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| Written by Katie | |||
| Saturday, 09 May 2009 07:16 | |||
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Call me Ishmael.
Oh, wait, wrong story.
Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me at home, I thought I would surf about a little and see the blogging part of the world wide web. It is the way I chose of driving off the “mean” and regulating the stress levels. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before Chinese takeouts, and wiping the rear of every child I meet; and especially whenever my temper gets such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately putting my children on the street, and methodically biting people's heads off - then, I account it high time to get to the internet as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the keyboard. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all women in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards their lives as me.
I am a wife. I am a mother to four little boys and a little girl. I am a woman who has been through the heartache of infertility, the rollercoaster of adoption, and the miracle of “impossible” pregnancies. If you have an afternoon (and the inclination) you can read the story in the “Journey to Motherhood” section. But here’s the condensed version. A few months after marrying my high school sweetheart, Sean, in the summer of 1999, we decided to start our family. After about seven months and a lot of crying, we visited a reproductive endocrinologist who discovered that Sean had anti-sperm antibodies. We were told that the chances of us ever conceiving on our own were one in a million. Even regular in vitro wouldn’t work. It was recommended that we do an in vitro procedure with forced fertilization (ICSII). We spent the next three years going back and forth, deciding if we wanted to try the in vitro (which our insurance wouldn’t cover), or move on to adoption. Eventually, our desire to be parents beat out our desire to carry on the genetic lines. We adopted our oldest son, Noah, who is now six. While I wouldn’t try to force it on anyone else, we did decide to fully open his adoption. We have a wonderful relationship with his birthmother and her family. When Noah was eight months old, that “one in a million” pregnancy happened. No drugs, no test tubes, no monitoring—just the experience of barely making it to work one day before tossing my cookies in the trash can under my desk. My second son, Wyatt, was born via c-section (after about 31 hours of labor—most of which was unmedicated other than the pitocin they were pumping me full of, thank you very much). He is now five. We went back to our doctors and had tests done to see if anything about our fertility status had really changed. We were told that the problem was still there, Wyatt truly was a miracle, and we shouldn’t expect it to happen again. Eight months later, I was pregnant with my third son, Caleb. He was my first VBAC. Caleb is almost four. We were a bit more careful after that. Caleb was a ripe old fourteen months before I became pregnant with son number four, Eli. Eli is almost two years old. But he wasn't the baby for long. Yes, I got pregnant…again. That makes the fourth “one in a million” pregnancy (hmmm…I really should bring that up whenever my husband claims he’s neglected). Baby number five was born in July. This time, I had a little girl (REALLY???). Her name is Violet. Add to all those kids a wonderful husband and three dogs. Sprinkle a dash of homeschooling. It is a recipe for a chaotic life. But, after all those years of wondering if I would ever be a mother, I don’t mind that it doesn’t look like the perfect fairytale. We’ll still live happily ever after.
Oh, and forget about Ishmael…You can call me Katie.
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  written by mama2roo, January 20, 2010
Hi Katie! *waves* Glad to see you--wondered where you went
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