Finding the brave girl within

This is a bit corny but I honestly feel like infertility has taught me much more about myself than what I would have ever known had babies been an easy thing for Joel and myself to come by. If you had've told me at, say, age 18 that I was going to be labelled an "infertile" and so was my husband, and that kids were going to be in doubt for us then I would have told you that I couldn't survive that. I might have also said something selfish like I wanted a different husband or something. But 9 and a bit years older and I can thankfully say I CAN survive that. I also would never dream of wanting a different husband (actually I just watched the movie "The Holiday" and I think Jude Law could be nice! hehe). All jokes aside, my husband really is the best there is. I know without a doubt that God means me to be with this man forever, and if that means that through my problems or his, that we can't have any more children then I guess we are not supposed to. I am glad I have learnt to be the type of woman who can realise this.

Somewhere along the journey of infertility, people started labelling me with words like "brave" and "strong". Let me tell you though, when I was in the midst of such a tough time, I really thought these people were crazy. People would say "you are coping so well, you are such a strong person" and I would think "my goodness if they only knew that I am barely hanging on here". But I guess they ended up being right because time went on, I fought the battle, and though I was barely hanging on, I DID hang on until the end. Thankfully I also "won" because I have my boy. It wasn't until recently, that I looked back on all we had been through that I saw how brave and strong we really had been, because at the time it was just something we had to do, not something we did because we were brave.

Sometimes when I have a hard day, I try to remember how brave I am, and how sometimes being brave means different things. Sometimes being brave just means getting up and making it to work that day. Sometimes it means having the courage to smile and shrug off an insensitive comment. Sometimes it means to fight with all your worth. And sometimes, like I am discovering these days, it means having the strength to admit that the battle is over, and you need to move on. After having the miscarriage, last July I could not for the life of me imagine being in that place. But here I am, and even though it hurts a lot, I also have found peace.

I really had to dig deep for that inner brave girl yesterday when I took Xavier to his weekly swimming lesson. Joel was home and decided to accompany us and to take Xavier into the water, so I had the rare task of sitting and watching. Along came the mother of Xavier's little swimming friend carrying her new 8 day old baby girl, and she sat down next to me. I admired the little girl and asked her name. I was taken aback to discover that she had been given the very same name that we had picked out for a girl when I was pregnant with Xavier. For some reason that made me sad. Then she asked me would I like to hold the baby and I felt impolite to say no. While I was holding this gorgeous baby girl and gushing over her, as I do with babies in general, the questions started coming in about "when are you and Joel going to have another one?". I took a big breath, put on a big "I'm totally fine with this" smile and said breezily "oh unfortuneately we aren't able to, as much as we'd like to." That was really hard to do, and is still smarting a little today. But hey, I did it, and I survived!