The Invisible Finish Line

I've often compared trying to conceive as a race with an invisible finish line.

With other events in our lives - like weddings, for instance - there's a finish line. When I planned my wedding, I had a wedding date, and had to plan everything according to that one day. Favors, cakes, dresses, flowers, everything had to be ready according to a schedule in order to be ready to walk down the aisle at 11:30am on October 16th, 2009. That was my finish line. Technically it was the beginning of something new, but it was the end of my planning. The goal of marrying my husband was achieved.

With trying to conceive, the finish line is invisible, a moving target. We have no idea how long we have to run, or how far we have to go. We don't know what the terrain looks like, or what's around the next bend. Some runners have only a short race. Heck, some don't even know they're racing and suddenly find themselves at the finish line. Others of us, like me and my husband, have long races with hurdles and pitfalls. We're running a race with complications, diagnoses, conditions, infertility.

This is the story of our race.