Recently, a friend of mine wrote me to ask a simple question with a not so simple answer. How did you get through the first trimester of your pregnancy? What she meant, of course, is how did I avoid losing my mind from fear and anxiety after the loss of my twin pregnancy. I told her the truth: I wasn’t calm. I had nightmares almost every night for the first eight weeks. I spent my days battling a sense of hopelessness. I would wake and dread walking into the bathroom. I just knew that today would be the day I’d see that swipe of red, that spot, the sign that meant that this dream, too, would come crashing down around me. Being pregnant with a “rainbow baby” is an altogether different experience from simply being pregnant. My friend was struggling with this, as did I. So much of my anxiety was spent grieving the pregnancy before and the innocence I’d lost because of it. No longer did I simply expect things to go right. No …

I didn’t know how scared I was until our midwife said the word “induction.” What’s silly is that I KNEW it was coming. My blood pressure has been rising, and my  platelet count has been falling. I told Ryan yesterday that this would be the verdict at today’s appointment, but I wasn’t really ready to hear it. It’s not the induction I’m afraid of, really. It’s that… it’s here. No more waiting. During the entire appointment, I felt… Actually, I can’t decide whether I felt overwhelmed by so many emotions or if I felt numb. I think I asked the right questions, gave the appropriate answers. Went through the motions… Near the end, our midwife asked me what I’m afraid of. I think she was surprised by my reaction. I stumbled through my response… I’m afraid something will go wrong… I’m afraid I’ll do something wrong… I’m just afraid. Finally I said, “We’ve been trying to have this baby for almost seven years.” Somehow, that’s what made it click for her. She said, “It’s hard …

Today, I am nine months pregnant. Thirty-six weeks… That leaves four weeks until our due date or x days until this child presses the “eject” button. We have cleaned, organized, and prepared to the very best of our abilities. We have studied, practiced, and talked… and talked… and talked… But, ultimately, we wait. We are at the mercy of this tiny person. It is remarkable that there is a human inside me. He is of us, yes, but also not us. That’s the magic part: our ability to create something greater than ourselves. Ryan and I have come in and out of our love. Love in the long term is much like anything else: easy and hard at the same time. Nearly all of our marriage has been spent passively or actively fighting my infertility. We learned to truly love… became best friends… softened our edges… dug deep to find the kindest, most generous parts of us… all while navigating a battlefield. We’ve had periods of such sadness that all we could do was cling …

I’ve waited my whole life to be a mama. For many women, life changes the very moment you see that little plus sign. For me, that positive test result was only the first step toward believing this was real. Once I believed the black and white truth — yes, I’m actually pregnant — I had another journey to take. This path has led me toward the idea that this could end well, that at the end of this long, long road to mamahood is my own little child. This last journey has been complicated for me. Ryan and I didn’t buy ANYTHING for the baby until I was very nearly 7 months pregnant. We didn’t rearrange our house, didn’t make moves to build a nursery, nothing. Though we didn’t discuss why, I think we both just simply didn’t trust this unexpected stroke of luck. Many people have told us that we “deserve” this… that it was just “God’s time…” that this pregnancy was “meant to be.” We both, I think, appreciate and love the intention …

He was twenty-seven years old and some change the day we crossed the icy pavement to a little Thai place on Kirkwood and Lincoln. It was a bitterly cold Tuesday with snow lazing in gray piles along the curbs and at the corners of parking lots. At dinner, we sipped ice water from cloudy plastic cups, while a short lady with a silky black bob chopped cucumbers in rhythmic rap-rap-raps. We placed our orders and made the kind of small talk that feels big even in the moment. I couldn’t tell you about my half of that conversation, but his words, they’re seared into my memory, branded across the pages of a chapter called “My Last First Date.” His eyes were shining as he talked about his father and the grin that spread across his lips when he talked about his college days revealed far more than his words did. It is for the best that he’d already hooked my interest before he even talked about thirty-five. Had that not been the case, it might …