Fourteen years ago today, Brian and I went on our first date.

I worked at a shoe store and he worked at a movie theatre, we had both just graduated from high school together.  He came into my shoe store, bought a pair of dress shoes and asked me out to see a movie that night after I got off of work.  I said yes.

He wore those dress shoes on our wedding day.

I always think about how meant to be we are based on that story.

I love that it’s ours and it’s unique and that it’s perfect for us.  We have a great time together.  He thinks I’m funny (because I am) and I love that.  When he laughs at me it makes me happy.  He is the logical guy with the biggest heart.

He makes the best waffle cones ever.

But things are rarely perfect.

crap

He doesn’t think enough, I think TOO much.  I like the house to be clean and he likes to live in a Frat house.  I like to use detergent and hot water when washing dishes and he, well, you don’t want to know.

He works constantly to be the best employee ever (and he is) so he can provide for his family.  I’d like for him to spend time at home not working and instead cleaning playing with the kids.

We always have differences.  And it’s really okay.

When we lost James and Jake, we met with our priest to discuss their Memorial Service and he warned us that some ridiculous percentage of marriages end in divorce after the death of a child.  Even though at the time the last thing I thought about was whether or not our marriage would survive, my biggest concern was how I was  going to make it through the next hour without collapsing to the floor while beating my fists to the ground.

But after those initial moments, days, weeks, months, I spent most of my time in therapy talking about him.  My concerns for him, my frustrations with him, how our relationship was changing.

And here we are, 15 months later.  Still pretty strong and still struggling with so much but still surrounded by intense love and understanding.

Today was our “big appointment.”  The scary one where we met with the specialist (who specializes in pregnancy loss.)  Essentially, over the past few months, she has been studying our case, taking ridiculous amounts of blood, performing tests on my uterus, researching our genetics, our chromosomes and my family history.  It was this appointment where she was going to either advise to go forth and populate or DO NOT HAVE ANY MORE CHILDREN BECAUSE THEY WILL NOT LIVE.

We approached the appointment optimistically, for some reason.  Intuition, I suppose.  I personally was just happy to finally have this meeting over with – we began this process in February.

We figured we would walk out with one of two outcomes:

1.  She would tell us not to have any more children and we would be completely devastated but we would move on as positively as possible.

2.  She would tell us we can go ahead and try again but that would mean getting pregnant and PREGNANCY IS SO SCARY AND HEARTBREAKING AND OMG WHAT IF IT HAPPENS AGAIN.

We walked away with #2.

We are happy, scared, cautious and still waiting for a few other test results to come through before we make any decisions about future children.  All we know is that there will be attempts for future children.  We just don’t know when.  I do have some precautions I have to take, certain medications that need to start now, others that need to start later, needless to say, we will be watched closely.

We have full faith that one day we’ll be holding our own little, tiny, precious baby in our arms, and I have no doubt that Brian and I will spend lots of time arguing over who gets to hold the baby the most.  And that is perfectly okay with me.

We are hopeful.

Beth and Brian 14 year dateversary


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