Way Back When-esday - How Far We've Come...

Today for Way Back When-esday I'm reflecting waay back. Has anyone ever said to you that to really appreciate where you are, you have to look back at where you've been? Well, now they have.

The other night someone asked a question on one of the bulletin boards I visit about the timeline for an IVF cycle, so I went back to my journals to check some dates and here is what I found. It's a letter I wrote back in October of 2006 after our first failed IVF cycle. We had transfered one embryo - the only one we had - whom we affectionately dubbed 'punkin', it being Halloween season and all. I wrote this letter after I found out that I wasn't pregnant - that punkin was gone.

I had no idea at that time just how long our journey to parenthood would be or all of the places it would take us. I only knew that for a brief time, we had punkin, at last - and then no more.

I read this letter while holding Brewer in my arms and it made me cry, a sad thoughtful cry, and I hugged Brewer tighter than ever. I knew as I read it that what I wrote about punkin being our special angel is true. I told Jon when he got home that I had found this and read it - he remembered it, and he teared up. Punkin will always be with us and when I thank God for my boys, I thank him for Punkin and every other child we tried for that was not to be.

I wrote a letter this morning to my punkin. I'm going to tuck a copy of this letter and our u/s picture into our family bible so we'll always have it to remember by. This was very hard to do, but I hope it will make me feel better.

My dearest lil punkin,

You probably won’t remember me the way that I remember you, but I do hope you know who I am. You never saw me and I knew you only very briefly and you were very small. I am your mom. Making you with your dad was one of the most amazing and hard and wonderful things that I ever did and I am sad that I know now that I will never see you as a little person with big blue eyes and blonde hair (how your dad and I both looked when we were little – it was pretty much a guarantee), but in the few days that I knew you were living inside of me and the days that followed when I hoped you still were, I came to love you more than I ever imagined possible.

Even though I did not know you, I imagined you….sometimes you were a boy, sometimes you were a girl…I thought about how you would laugh and smile, what you would feel like, how you would smell, how I would sing to you and comfort you when you cry…what your room would look like…how much fun you would have with your dad…all the things your granny would do to spoil you and all of the tall tales your grand-dad would try to make you believe. I so hoped I would get to spend the rest of my lifetime watching you grow up into someone wonderful and helping you to learn and become the amazing person I knew you would have been, but it was just not to be…I’m sorry for that. I’ll always be your mother and you’ll always be my first baby and I miss you and love you more than I can ever say.

Your dad says you will be our family’s special angel now. Your dad’s a pretty special guy. He wanted to teach you how to build things and how to play the guitar and drive a tractor and he wanted to play with trains together with you – all of the fun things he used to do with his daddy when he was little. If you had grown into a little boy, I had the feeling that I would never see you because your dad and your grand-dad would have had you with them all of the time. If you had been a girl, your daddy’s entire world would have been wrapped on the end of your tiny little finger. He’s a push-over with the ladies. He is also the kindest person I have ever known. I know he misses you and that he hurts very much because you can’t be with us and he, too, had his heart set on a lifetime with you. He also understands though, that you are with your true Father now, and that it’s just how things were meant to be. (He’s a little bit better at being at peace with things than mommy is – he takes care of me that way.) You would have been crazy about your dad. He was so in love with you, even before you were ever made. We hoped you were our lucky “one” - and maybe you are, just not in the way we had planned. I am sure your dad is right and that you are now watching over us.

I hope you have found your Gramma in Heaven. That’s my mommy. Just like how I feel about you, I miss her and I love her and I think of her every day. Please take care of her, and let her love you, and watch over your dad and me together with her.

There are so many things I want to tell you, that I just can’t find the words to do right now. Perhaps I will write again sometime.

I want you to know that your dad and I aren’t the only ones who loved you. You have aunts and uncles and grandparents (I mentioned them) who all loved you so much and were cheering for you to stay here with us and be a part of this world. We all have heavy hearts that it was not meant to be. Many of mommy and daddy’s friends feel the same. We all understand that it was just not meant to be, but we had hoped and prayed, and now we grieve. Someday we will feel better and we will remember you fondly always.

I need to tell you again that making you was the most wonderful and difficult thing that your dad and I have ever done. Your existence gave us hope that someday a child will come to us and that it will stay and we will have a chance to do with it all the things we dreamed of doing with you.

We love you always, little punkin, and we thank you for being in our lives, even for just a moment and so small we couldn’t even see. We knew you were there, living and growing – a little bit of me and a little bit of your dad. That means everything to us.

Please watch over us and know that we love you. Take care of us and hear our prayers along with our Father in Heaven.

Love,
Mom

For posterity, and in keeping with the 'Way Back Whensday' tradition...here is a picture of me with all my 'loot' as we embarked on our first IVF cycle - almost three years ago now. It was the one that brought punkin our way.

Observe the ridiculously hopeful grin of someone who had not yet experienced an IVF failure. I am pretty sure that after my first failed cycle there were no more cycle 'kickoff' pictures - go figure - makes me glad I took this one - now that the boys are here, I recognize this girl again.



Join Cheryl at Twinfatuation for Way Back When-esday!