Remembering Tavin & Casey

Infertility is a funny thing. You spend months (or years) fighting against this invisible foe, until one day you wake up and for a change there are two lines on that damned pee stick instead of one.

And most people would assume at that point that your journey with infertility is over.

But it's not.

I still haven't gotten to that point. I haven't seen the two lines since my two early losses. And excuse me for speaking out of school here, but I think I have a pretty good handle on what happens after that BFP.

Two pink lines are not the end of worrying. Two lines are just the beginning of the fear.

You go from fear of never having children to having fear of losing the children you've fought so hard for. You spend the next 40ish weeks doing whatever you can to ensure that these children that you've loved since before they were conceived have a fighting chance out in the world.

You go from living in 2 week chunks of time between stages of treatment to living in chunks of time separated by milestones.

"Just a few more hours until we see if our betas have doubled"
"Just a few more days and we can see the baby on ultrasound"
"Just a few more weeks until we can hear a heartbeat"
"Just a few more weeks until we're out of first trimester"
"Just a few more weeks until V-Day"
(that's viability day, or 24 weeks gestation- the point at which medical intervention will be taken for preemies, for those not in the know)

Each milestone passed is a quick sigh of relief, and then you find yourself focusing on that next milestone. That next hurdle that stand between you and holding a child in your arms.

Last week, two of my infertility sisters (partners)  were stopped in their tracks, that last big hurdle in their sights. They had fought the battle of infertility. They had come out victorious. They were expecting twin girls. They were over the moon. They had bumps in the road, and the mother who was carrying their babies was placed on bedrest for the past several weeks.

And then the unthinkable happened. At 21 weeks their daughters were born. They had to say hello and goodbye to Tavin in the same breath, and they had an hour with little Casey before she joined her sister in the life that comes after this one.

M & H, I don't know if either of you will ever see this blog, but my thoughts and prayers are with you both today as you celebrate the lives of your daughters. They are so lucky to have moms like you