Reflection in a letter

Today is New Year's Eve.  As I'm picking up the kitchen, I started reflecting on this past year.  Suddenly, I felt compelled to start writing stuff down...the old fashioned way, nonetheless.  I started jotting things down and before I knew it, I was writing a letter to our 'not yet conceived' child.  I decided I would share it.

Dear Sweet Baby,

Where are you?  This year has come and gone, and you're still not here.  I know it just isn't time for you to be here yet, and I need to be more patient while I wait, but I'm so anxious for you to come to this Earth to be with me and your daddy.  We already love you so much and we'll keep waiting for you, but know we are so excited for you to arrive.

It's been a hard year without you.  Last New Year's was around the time that I realized you were going to be more "elusive" than we had originally thought.  I thought you would be here shortly after we decided to start trying for you....but it didn't work out that way.  In the meantime, I've watched countless friends go from not trying...to trying....to conceiving and carrying..to giving birth...to spending their first holiday season with their sweet babies....and here we are.  It's like everyone around us has changed and grown, yet we're exactly where we were a year ago.

Only we're not.  Although you're not here yet, lots has changed.  I've spent the last year taking my temperature where the 'sun don't shine', peeing on sticks, getting stuck with acupuncture needles, changing my lifestyle and diet, only to give up on "giving up" on things I enjoyed.  I've put foreign, synthetic chemical in my body to make my eggs and our chances better, with little to no change in things.  I've switched doctors, had countless ultrasounds, viles of blood drawn, Hell, I'm even currently on birth control to "reboot" my system.  Birth control!!  Ironic, huh?

So here I am, in the last day of 2011.  I know I could look back on this year and feel sorry for myself (which I have at times....and that's ok, too) or I could look to 2012 and think "THIS is the year our sweet baby is conceived in love and joins us in this world."  I'm going to stick with the latter way of thinking.

In 10 short days I go in for another ultrasound and blood work to see if this next cycle we can start injections, hopefully bringing you one step closer to this world.  Until then, sweet baby, stay close to Jesus in heaven and know your daddy and I are down here, praying for patience, strength, and hope until it is your turn to leave Him and come down here with us.

We love you, sweet baby.

Mommy