The Other Shoe

When you're battling infertility and walking the path towards conception, you are constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. We must have an amazing shoe wardrobe because it seemed to be years of escalating bad news, plenty of dropping shoes:

miscarriage

zero normal morphology

low testosterone (pills)

low count

failed IVF

no embryos for freezing

Leiden Factor V blood clotting disorder

bizarre physical effect of varicocele surgery

no improvement in sperm morphology or count after varicocele surgery

lower testosterone (more pills)

lower testosterone (shots)

induction instead of normal delivery

lots and lots of blood thinner delivered through lots and lots of shots

Finally it seemed that we'd go barefoot for a while. We had Wisebaby. He came via the natural start of labor that I had given up on. He weighed the right amount, and he was a nice height. Perfectly average. We could breath easy and wander around, letting the grass and sand and and carpet and water tickle between our toes. 

I've realized though, that I never gave up holding my breath for some sort of set-back. We've taken them all in, seething, grieving, adjusting, surviving, thriving. I keep waiting for some major set-back to happen with Wisebaby, and it has and it hasn't. Yeah, he's stubbornly refusing to walk even after his first birthday. Yeah, he wouldn't eat solid food for a while, four months if you must know. Yeah, he's been doing crazy things with his nap schedule since day one. Yeah, he's been to the doctor a lot--slow gainer after birth, tongue tie, nursing difficulties, five ear infections, RSV, strep throat, hand foot and mouth, rashes, colds, and ear tubes. Through it all, I've said to Wisehubby a million times, "I know he's been sick a lot, but don't we have just the best kid?"

Maybe a lot of other mommas would freak out as the shoes all start dropping, but I've just sort of been rolling with the parenting punches the way I learned to roll with them when we were just TRYING to become parents. Maybe we had a bit more practice at dashed hopes and altered expectations than the average fertile couple? As it is, I'm holding my breath and waiting to see if a shoe will drop on us during this frozen embryo transfer cycle. If it does, we'll just dodge it and keep on trucking.