33

Dear Rowan,
Tomorrow is my birthday -- I'll be 33 years old. Your father will do his best to make it a special day. He's taking me to Dallas for the weekend. We're going to a concert, having a fancy dinner out and I'm sure we'll do lots of shopping. But, it won't be the birthday I'd hoped for.
This year held so much promise for us a month ago. And, I suppose 2010 still holds hope for us. We have three frozen embryos that could very well surprise us.
Since we started trying to conceive in 2005, each birthday has been a reminder of what's missing in my life and how time is quickly passing. I often think to myself that we made a mistake by waiting three years to start trying, but back then I was blissfully unaware of the effect of age on eggs and all that garbage. I was busy being a newlywed and I was happy to pursue my career -- which didn't really matter anyway in the long run (but that's a story for another day).
I think about all those birth control pills I swallowed and it turns my stomach. I was so naieve as to think that a medicine or a simple procedure could fix Greg's low sperm count. It wasn't until I decided the time was right for us to have a baby that I educated myself and discovered that there's no simple fix.
There have been times, Rowan, when I have regretted my carefulness in the past. What if I had been a little less responsible in my younger years? Would you be real now?
Of course, we can't dwell on these things. If I'd become pregnant as a young woman I may have never met your father. I might be stuck in a loveless relationship held together by the tinuous string of parenthood. And, if I'd never fallen in love with and married your father, I wouldn't be the woman I am now. Marrying a military man, changed my life. Because of him, I spent four beautiful years living in Italy, traveling around Europe and collecting many friends along the way. And, for that I'm so grateful.
The life I have now is not the life I'd envisioned. But, it's a good life -- full of love and laughter and adventures that I would have never dreamed for myself.
I have to trust that all things happen in God's time. I think of my parents, they had my sisters in 1963 and 1964 and then nothing for many years until a heart-breaking miscarriage in 1972. And, then, in 1976 when they least expected it -- a pregnancy -- with no medical intervention of any sort. And, on Feb. 12, 1977 I was born. My mother was 39-years-old.
"I thought the oven was broken," she often told me when I was growing up. "Your Daddy was so sure that I wasn't pregnant that he wouldn't even go into the doctor's office when I went for my test. He sat out in the car."
So, I know that miracles happen. And, I try to have faith that you are waiting somewhere in the future.
We can't anticipate the path our lives will take. What will age 33 bring for me? I can't begin to imagine. My best guess would probably fall far short of reality. I just hope that you're out there in my future.