Why on earth are we even considering this right now?

You know, it’s funny. Back in the day when I would hear about others going through this sort of tragedy, and I would try it on for size and think about what I would or wouldn’t do, I had definite ideas on how life would be. Now that I am actually living it, none of the things that I thought I would do actually sound good. The opposite is really what I want. I thought I would pretty much give up on having kids. I thought people that went ahead so soon were callous and trying to replace the child that was lost. That couldn’t be further from the truth. The fact is that being a parent was so unbelievably awesome, that I can’t imagine not doing it again. Noah was an amazing person. We love him deeply. There will never be another child quite like him. What we learned is that having a child and the love you feel for them is the greatest of all the human experiences. How can we miss out on that?

Furthermore, there are two needs in this situation that must be kept separate. One is our love for Noah. Second is our desire to grow our family. Those are two very different feelings and needs. Also, for those of you out there that have multiple children, when you decided to have your next child, it wasn’t to replace the one you already had. It was for the love of your family.

I am and have always been pretty in tune with myself both physically and emotionally, and I can promise you that I am not going to do anything that we are not ready for. I have had a pretty rotten last few weeks, so I can’t imagine pumping myself full of hormones right now. I can, however, do research so that when I am ready I know what we are doing. I can get the lab we choose going on building the probe that will test our embryos for MCADD. It takes three months to complete and can just sit there until we are ready to use it. All of this is far more comfortable taking baby steps. The doctors we have talked to so far have been pretty amazed at us and how slow and methodical we are being. Most of their patients want to get pregnant as soon as possible thank-you-very-much. We are one of the rare ones that are going one small step at a time.

So, the timing isn’t set, but it helps tremendously as we plug along and get reaffirmed over and over again that this tragedy is not the end of the road for us. At first that was the initial slam right in the face 1. we LOVED being parents and our son is gone, and 2. we don’t know that we can have healthy children. To hear over and over again that #2 is not true in the slightest is just the best thing in the world.