Jennifer Woodbury

*tap tap*

Is this thing on?

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I am behind by two birthdays and a vacation. And that’s just scratching the surface. We moved, Matt started a new job, and the school year ended. Life’s been a bit crazy these past few months, but the dust has started to settle and yet I still feel slightly paralyzed when I think about revisiting this blog. And I’ve decided it’s because there’s one story I need to tell before I can start telling all the rest. Even if it’s a hard story to share. So here it goes…

My “number” has always been four.

As the years progressed, I realized how lucky I would be to have even one or two. And then Lucy came along, surprising everyone.

As Lucy grew out of her babyhood, the questions about whether or not Matt and I would try for number four inevitably started. My answer was always the same: we’d both love a fourth but I wasn’t going to go through any medical interventions this time. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, that’s okay.

Well, that’s easy to say until all of a sudden it doesn’t happen, and you realize you don’t feel so okay about it after all. So after months of being disappointed but pretending not to really be disappointed (if you have ever experienced infertility, you are probably familiar with the amazing mind tricks you manage to play on yourself to try to stay sane), Matt and I decided that if this was really something we wanted – and we both agreed that it was – it was time to go ahead and call my reproductive endocrinologist.

So last December I did just that and made an appointment to see my old doctor, the one who helped me conceive Claire more than five years ago through IVF.

The next day I took a home pregnancy test.

It was positive.

In that moment, part of me got giddy with excitement and thought about what a great story this would make when I announced my pregnancy in a few months time. But another part of me – the part that has been down this road far too many times before – knew there was a good chance I would never get to make that announcement.

It was that same part of me that decided to keep that appointment at the fertility clinic just in case, and the same part that responded very matter-of-factly a few weeks later when I got the call telling me what I already knew: that my pregnancy hormone levels were dropping and I was most likely having a miscarriage.

In January I went to that appointment and made a plan with my doctor. Shortly afterward, there was another positive pregnancy test, and another small seed of hope that ended in disappointment.

And so in February I strapped myself in and started my IVF cycle, and all the daily injections and constant 6:45am doctor’s visits that went along with it. The numbers from that cycle went like this:

22 eggs retrieved. 11 mature. 2 fertilized normally. 0 survived.

I was so confident that things would work out for me just like they did with Claire that this result was a huge blow to me. It was in that moment that I realized for the first time that the picture I’d always imagined of my family really might never become a reality.

At this point I was emotionally and physically exhausted. I would have loved to just forget the whole thing and move on with life. But I didn’t ever want to find myself at some point down the road regretting that I didn’t try hard enough. And so I decided to do one more cycle, which I started in late April. To quote my favorite nurse Cathie, things “looked beautiful” this time around. The numbers from cycle #2 went like this:

20 eggs retrieved. 13 mature. 10 fertilized.

I’m not going to lie. Hopes were extremely high this time around. So when my doctor called on day 6 to report how many embryos we would be able to freeze and test via CCS (because of my miscarriage history), my heart sank when he told me there was only 1 that was still hanging on, and the quality of that one embryo was so poor that it was most likely not viable and would not survive the freeze process.

And just like that, the door officially swung shut behind me. There would be no number four for us.

Could I have tried again? Maybe. But two times was the line I had drawn in the sand. The emotional toll of IVF can’t be underestimated (even though I liked to shrug it off as no big deal), and there was no doubt that my girls got the short end of the stick during those months as a result. At some point I knew it was time to re-focus on them.

To be honest, once I knew the outcome of the second IVF cycle I felt like a weight had been lifted. Just to have an answer one way or another was such a relief. I was really positive about the whole thing until nurse Cathie called and left me a message a few days later. On it I heard this tough, no-nonsense woman holding back tears and telling me how disappointed she was for me.

And that’s when I realized it was okay to be sad.

I think this whole time I’ve felt a little silly. I’ve thought a lot about how people out there – especially women struggling to have just one child (aka my 2003 self) – would probably think I am ridiculous not to be satisfied with the three incredible and dynamic children I already have. And it’s true that words really can’t do justice to express how grateful I am for their presence in my life. They are more than I could have ever imagined. But we all have different visions for our lives, and I had to give myself permission to mourn the loss of this particular dream.

Ironically, for somebody who is really bad at goodbyes, I think the hardest part for me is to think that I missed out on properly saying goodbye to all my lasts: last birth experience, last middle of the night feedings, last first steps. And the reminder that those lasts have already come and gone keep surprising me like a punch in the gut, like when I’m unpacking boxes and suddenly come across old baby gear I’ve been carefully saving that I suddenly realize I have no use for anymore.

I can’t lie and say that it’s not hard for me when Ella tells me how much she wants another baby in our house. If only she understood how desperately I tried to give that to her. I also can’t tell you that the empty sixth chair at our dining room table never catches my eye or puts a pit in my stomach.

But I can tell you that my love and gratitude for my girls has been magnified by this experience, and bit by bit I’m allowing a new vision for our family to take hold.

Matt’s lucky number has always been three.

And I’m beginning to see that maybe that’s been my number all along too.

2013 has been a quiet year for my camera so far. I have taken significantly fewer everyday photos this year than in years past, probably because I’ve been too preoccupied with all the major changes going on in our lives to remember to pick up the camera on a regular basis. It’s not something I’ve stressed out about, but I am really glad that back in February I decided to follow along with Ali Edwards’ Day in the Life project. I took more photos during that day than I had during the entire month.

In addition to taking photos I also kept a detailed log of our activities throughout the day. Hopefully someday soon I’ll actually compile everything into a template and print it out. Here are a few photos from a day in our life on February 28th (and yes, I was also inspired by Ali when I labeled these photos):

Ali is doing a Day in the Life once a month for this entire year. If you want to give it a try, you can join in next Tuesday, April 30th. I’ll probably participate at least one or two more times later on in the year.

“I think I made the wrong choice.”

That’s what Ella said as she sobbed last Saturday night after a long day of packing up boxes and watching the movers come and empty out this little old house that has watched our family grow for the past six years. Even with all my planning and organization (including a detailed packing log), I
was not prepared for how exhausting and emotional this whole moving process
would be.

Ella has been dying for her own room, and we promised her that she could have one once we moved. As the moving date got closer, I tried to convince her to wait until the second move into our new house to make the switch, but she was adamant that she was ready now.

And then on that first night in the rental as I was in Claire and Lucy’s new room trying to make up their beds, Ella came in, looked at me for a moment, and burst into tears. These weren’t your regular “I scraped my knee” tears or “my sister got a bigger cookie than me” tears, but real, gut-wrenching tears. Having her own room lost its appeal after she was confronted with the reality of sleeping in a dark room by herself without her constant companion of the last five years.

I cried right along with her that night. It may seem trivial in the grand scheme of things, but this was probably the first time in her almost eight years on earth that she’s had to face something really hard, scary, and seemingly overwhelming for her. If I hadn’t felt like I was literally going to collapse from exhaustion in that moment, I would have moved her bed back in with Claire’s by myself that very night. Instead I did my best to calm her down and told her we’d figure it out the next day. She later told me that she stayed awake staring at the door with tears rolling down her face all night long. It broke my heart.

After that I was sure that she would decide to move back in with Claire, at least for the next couple of months until the next move. So the next evening when she told me that although she would miss Claire (“she really was a good roommate”), she was no longer afraid and still wanted her own room, I was the one who ended up crying. It just felt like too much change all at once, and I was worried that they would start to lose their close relationship. So all week long Ella’s been writing me notes to try to make me feel better about things, filled with memories of sharing a room with Claire like “falling on your pillow,” a game they apparently liked to play that involved standing at the foot of their beds and falling face first onto their pillows.

The day after our move was Easter. Despite being completely unprepared (at least the Easter Bunny still managed to find us), I was able to scrounge up some Easter-ish outfits for the girls – two out of three wore hand me down outfits that I pulled out of a bin minutes before we walked out the door – and we headed to our old house to say our final goodbyes and have an Easter egg hunt in the backyard.

Afterward, Matt loaded the girls into the car and I stood by myself in the kitchen, staring for the last time into the empty living room with tears rolling down my face this time.

I didn’t expect to be so emotional over the whole thing, but it felt a little bit like the end of an era. I just couldn’t stop thinking about two of my babies coming home to this house from the hospital, Christmas mornings, the girls playing in the backyard, hearing their footsteps on the squeaky stairs as they came downstairs to ask for just one more thing before falling asleep, Lucy yelling good night to her sisters from across the hall, first day of school pictures in front of the white fence, the girls sitting on the kitchen counter while I made dinner, and the list goes on and on.

In that moment I really just wanted to call the whole thing off and forget about this selling our house business. But on Monday the papers were signed and we handed off the keys to a family with two boys who will hopefully make many more happy memories there.

Just as the morning brought a fresh perspective to Ella, a few days of distance (and some sleep) has helped my own emotions to subside. I do know that this was the right decision for us and that it was time to move on. And I’m looking forward to finally moving into our new house.

We have settled into life in our rental house. None of us can quite bring ourselves to call it home; even Lucy calls it simply “the rental.” I have to drive by our old house at least once a day on my way to drop off Claire at school, and my heart drops a little bit each time we pass by. The good news is that Lucy is thrilled to be sharing a room with Claire. That first night she was so excited she screamed and started hugging all the furniture in the room. Claire seems content with both living arrangements. “I just want to share a room with all my sisters,” she tells me.

The other night however, things in Claire and Lucy’s new shared room got a little too rowdy, so I pulled Claire out and told her to go into Ella’s room until Lucy fell asleep. A few minutes later I peeked in and saw Ella reading a book to Claire, the two of them snuggled up together on Ella’s bed, and for a moment all was right with the world again.

There may be a lot of change afoot in our lives right now, but at least I can count on some things remain the same.

I have received a few comments about my absence in this space over the past couple of months. The truth is, if you look back over the history of this blog, I tend to get much quieter in the winter.

This marked my 7th New England winter, and over the years I’ve actually come to really appreciate and enjoy the quiet that January and February brings
after a whirlwind holiday season. The only problem with this winter is that I haven’t really been able to hibernate the cold months away like I normally do (although I did spend a good portion of February watching all four seasons of Parenthood).

First of all, we put our house back on the market (you may remember that we tried to sell our house two years ago without success) at the end of January and it sold in one day. This was great news, but it has meant that we’ve been scrambling to find a short-term rental to move into while also searching for a new home to buy (thankfully we just signed contracts for a place we’re really excited about last week). And on top of that, we’ve been juggling a couple of other pretty major things that have taken up a lot of our attention as well. It’s mostly all good, but it’s meant that I’ve been a bit distracted, to say the least.

But spring is officially here now, and for the first time in a long time, I finally feel ready to come and revisit this old blog of mine. Things are about to get pretty crazy for a while (moving day is just a little over a week away), but hopefully I’ll be here a little more often from here on out.