As my little girl gets older, I have more time in my day to reflect on her life. I also have more brain power to do so because sleep gets better with each passing month. Lately I have been intrigued with the circumstances that got her to us. The crazy happenings that lead to her being made. Her. Not just a baby, but her. Her personality, her looks, her being. I am truly amazed by everything that had to happen for her to be here, and every day I feel like I have a new realization on just how amazing it is to have her, and why I have been overwhelmingly attached to her since the moment I first saw her.
Ignoring ALL of the tiny things that had to happen for her to be here, like the Big Bang, the solar system forming, and life evolving on our little planet, I think about just the things that had to happen for her daddy and I to meet. He grew up an Army brat, traveling to a different state every few years. I grew up in a small town, and stayed there almost my entire life until college. We ended up both living in the same state, both attending the same college, and both, somehow, befriending the same people on a campus of thousands of students. It seems almost inevitable that we met, but I won’t go into all of that. Let’s just say that we were meant to be. Simple (is that simple?) as that.
Where it really starts to get interesting for me, is when we finally decided to try to have a baby. We had just bought a house and figured that this was as good a time as any. I was 25, he was 26, and everything felt right. We went through all of the motions for having a baby. I went off birth control, waited three months, we tried, and tried, and tried for a year with no results. We then sought help, and began the process of fertility treatments. Five rounds of Clomid, three rounds of IUI, and finally the big IVF. Luckily IVF worked for us, but that is where my mind starts to be truly amazed, because that is when our little one was made.
After injecting myself with what felt like a million needles full of hormones, we had our egg retrieval. There were only five mature follicles that would attempt to be fertilized. Of those five, four fertilized and began to mature. Of those four, two were chosen on day three to be transferred back to my uterus. It all seems simple, doesn’t it? But in reality it is insane. I was born with millions of eggs, but only five were made to try IVF with. Five. Then, in a lab at our specialists office, an embryologist took five of my husbands sperm, and inserted one into each egg. Four of those eggs became embryos. Four out of millions of eggs were now becoming babies, humans, life. The embryologist then decided that two specific ones would be transferred back. Two, out of millions of eggs, were receiving the chance to grow and become babies inside my belly. Back to where they came from, after having started their little lives in a lab. Seeing the outside world before they saw the inside of me. Imagine! What a way to start life! Of those two transferred back, our little girl decided to latch on. To bury herself deep into my uterus, and to begin to live. Developing from an embryo, to a fetus, to a baby, and now into an infant. Absolutely magical.
…but what really blew my mind is this… this simple fact that half of my little girl has been with me since I was born. It’s no wonder that mothers become to attached so quickly, as we have been carrying our babies with us through our entire lives. She was with me when I was born, as I learned to walk, as I started school, when I cried, when I laughed, when I got married. She has been with me through it all. She has been with me longer than my husband. Isn’t that absolutely amazing to think about? She has always been with me, and that is why my love for her is so overwhelming, deep, and perfect. My little egg. One out of millions.
Wifey, Mommy, and What Have You 