A Shiny New Year

I get all giddy and excited when I look at the blank 2011 calendar, it just holds so much promise. I'm looking forward to seeing how we fill all those blank squares! We have some trips planned, some plans for house stuff and of course, we are eagerly anticipating starting our IVF journey. We keep talking about it and the more we talk about it, the faster we want everything to fall into place!

I'm happy to be feeling so optimistic, rather than be filled with all that fear I was feeling. Don't get me wrong, the fear is still there, but it's being overshadowed by everything else and I'm so thankful for that. It feels good to be excited about something. I find myself talking about it a lot to a good friend of mine, she's so wonderfully supportive and sweet about it all. She's facing some TTC issues of her own, so sadly, she can relate.

I read through my blog posts from this past year and they really surprised me. I was so relieved to be on a break but still reeling from it all. As nice as it was to not be dealing with IF appointments, I was still dealing with IF. My ache for a baby was always present and it often made it hard to fight the sadness. When we were in the thick of it all in 2009, fighting the sadness and depression often left me exhausted and feeling like I had nothing left in me to also take on treatments. C and I were at our wit's end, we desperately needed a break but couldn't see that until we were forced to call it all off. It was a blessing in disguise.

2010 gave us a chance to breathe, to rebuild ourselves and make our marriage stronger. We cried but we laughed more, we grieved our fertility but we celebrated the miracle of four little sperm and, most importantly, we realized we could once again find the light out of all the darkness. We can take on anything and come out on the other side because we'll never stop fighting for what we want.

We're stronger than IF and because of that, our hope endures.