Where to Begin?

One day late last March my wife, Vanessa, said, “I think I am pregnant…”

This in and of itself came as a bit of a shock because we were trying to make sure that didn’t happen. You recall I am 51 (she is much younger).

Vanessa and I were married October 13th, 2012, after being in a relationship for about seven years. We both have children from previous relationships, and we love them dearly. Neither of us thought about having a baby together. I had a vasectomy in 1994, we were both enjoying our work, her daughter was in high school and my boys were out of the house doing their thing, so we were pretty content.

I can’t really remember what ignited the spark, but sometime in early 2014 we talked about it and decided to see if it was even possible. Our first stop was the urologist to discuss a vasectomy reversal (more on that in a separate post). Obviously, the reversal was successful but between the reversal and Harper’s arrival, we faced six heartbreaking pregnancies ending in miscarriages. (I want to devote a whole post to miscarriages because they are devastating and rarely talked about.) We also had many wonderful events occur in our lives. We watched our children grow into adulthood, graduate from high school, go to college, join the military, get married, have children of their own. We saw job changes and we moved into our new home. We even adopted a third dog. Through it all, we tried to have a baby of our own.

Until we decided it was just not meant to be.

The toll on our hearts and Vanessa’s health was too high. So we held each other, cried a little and then put it in our rearview mirror, for about six months.

Welcome back to March 2018.