On This Mother's Day...

About a year ago, I came across an idea on Pinterest.  A mother had started writing letters to her children starting the day they were born.  Her plan was to compile all these letters and give them to her daughter on a special occasion in her adulthood.  Maybe when she left for college or got married. It was so inspiring!

So inspiring, in fact, that I decided to start my own letters.  So I write to my future children every so often.  When they're on my mind or I'm sad they're not here yet.  So today, on this Mother's Day, I thought I would give you a little glimpse of my musings.  I'll let you know that some of my baby names are revealed in this post.  Lots of you already know my first girl name.  Eventually I'll post my "Full Disclosure Baby Names" post and you can see what the others are.  For now, I picked a sweet note I wrote to my Maggie Soutine  in October of last year.  If you're a mommy already, I would encourage you to start writing to your kids.  What a special thing to be able to give them eventually!  If you are waiting for your angels like me, write to them too!  It's therapeutic and it reminds me that they're on their way!

October 20, 2013

My Sweet, Beautiful Maggie,

You are on my heart today.  Really you’re on my heart every day, but today especially, my heart aches for you.  I heard someone say the other day that their arms were aching to hold a baby.  Well, my arms ache to hold you!  One of my best friends, her name is Rachel too, just had a baby this week.  You will get to know him one day…his name is Henry.  He’s a beautiful baby boy…I think he looks just like Rachel!  It’s surreal for me to start seeing my best friends and my sister having babies.  When they’re born they inevitably look like just the perfect representation of them.  A baby, perfectly manufactured by God, with their features and personality.  It’s pretty cool! 

Man, I can’t wait for you to get here.  It’s going to be a glorious day!  Each month I pray for you.  I think about that egg being released into my body and I wonder “Is this Maggie?  Is this Greysen?”  One sweet day, it will be.  One fine, sweet day I’ll take another positive pregnancy test and your daddy will wrap me up in that impossibly excited hug that says “We’re gonna have a baby!!”  And you’ll be on your way my sweet girl.   And I won’t be able to contain myself when I see your sweet face for the first time.  I will be overwhelmed!  It will take my breath away when I hear your heartbeat on ultrasound, when I feel you move inside of me for the first time, when I get hooked up to all the machines in the hospital on the day of your birth… Because all those things will remind me that your life is about to begin.  Your life which I’ve prayed for, hoped for, dreamed of…it’s about to start.  All those things I kept hidden away in my heart will soon be a reality.  I’ll be your mommy…finally!  That day is coming for sure.  My God solidifies that for me on a daily basis!

The waiting is hard.  I cry for you.  I long for you.  Some days I don’t understand why you’re not here yet.  Most days I feel like I won’t be able to wait another cycle to see that positive pregnancy test.  I question God.  I plead with Him to PLEASE send me my babies.  Sometimes I feel like He doesn’t hear me.  But I know, deep down, that He does.  And He’s setting up the perfect life for you and me and Daddy.  The perfect timing.  If you come soon Daddy will be a resident before you have the capacity to remember all this hard stuff.  We will be living in a nice house, in a good neighborhood.  Daddy will be making enough money for us to go on nice vacations and have nice things.  You will never want for anything my darling.  Your daddy and I will be able to provide the most perfect life for you.  We are sacrificing now for YOUR future, my love.  For YOURS!

Every day I pray for you.  Every day I ask God to send you to me.  And I have faith that He will make that a reality so very soon.  I was created to be a mommy.  To be YOUR Mommy!  And I just can’t wait for the day when I can say “Hi Maggie…I’m your mommy!”  It will be such a sweet precious day!  I can’t wait to see your daddy hold you and look at you and tell you how beautiful you are.  You’ll have him wrapped around your tiny little finger in no time.  Watching him love you will make my heart so full.  He can’t wait for you to get here either!

Until that sweet, sweet day arrives…we watch and wait for you my Maggie Soutine…

Love Beyond Words,

Mommy 

For I Know The Plans I Have For You...

Wanna know where my mind has been these past few weeks?  Well...judging by the fact that in the last month Jonathan has taken two pivotal tests and we've packed up our apartment, I'd say it's been on the future!  You know, a large part of the medical school journey includes the fear of the unknown.  There is always that chance that even though you work really, really hard, you might still have abandoned everything for this and not see a positive outcome.  After the results from the first mini exam were posted in MERP nearly 2 years ago, Jonathan was really displeased with his scores.  I mean REALLY displeased.  He was beyond frustrated with himself saying things like "I'm in med school now.  I can't just take a bad test the first go round and then redeem myself the second time around anymore."  But that was the turning point for him...for us.  His quote then was this:

"Babe.  I made us give up everything for this.  And I promise I'm going to make this happen.  I'm not going to let this end in failure.  Whatever is in my power to do, I'm going to do it.  And this WILL end in an M.D."

A bit of determination, huh?  And you know, ever since then he has not quit amazing me.  Both with his tenacity and with his scores.  It's becoming more and more real this idea that what he is doing right now is setting us up for a beautiful future.  He's had a vision all along.  THIS is when I realize how invested he's been in our future.  How smart and calculated he's been.  And how serious he has been all along about that promise he made to my dad nearly 8 years ago when he asked for my hand in marriage.  He promised he would take care of me in the way that I've been accustomed to being taken care of.  And even though the journey to get there has meant lots of sacrifice and difficulty along the way, our future is bright, bright, bright!

In these past few weeks I've been dreaming about our future home.  All the wonderful vacations we will take our children on.  All the road trips to visit family and friends.  The fact that our babies will go to college on our dime, never want for anything, have beautiful weddings, and experience the world.  How gorgeous is our family's future??  

The hardest part of this journey through medicine will likely be those first 2 years of internship and residency.  I know this full well.  I remember as a child *hating* those nights that my daddy wasn't home because he was working shift work.  As a little girl, your house never seems quite safe enough when your protector isn't there at tonight.  In retrospect I know how difficult that work must have been for my dad.  But I know now that his choice to take on those "scut work" type jobs meant that he built a reputation for himself and a future for our family.  My sister and I lived a beautiful childhood because of my dad's unwillingness to accept mediocrity in his job.  And I am SO grateful for that!  And I'm excited for my own babies when I consider the fact that my Jonathan is doing that very same thing for them right now...before they're even conceived!  And thankfully, by the grace of God, by the time their ability to form long term memories has developed, residency and long grueling hours at the hospital will be a thing of the past for us.   Their formative years will be when we are making a 6 figure salary, living in a beautiful home, and enjoying great vacations and family time together...

If only our babies right now today could see and hear and experience how much their daddy and I already love them.  If only they could know how hard we are working, what we are sacrificing, to give them a spectacular future.  If only *I* knew 8 years ago what today would look like!  Though I probably wouldn't have believed it, honestly...

We are right on the cusp of one of our turning points in this.  Just a few short weeks will see us ending this Caribbean med school experience and heading back to the states.  A few more weeks will *hopefully* see us with a healthy pregnancy...just months away from realizing one of our most deep seated hopes for our family.  If we are lucky, this time next year we will be holding our baby (or babies) in our arms.  We'll be making plans to head to New York for a year for Jonathan to work through his clinicals.  2 years from now we will be putting the finishing touches on his residency applications.  No way!!  

So our future is bright...and it's exciting to think about it.  The next step in the short term is our first OU appointment.  44 days until we meet Dr. Hansen for the first time and create our official IVF plan!  I just can't believe it's almost here.  But instead of feeling nervous and anxious and scared, I feel excited.  I'm ready.  Jonathan takes the USMLE Step 1 on June 18th and then it's 12 weeks full of focusing on our little (hopefully growing) family and on our future together.  

"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord.  Plans to prosper you and not to harm you.  To give you a hope and a future..."-Jeremiah 29:11

He knew before Jonathan and I drew breath, before we fell in love, before we married.  He saw all of this and He said it would be good.  He said He would give us a Hope and a Future.  And He has delivered on all counts so far.  Here's hoping and praying that the next item on His agenda is sending us our miracle babies!