It all started one year ago...

This week marks not only what would have been Isabel's 4 month birthday, but it also marks the one year mark from when this whole journey really started for us. I was thinking today about what I was doing a year ago right now. Last year on the 20th I had my doctor's appointment where my doctor absolutely insisted that my first round of clomid failed and he showed me a negative pregnancy test to prove it. I had also taken a pregnancy test that day at home that came up negative, so I knew that the test in the office would be negative, but I was so frustrated that this round had not worked. When I took my home test and it came up negative, I drop kicked it in frustration. It was all very irritating. I kept thinking how obnoxious it was that some people really have it easy getting pregnant and having child after child and her I was going to have to have another round of drugs that cause hot flashes, mood swings, and loss of money.

Still, the next day I wasn't feeling quite right and after I got out of my last class of the day I remember walking across campus to my car debating whether or not to take a pregnancy test again. I finally decided that I would take one, knowing it would be negative. However, that isn't what happened. I remember watching the second line get darker and darker and just dropping to my knees and thanking Heavenly Father for finally trusting me with one of his special spirits. I then called my doctor to let him know and was told to go get a blood test. I remember what it was like going into the hospital and getting the blood test and thinking how everything I had always wanted for my life was coming to past. I was going to graduate AND get a baby all in the same month! I couldn't imagine a better end to 2009.

That was one year ago. I can't believe that a whole year has passed, but then again, those days seem like forever ago. I look at pictures from then and think that Mark and I look so young then and how much we have aged. It is funny how death can do that to you. I feel like we were 18 when we found out we were expecting and now I feel 50.

Yet, despite feeling older even if we are just college graduates, Mark and I are expected to have ourselves together. We are expected to know what we want now and to just keep going. But that is hard to do. We want what we had a year ago, we want to be having a baby, we want to be naive and think that if you get pregnant, you get to have a baby. I am tired of people telling us that we are young and that we will have other babies. Those babies are not Isabel and there is no guarantee that we will have other children. The only guarantee that we have is that we have to keep going. But, it has been nice thinking about the past too.