Happy New Year

So I thought I'd say adieu to the old year with a bang today.... After getting some bloodwork done (as the first step towards an embryo transfer looming in the near future), I passed out.  And apparently fell to the ground, leaving a big oh colorful bump on my forehead and a cut by my eye from my glasses. In the aftermath of coming to, I realized today's date and joked to my hubby, thank goodness it's the LAST day of the year!  Let's get this sort of nonesense out of the way and make way for a fresh start in the new year.

I used to spend New Year's Eve doing various activities prompted by, well, superstition.  I called it tradition, but let's be honest.  Today, I realized that I'm not worried about any of it.  I don't believe anything magical is going to happen tonight at midnight, since it's been turning midnight for hours now around the world.  How can one part of the world already be in 2016 while other parts are still in last year?  I tell you how, time is a human construct.

As I was coming to from my little incident today, I felt exactly as if I were waking from a dream.  I actually remember the dream.  There were a lot of people, it was a sort of convention or something, there were some stairs and balconies, and an event with a ginormous whale was about to start.  It felt like a pretty long dream, though apparently I was only unconscious for a minute or two. During the chatter of the phlebotomist and nurse and hubby, I just marveled at how time essentially stood still as I mentally checked out of this reality on my way to the floor.  I marveled at how this time (not my first encounter with blacking out, I'm afraid), I knew I felt queasy, but I didn't see it coming.  One second, I'm sitting there confirming that I want a bit of water, the next second I'm in a parallel universe getting ready for some giant whale show?!

I smirked to myself a bit.  What we think of as reality, that's the real dream, isn't it? ;)

Today, as the sun set on the year 2015, I didn't even peak outside to bid it farewell, as I've done in years past.  (I've welcomed the first day after high school graduation by photographing that "first sunrise of freedom" as I called it.  I also photographed my last sunset on my way home after being discharged from the Army, another "freedom shot".)  I just thought to myself, hmm, I'm no longer superstitious, am I?  I'm not religious anymore.  I'm sure they're related.  Not terribly sentimental either, at least not as much as I once was.

Ever since my daughter was born, I've been trying to figure myself out.  I feel more grounded now, as a mother.  My life feels more real.  Looks like I got exactly what I had hoped to get by becoming a mother: a meaningful life.

And yet.  And yet I'm still here, ruminating about the ever mysterious spiritual things.  Part of it is that I don't want to teach my daughter things I now consider lies, or at best, fairy tales, but at the same time, I do want her to have a spiritual sense of self.  Part of it is that I realize my daughter will not be so little forever, and eventually I will have to be OK with whomever I am besides her mother.  So I should figure out what that is.

Interestingly, it seems just as a sense of a new normal finally descended on our home, and hubby and I have gotten into a rhythm as a family of three, we are now embarking on the journey of another embryo transfer.  This will be our last one.  This will finally conclude our long journey to parenthood.  Either we will remain a family of three, and continue raising our little girl as an only child - something we are both perfectly happy doing - or we will add to our brood and have to relearn all over again how to function with multiple kids on our hands.  But these last two embryos, they are genetically related to our daughter.  We owe her the attempt to have a genetic sibling for her.  If it doesn't work, c'est la vie.  But it is the only right thing to do.  And so we're doing it, and praying that whatever may come, God will walk us through it, just like God walked us through these last three years, since the last transfer, through the pregnancy and birth of our daughter, and these last two+ years with her.

It has been amazing, exhausting, exhilarating, frustrating, stressful, joyful, difficult, yet second-nature.  Our daughter stretches us in new ways, pushes us to grow in ways we otherwise wouldn't have grown.  Every day we look at her and think (or say out loud) how amazing she is, and how lucky we are to have been blessed with the job of being her parents.  And to think, we might get another bundle of joy like this?  "We don't want to be greedy", my hubby says.  We are happy with one child, if one child is all we have.  But as difficult as having a newborn would be, especially with a toddler/preschooler, I think of how much joy the kids may bring to each other down the road, and I'm torn between hoping for a successful transfer, and hoping that we can just end this chapter of our lives and focus all our attention on our daughter.

In a way, we're both glad that it's not up to us.  It's in the hands of God.

Here's to the great unknown that is 2016.  We will be celebrating our 13th wedding anniversary, and 13 being my lucky number (our daughter was born in 2013!), whatever the future holds for us, I know it will be awesome, and rewarding, and worth the work.

Happy New Year, blogosphere!