In 2000, after nine years of marriage and many hula-hoops in the infertility world, we finally got pregnant for the first time. We had passed the thirty-year marker, and most of our married friends had started their own families. In fact, everywhere I looked everyone seemed to be pregnant, and I was at my wit’s end. We tried Clomid, and I endured a difficult surgery hoping to make things better. Still nothing. Then our doctor recommended injectables as the final step before IVF. It felt like a personal best when I administered them to myself. Would this make a difference?

Midway through our first cycle, we received a phone call from the clinic. My blood test was positive! We were overjoyed. I promptly sat down at my desk and began a diary/scrapbook for our baby with my first thoughts, photos of our lives together, our hopes and dreams.

With the sight and sound of a heartbeat, I was handed off from the infertility clinic to an OBGYN where we were assured I had a low risk pregnancy. After all of these years, was I not high-risk? I wondered. We were reassured. Several weeks later, we sent out little announcements to family and friends, and the first trimester passed swimmingly.

I continued to write pages in the scrapbook and collect fragments of our lives to set the stage for our little boy’s scheduled arrival in July 2001.

In February, however, I started to feel slightly off. I consulted with a few doctors and booked an appointment for my twenty week checkup. But before it arrived, my cervix gave way and our son was born, healthy in body but developmentally unable to survive on this side.

We grieved. I wrote more pages, this time trying to make sense out of the pain and loss. I searched for books to explain the inexplicable, to restore my faith. I wrote until there were no more words. I cried until there were no more tears.

As I healed my body and spirit, we decided we wanted to pursue a totally different path this time. No more infertility clinics. We wanted seek help through Chinese medicine. With acupuncture and herbs, both of us restored our inner balance, and by our boy’s due date I was pregnant again.

This time, I did not write. I was scared. My weak cervix was a known quantity now, so I had surgery to keep it closed. A few days after the surgery, my cervix was funneling. Bedrest was the only option. For six months.

My belly grew and with it my confidence did too. Lying down on my side, I began a new scrapbook. My words came slowly, hesitatingly, but after G was born, they gained steam. Sometimes it was prose, occasionally it was poetry. I took dictation from my sleep-deprived mind as I learned to listen to our child and find my true north as a parent. The first binder became one of many. And, over time, I took the contents and made them into a manuscript.

Parenting after the loss became something holy to me. I felt like our child’s safe arrival was a gift. With it, I was offered a unexpected chance to review my own childhood and reparent myself.

Now our early years are long gone, and I am in the throes of parenting a teenager. These years are a supreme act of faith that do not end with night-time snuggles and assurances of love everlasting. We love and we let go.

And with my words, I follow.