Cuties in a tub and thoughts are reeling ...

One of the absolute best things about living where we now live is our proximity to my parents and to my sister and her kiddos. Tatum gets to see his CeCe and Gramps at least once a week, and often sees his cousins several times a week as well. We are SO LUCKY, and while I know it may not last forever, we’re soaking up every minute of this time together.

My sister invited us to their house for the Super Bowl, along with my folks and a few other friends and family members. Tatum has taken to skipping his afternoon nap lately (what?!  The munchkin just turned one…not sure why he’s doing this, but it makes for some LONG afternoons/evenings for the little guy) and was pretty bushed by 7:30 or so.  We’d thrown a pair of his PJs in the diaper bag in case we decided to get him ready for bed over at Laur’s house, and when Lauren’s little girls found out, they asked if Tatum could take a bath with them.

Oh—be still my melting heart. Just imagine the squeals and the sight of these three nudie cuties in a bath together, playing and laughing and splashing around.  One of those moments you just want to bottle up and hold on to; I just couldn’t stop smiling.

(a fuzzy, pre-bath pic taken with my camera phone)

That night confirmed a few things. 

• We don’t want Tatum to be an only child. I love, love, love my sister, and I adore watching her three children interact with one another. Each of her children is so different from the next, but there’s so much love there, it just warms me all over when I watch them chatter and play together. I don’t want Tatum to miss out on that. Not that he doesn’t get a ton of love—of course Bruce and I couldn’t possibly love him any more than we do, and he gets lots of wonderful time with his cousins and CeCe and Gramps. But it just isn’t the same as that constant sibling connection. 
• We don’t want to wait long before we try again. On the one hand, it scares me. Pregnancy—and attempting pregnancy—always does. It probably goes without saying that I wish we could have lots of wonderful sex and an amazing surprise would present itself, but  …. We’ve had lots of sex for eight years (and that’s just counting the years we’ve been married…ahem) and our only pregnancies were the result of IVF. I'm in better shape now than I have been in many years; certainly since pre-triplets. I've increased my running mileage from a few miles a week to 6-7 miles a week to now, 12-15 miles a week. And it feels great—I don't feel like I'm huffing and puffing and just trying to make it through a run any more. I feel energized and buoyant and light on my feet. Of course I've lost some weight too. Not every pound that I'd ideally like to shed, but I'm happier with where I am health-wise than I have been in a long time. Yet at the same time, I'm feeling my age. My knees are beginning to hurt a bit after a longer run. My back sometimes twinges when I've been carrying Tatum all day.  Let's face it, I'm not in my 20s anymore. In fact, come June, I'm going to cross the threshold into what I guess could be considered LATE 30s (36, is that late thirties? Late mid-30s, I guess we could go with that).  My point is, we can't really mess around. Time isn't on our side here.
• We want to give our frozen embryos a chance. We have four little frozen, fertilized eggs here and one in DC. I think about them often; one is the fourth egg in the batch that produced Adam, Joey and Paul. If I could have that baby right this minute, what I wouldn’t give to make that happen. It would be a miracle to be able to carry that baby to full term and bring him or her into this world. There’s no way of knowing whether that fertilized egg will survive the thaw; but we’ve put into play the process of bringing it here, where it will reside with the four little lives created when Tatum was conceived. And who knows? Maybe, just maybe, that embryo will be the one that makes it.

However…my mind is reeling.  

• I’m—maybe not terrified, that seems too strong a word—but I have major trepidations over the thought of embarking on this frozen embryo transfer (FET).  I’ll say it right now: I don’t want twins. The thought of carrying more than one child scares me more now than it ever has before, perhaps because now I know what it takes to raise ONE baby. The idea of two…I just can’t wrap my head around it. (Which is funny, because when we found out I was pregnant with a single baby after IVF #2, I cried. I was actually sad and disappointed—how ridiculous is that?! I suppose I wanted back what I’d had with the triplets at the time—but now I’ve come full circle and the thought of even twins just makes my stomach flip-flop.) I don’t want to be on bed rest and to lose out on precious time with Tatum. I don’t want to be completely consumed with a high-risk pregnancy. I don’t want spend every day of 8+ months terrified by thoughts that my cervix won’t hold up, that I’ll lose the babies, or that some other terrible complication will develop. 
• On the flip side, I’m scared that the FET won’t work at all. We’ve been (it seems odd to say this, given that our first IVF attempt resulted in the saddest moments of my life) successful with both of our IVFs. Somehow I can’t help but feel that statistically, maybe this time things won’t work out. And that leaves me on shaky ground.  We only have 5 frozen embryos, and there are so many possibilities to consider…that none might survive the thaw. That all five might survive the thaw. How many would we transfer?  Two?  Three?  I said I would NEVER transfer three embryos again, but what if three survive. Does it make sense to transfer only two?  Then what would happen with embryo #3?
• This is our last shot. If these embryos don’t survive the thaw, or if one doesn't implant, we’re done. We don’t have the financial wherewithal to embark on another fresh IVF cycle, and frankly, I’m not sure if I have the emotional fortitude for it. 
• I’m in love with my son. Tatum is the light of my life—if he’s our only child, I’ll count my blessings every single day and be eternally grateful that we were given the gift of this amazing little person to share our lives with. But—I so, so want for him to have a brother or sister to share his life with as well. 

·         So much to think about. So many possible paths before us. I know we’re fortunate to be in a situation where we have some embryos to thaw and a history of successful treatments, but I’m feeling scared and anxious and also incredibly excited.

So, how’s that for an update? ;)

PS…I should probably say, we aren’t discussing this with friends and family yet. So if you’re a person who knows me in real life, or a family member who reads this blog, please keep this post to yourself. I’m fairly certain that my parents and sister don’t read this, and I’d rather keep things quiet as we proceed, if at all possible. I just don’t want to get hopes up and then have things not work out, you know?