February 8th: The beginning & the end...

It's February 8th again. And although the date doesn't have quite the same power over me that it once did, I can't help but pause for a moment and think about it.

February 8th, 1998: my "LMP date," forever associated in my memory as the beginning of my pregnancy with Katie. 13 years. Yes, we're hitting the teens now (eek).

This was the day my life changed (although of course I didn't know it at the time). The day my roller coaster ride began.

It was the beginning of something wonderful: a baby, the future unfolding as we hoped it would, as it should.

It was the beginning of something incredibly tragic and sad: the loss of a baby, hopes & dreams shattered and crushed.

I knew (once I knew the significance of the date) that it was the beginning of the end of my old, pre-pregnancy self.

I just didn't know it would be the beginning of the end of my dreams of a family, too.

In many ways, my life is very much the same as it was on February 7, 1998. And in many ways, it most certainly is very different. Just not "different" in the way I envisioned it in the spring of 1998, or before that, or even for awhile afterwards.

I imagine there are many people out there who haven't lost a baby or been through infertility, whose lives are also much different today than they were or had imagined in February 1998 -- for the better in some ways, for the worse in others. Life is like that.

But that doesn't mean that you ever stop wondering, at least once in awhile, why it had to be this way, and how different things might have been, if only...

February 8, 2010

February 8, 2009

February 8, 2008