Noah's Rainbow

            This week is Infertility Awareness Week. It’s also my birthday week. I’m officially 38 years old. My birthday is typically a time of reflection for me, not only on the last year of my life, but on where my life has led me to so far. In my 38 years, I have grown into the person I am right now; all the heartbreaks, failures, achievements, and successes has brought me to this point. For the most part, this is truly something to celebrate. But I have also become slightly jaded about my birthday since starting my journey with infertility and loss. Each birthday was a marker of what I didn’t yet have, and another tick on the clock to a time when I would never be able to achieve that thing again. In these years of desperately longing for a baby, each birthday that passed was inching me closer to a time when my body literally would not be able to give me that child. There were times where I genuinely thought I had already reached that place...

       Justin and I started our journey to become parents almost 3 years ago, but really the journey for me began much earlier than that. I cannot remember a time when I didn’t want to be a mother. Playing house was a big part of my childhood. I remember telling people when I was in high school and college that if I had to choose between my dream job and being a mom, I would be a mom. Motherhood to me was my number one dream job anyway. When I graduated from college in 2007 at the age of 22, I felt like I was already behind in achieving this dream. My visions of the future included meeting my husband in college, so I started wondering if my life plan was doomed to fail. In reality, this was insane; at 22, I was nowhere near ready to be a mom and if I had married any of the clowns I dated in college, my life would have taken a much different path, probably a disastrous one. But that was the first time I can remember being fearful that I might not be able to have kid...