She Did It!

I have been holding off on making a very important announcement. It's been killing me, but I wanted to be sure that the remarkable event I witnessed wasn't a one-time occurrence before I broadcast it. And so, without further ado...drum roll, please...

CAITRIN IS WALKING!!!

That's right, folks. We put her through the trauma of the ECI evaluation, and two days later we were at home playing, and she looked over at me sitting on the edge of the couch, got a very determined look in her eye, and proceeded to take a step toward me, unaided. I got down on the floor and held my arms out, cheering her on, and she took four more steps into my arms. The look on her face was priceless, and I scooped her up and twirled her around and jumped up and down and screamed. I was SO proud! Sean was on his way home, but I couldn't wait the extra 15 minutes to tell him, so I called him as he was pulling out of the parking garage.

She didn't do it again right away, and she still crawls the majority of the time, but I have caught her half a dozen times now making short trips between objects on foot instead of crawling. And she'll walk all over the house now holding our hands, and most of the time just holding one hand. She loves it. All those months I agonized, trying to make her do it. Then one day she just made up her mind that it was fun, and there you have it.

The picture above was taken last night. This was the first time she stood up in the middle of the floor, without any support to start with, and took a few steps. You'll see she's proudly carrying her seahorse. Ah, yes, the seahorse. His name is Queaky (honest, that's what she told us) and he goes everywhere with her. Honest to goodness, my daughter is such a trip. It's a really good thing I have her around for comic relief right now.

Otherwise, things are...well.... I'm going Sunday before church to have my Day 3 blood work drawn. And next Thursday, the 12th, I'm scheduled for an HSG, a prospect that both excites and terrifies me. I so desperately want to get this fact-finding mission, this testing phase, behind us and start DOING something. Whatever's wrong, I just want to hurry up and fix it already. And I'm excited, either to learn that they can't find anything, or that they found something but there are plenty of options to treat it. At the same time, I have read numerous personal accounts from women who've had the procedure, and they range from "I didn't feel a thing," to "I bled like a stuck pig," to "it was worse than labor." Worse than my particular labor I strongly doubt, so at least I know I can survive anything less than that. There's also a tiny corner of my brain that houses the worry that they'll find something so severe it can't be fixed, thus putting to death the dream of a quiver full of arrows.

I can't speak for Sean, but I've spoken with him enough to assume he has many of the same fears. He's done his blood work and goes for the really heinous part of his deal, the SA, on Monday. Most of these tests are pretty undignified, but I think his takes the cake. Society loves to belittle men for so many reasons, and women seem to feel the need to go on and on about how our lives are supposedly so much more difficult then men's. But to be honest, I'd rather go through a hundred pelvic exams than one SA. I love him for being my partner in the trenches.

I hate knowing that the cycle that began today is going to be one more where there's no chance of anything happening. We're testing, for one, so there is no treatment protocol yet, and I've all but given up any hope of our babymaking efforts achieving their objective without assistance at this point. The only thread I'm hanging onto now is that maybe, just maybe, next cycle we'll actually be doing something proactive. I ache when I realize how quickly time's going by. Every month of nothing is one more month I'm older, Sean's older, Caitrin's older. One more month farther away from my days of breastfeeding and snuggling a tiny baby all day. I've already forgotten so much. I'm terrified of forgetting more, and of Caitrin being my only chance to experience such a breathtaking phenomenon...pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, mothering a newborn. You know, there are those for whom no treatment ever works. What says that won't be us?