start having babies, we will be 70 before we meet our grandchild.  Being 40 having kids isn't how I imagined everything working out, but sometimes, life's plan doesn't always match our plan and in some ways, it's better that way.

This blog took a lot of courage for me to write because I was going to keep it to myself. But I can't. I can't spend the next three years crying, living life in 14-day cycles wondering when we will get pregnant again. We wanted to share again with you our journey of trying to build our family.  Your support meant more to us and kept us strong through the process.  We also learned that there were a lot, A LOT, of you out there who were going through the exact same thing.  I found a lot of support in knowing my words were helping other men and women feel a little less empty and hopeless.  Even the fact that Duane was so open about it helped a lot of men, because there is so much focus on what the woman is feeling and enduring, the man gets left out.

Now that we are in Seattle, we met with another fertility doctor. He assures us we are the quintessential case study for the 30-something who wants to get pregnant.  He has no fear that we will get pregnant right away and has no desire to change what worked for us in the past.

So, here's to starting the process over again.  Here's to hoping we get pregnant right away.  Here's to all the people in the world who have struggled with infertility and miscarriage silently.  Follow along with us again if you'd like.  We couldn't have done it without your support.  We thank you for your kind words and encouragement.  It's a difficult journey, one with which many men and women struggle.  I hope that a few of you will find the courage to heal, help others or the find the strength to keep trying if you too have struggled.  And for those who haven't, it is my hope that you will have a little more understanding about what it's like to be on this path since it's not one we choose, yet one we still have to navigate.  In the end, the journey has brought us closer and the reward has been sweeter.  It is through the pain that we have been able to fully enjoy what a tremendous miracle pregnancy, childbirth and parenting are.  We are so blessed and grateful for all of it--the good and the bad.

Leaving breadcrumbs

It's been three months since we arrived in Seattle.  When I started this blog a year and a half ago I had every intention of writing about being an insta-mom when we got our foreign exchange student Muro.  Now that I am a mom, I have no idea where the time went and there is this big abyss between this blog post and the last.  I suppose life is like that.  We spend our lives looking ahead, fixating on that end goal, where we want to be and at some point, we stop and have to connect the dots to figure out how we ended up where we are. Some of our living is deliberate while other times life just takes its course and Duane and I let it.  I wanted to start this blog up again for two reasons.  One is to give myself a roadmap to talk about the goals we set for ourselves as a family, as parents, as spouses, as friends, as workers, as Airmen, as humans.  The other reason is to give us a place to reflect on where we find ourselves when life takes its course and there is no trail of breadcrumbs to get us back to where things are comfortable and familiar.  In the end, it's all about the journey, the trail of breadcrumbs we leave along the way and the things we see and experience while leaving them, not the destination.  This blog is my trail of breadcrumbs.

I recently created a book for our families that took them back to our beginning.  It got me thinking about all the places we've been and how far we've come in just a short time.  

All those images and memories dance in my head and they emerge when something triggers them.  Big fluffy snowflakes make me think of Duane's smiling face when he was in Iraq.  I was living day to day then, each day waking up hoping it wouldn't be the day I had to leave him, yet wanting to leave Iraq and get home to Japan.  Then I spent the next nine months wishing time away so we could be together again.

Last night Duane and I watched the movie Click where the character in the movie, played by Adam Sandler, spends his days with a magical remote fast forwarding through life, hoping he will hurry and get to the good part only to find that the little moments in between where he finds himself is the good part.  It isn't until he is on his deathbed that he realizes he's inadvertently wished away all the good stuff.  Looking back over the whirlwind of the past five years, I want to make sure those moments in our lives find a home that will always be there.  I was able to capture some of that when I made that book, but I realized I've been a terrible keeper of our memories.  This fueled my decision to blog again.

Five years later, here we are.  How did we get here?

I'm not really sure, but it sure was nice to go back and connect the dots.  I realized in the process I hadn't left myself any breadcrumbs and trying to make sense of our journey was harder than I'd thought--we'd done a lot!  All of those memories in between might one day fade away.  At the same time, here we are in Seattle, making new memories, and we are here alone.  Our friends have to live vicariously through our facebook posts and our families cling tight to their email inboxes, hoping for another photo of August.  Whatever we do, whoever we tell, one things for sure: wherever we go, there we are.  Time will continue to pass and I don't want to forget what happens in the middle.  So come along with us on this journey and we'll get lost together.  At least we know there's a trail of breadcrumbs to get us back to the comfortable and familiar.