Battle Scars…Old Wounds and New Wars

SIX…Had life (fate, God, the universe, my uterus) chosen a different path, we would have 6 year old twins right now. I still remember the very first time I found out I was pregnant that February morning in 2005. I couldn’t sleep because I had an idea that this was really it, that I was really pregnant this time. I took the test, did the obligatory turn around and pray while I waited the 3 minutes, and there were the lines. I crawled back into bed crying and Patrick assumed it was the usual, another negative. I had to stop him from comforting me long enough to tell him it was positive. What a naïve, unassuming, hopeful time that was. We thought the hard part was getting pregnant back then…we thought the battle was over…but life was about to begin to show us just how tough we were…just how much we could endure.

It’s a long story- one that I’ve told before, just not here. It’s hard to know which loss was the hardest, they were all difficult, they were all unkept promises, they all chipped away at our souls, at our hope. But that first battle was a rough one. To find out days later that I had an ectopic pregnancy (and be immediately admitted to the hospital for surgery the next morning), and then by some miracle find out 1 week later that there was a second embryo (this one actually in the uterus instead of my tubes), well it just seemed like we were the luckiest people in the world. Turns out I was just a statistical anomaly…heterotopic pregnancies are very rare, and rarely end well. We lost the second twin a few weeks later, cue another surgery. And for the Cliff notes version of the rest of that journey: found out I had a defective uterus, fixed uterus, still needed fertility drugs, got pregnant, miscarried, more surgery, rinse/repeat . Finally figured it all out (daily blood thinner injections for the duration of the pregnancy!) and we got Larkin. Then as an added surprise, Kellen happened all on his own.

I revisit this now because that first pregnancy had a due date of Halloween, so every year it falls upon me to reflect on this journey, this old battle, which literally and figuratively left me with a few scars to carry.

So you stop and think…had things happened differently, we would have been trick-or-treating with two 6-year olds. But I would have missed out on my sassy zebra that charmed the neighborhood, and my snuggly boy that was a little under the weather but was giving awesome hugs last night. And I’m grateful. Our infertility journey made us stronger, prepared us for what was to come, proved to us that even when everything in and around you is telling you, begging you to give up, to give in, that you just freaking can’t. I constantly thought to myself that I would just try again because what if next time was THE time…and eventually it was…and they are everything that we dreamed they would be.

So I take these battle scars with me to the new war, and I will do my best to maintain the same attitude. Because in trying to help Kellen there will be bad days…and it will hurt, and we will feel like giving up, and we will lose our hope, and we will question our faith, and we will ask repeatedly “why?”…but we’ve been there before. We survived, we grew, we latched onto each other like our lives depended on it…because they did.

It brings me to a polarizing statement that has some history…
“Everything happens for a reason”
People love to say it when they don’t know what else to say. This actually used to be my mantra in life…back when the worst thing that ever happened to me was family drama (and who doesn’t have that?!). But as “life” happened, it got a little harder to swallow that well-meaning phrase. There are some things that are hard to find a valid “reason” for. Five miscarriages seems a little excessive…but if that’s what it took to get Larkin, to get Kellen, well I would do it all again in a second.

And you can’t help but try to find a “reason” for every family struggling with a diagnosis of autism. But instead of reasons, you just come up with more questions.
What will we face along our autism journey? Who knows.
Are we ready? Probably not.
Will we survive? You bet your ass.
Will it all be worth it? We have two beautiful kids…it already is worth it.