Happy endings, one day at a time.

You think all your life that children will happen when you want them to happen, that all you have to do is stop using birth control and within a few months you'll be spending your mornings puking your guts out. And then month after month goes past with nothing happening.

You start worrying, wondering if you're being unreasonably anxious. Should you go to the doctor or will you just get laughed out of the office? Maybe if you're just patient and keep trying, one day you'll wake up with a baby on the way.

Besides, I had fantasies to fulfill. I wanted my child conceived in love, in an act of intimacy between my husband and myself, a living symbol of the beauty of our relationship. I'd waited so long to find the perfect match. I wanted our baby's creation to be perfect too. I didn't want to bring in a third party, to have my child's conception be the result of a visit to a sterile, white-surfaced doctor's office, to maybe even have our child conceived when my husband wasn't even in the same room, maybe when I wasn't even in the room. Oh, no, that was impossible, unbearable.

So I put it off, denied anything was wrong, and kept hoping.

Hope is not a plan.

Eventually, I had to face it. I simply wasn't going to be getting pregnant unless I saw a doctor. So I made an appointment with my primary care physician, who gave me a referral, which got me into the gynecologist's office, where I finally (2 months later) saw an OB/GYN.

He listened to my symptoms and identified the problem right off the bat. PCOS. It would take some blood work to confirm it, but he was sure of it. There was just one little problem. The way my symptoms manifested, I shouldn't hold my breath waiting to get pregnant. He didn't think they could get me to ovulate. It was my choice, of course, whether or not to pursue fertility treatment, but (insert shrugged shoulders here) the odds were against success.

I didn't care. Of course I would try. How could I not?

For several months it looked like the doctor was right. We kept trying; take the Clomid on cycle days five to nine, watch my basal body temperature for a spike (that never showed up), try to make a baby days 10 to 20 (just in case I ovulated late), go in for a blood test on day 21, then find out a few days later that I never ovulated at all. Nothing. No eggs. No chance of a baby.

Finally, we hit the end of the road. I'd just finished the last month on Clomid that my doctor was willing to give me. I had to schedule an appointment to go in and start talking about other options. Stronger drugs, surgery, donor eggs. I had to make the call, but I had to make sure I wasn't pregnant first, and I didn't want to do that. After all, while it's almost bearable to live with knowing you've probably failed again, it's so much more depressing to be confronted with hard reality. As long as I didn't know for sure there could still be a little glow of hope.

But I had to make that phone call, so I took the test. And then watched in shock as the "You're Pregnant!" line started showing up even before the control line.

I couldn't believe it. I thought the test must be defective. But it was there, it really was showing up as a positive. I started sobbing and shaking. My knees buckled and I sat down hard on the edge of the tub, arms wrapped around myself, begging God, "Please, please."

I couldn't get more than that one word out. Please don't let this be a false positive. Please don't let my heart be broken one more time. Please don't let me miscarry. Please, please, please let me be a mother. Oh, please, oh please.

I looked at the test again. Both lines were getting darker. I went into the bedroom and collapsed by the side of the bed, sobbing so hard I started gagging. Sorrow and relief and joy and pain finally released and emotions I didn't even know how to name or describe came pouring out. I buried my head in the comforter and flung my hands above my head to grasp the blankets in my fists, twisting them as I prayed, begging God for this baby to be real, to comfort me if it wasn't, to give me strength to carry on. And, if I was pregnant, to keep the baby safe and healthy, to not let me miscarry.

The husband wasn't home and I didn't want to tell him over the phone. By the time he walked in the door I was calm, a little excited even. He reacted with skepticism, afraid to open himself up to hope. It wasn't until the next day, and a second positive test, that he stopped warning me against getting too excited. He didn't relax, however, until I first felt the baby move.

The toddler was born one day after her due date, induced because of my gestational diabetes. 8 lbs, 6 oz, 21". She was beautiful. She still is. And now I have a second. I feel incredibly blessed.

I doubt we'll try for more. We'd like to get all the kids out of the house before we retire, and well, it's just too hard on me. I really don't want to have to deal with simultaneously being a mommy and fighting off suicidal ideation. Neither do I think it would be a good thing for the kids to have to cope with an out of control, insanely angry, screaming shrew of a mommy. We have two; I have friends who've never managed to have even one child. I say it's time to count our blessings and protect them.

Though I do think, every so often, how nice it would be to have another.