Vicarious Motherhood

I’ve been living out my “fertile myrtle” fantasies vicariously through my closest friends these days. You see, they have all begun working on adding another little one to their beautiful families.  Some of them are currently pregnant, while others are actively trying. Of course, what follows these days is a constant stream of questions directed at me about when we will be trying to add to our family.

Let’s see, the difference in our case is that we already have two – one pregnancy, two babies, one boy, one girl – does it get any better than that?

It kind of makes me think, though - about all of that fertility (or infertility in our case) stuff. I think I’ve put it all in the past as much as possible for now, and that’s a good thing.

I’ll never forget, but I’m healing. You can’t go through all that we did without it changing you, but that time period feels like a whole different life. Ella and Aidan are my present-day. They are just too full of life to waste energy thinking about the past.

So, what about the future?

I really think it’s going to be “just” Ella and Aidan. Well, there’s really no “just” about them, but you know what I mean. Mike and I have already decided that we won’t be setting foot back in an IVF clinic again. It was worth every second, every injection, and every procedure to bring Ella and Aidan into our life, and I’d do all of it all over again in a heartbeat, but I don’t think either of us has it in us to go through another cycle.

The truth is, though, that even if we could be “fertile myrtles”, I don’t know that we would. I know that Mike and I both wanted children so badly that we would jump through a million hoops to make it happen. Now that we’ve done our hoop jumping and have our precious little ones, well, I think it’s enough. They’re more than enough, actually. They are our dreams come true.

So, I think I’ll put my “fertile myrtle” fantasies to rest and redirect all of that energy into doting on all of my good friends’ new babies. That’s where it belongs.