The Things We Do

Here we are in Santa Monica at a doctor’s office of sorts.  I don’t even know how to describe it.  Is it a doctor’s office?  An upscale hippie fertility clinic?  An acupuncture bar?  An Eastern…. thing?

We’re here because we want to grow our family.  Candace is going to spend a couple hours getting punctured (makes me queasy just thinking about it) with soothing music in the background.  She’ll probably get to take a nap.  Lucky.  As for Sammy and me, we’re going to hang in the waiting room until someone gets hungry, anxious, or has to go to the bathroom.  I brought the pacifying iPad so he can watch something.  At least it’ll be educational.  I hate having to bring a TV with us, but oh well.  It buys me a couple hours free of monitoring and shushing.

So back to trying to grow our family.  We have one child and want more.  How many?  We’ve always thought two of each would be nice.  I have two sisters no brother and Candace has two brothers no sister.  Not taking anything away from our siblings that we love very much, but we always thought it would be cool to have one of the same-sex, in addition to the ones we got.  However, it’s been a slower process than we thought it would be.  Looking back, we had Samuel at the perfect time, a fact we thank God for regularly.  But getting that second one has been a rockier road.  Two years and two miscarriages later, we’re still trying, one baby at a time.  We still want a big family, but if we have just one – the one we have – we’ll be content.  If we get another one; even more blessing, and so on. That’s how I look at it anyway.  Candace may have different thoughts on it.

Sometimes we question: does God want us to only have one child?  Does he want us to have a big family?  But as soon as I ask that question, I get the answer: of course God wants us to have as many as we want and can handle.  We’re capable and responsible, so why not?  Obstacles like miscarriages aren’t signs to quit trying, but rather providential assistance to give us the right baby at the right time.  Of course we grieve the ones we lost and worry about it happening again, but when we look back and see the gift that is our one son, who was born when he was born with the DNA that is his, we can’t imagine it any other way, and we’re grateful again.

So we’re going for baby number two, getting help from the sages in Santa Monica.  When Candace comes out of her session, we’ll hopefully be one step closer.  And then we’ll go get some Chicken McNuggets (just to balance out all the organic-ness of the day) and hit the beach.