Anticipation

So, it never came. I thought for sure that it would and it didn't. Maybe it won't.

About 2 years after we had Silas, this feeling came over me that I needed to have another baby. Not later, not in the coming years; NOW! I would talk to Archie about it and he'd put me off a little longer. Then one day we decided to try. We never tried with Silas. In fact, I am shamefully admitting that I had no idea how my body worked; no clue about ovulation or why my period came once a month and I had never been to a Gynecologist.

With Gavin, I had come across a blurb in a magazine about a study concluding that couples who had sex 12 days after the woman's period were such and such a percentage higher to conceive a baby. Well, that obviously needed to be tested! Sure enough; first try; they were right! Looking back, I am sure that God's hand was turning the wheels on that clock because I got a positive pregnancy test on the day of my Daddy's funeral.

After Gavin, that urge came back almost immediately. We needed to have another baby and sooner as opposed to later. So I threw myself into this mysterious world of reproduction and fertility. I bought a book (half in jest) called How To Choose the Sex of Your Baby. WOW! My eyes were opened to all new mysteries that no fiction writer could ever dream of. That book led me to Taking Charge of Your Fertility. There was so much to learn and do and try. I started a chart to track my basil body temperature. I took ovulation predictor tests and every month I would take a pregnancy test as soon as my period was 4 seconds late. We finally got pregnant, but miscarried at only 5 weeks. That drove my determination even more. I started self-diagnosing. I went to my midwife and asked to be put on CLOMID; a fertility drug. After several months, we got another positive pregnancy test. That also ended in a miscarriage at 7 weeks. I was starting to feel really desperate; in another attempt to self diagnose, I saw an endocrinologist who put me on Metformin; an insulin resistance drug. The metformin, clomid combo scored us a positive pregnancy test that produced a sweet baby girl some 8 months later.

Amelia was only months old and we were about 75% sure that our family was complete. I was waiting for my Ob/Gyn to get certified in a permanent birth control measure called Essure. We went back to our old faithful birth control; not really worried that we would get pregnant since it took the Clomid/ Met combo to have Millie. About 4 1/2 months postpartum, I woke up with strange and all too familiar symptoms; sore boobs, nausea, the whole works. A bleary-eyed test at 4am revealed that I was indeed pregnant and blessedly so.

So after having that achy, need-another-baby-now feeling so often, I've been waiting, anticipating it's return. It never came. I thought for sure that it would and it didn't.

I have this feeling deep within that our family is finally complete. There are no little ones missing. Our head count will always contentedly remain at six and I'm finally fine with that.