June 2013 PAIL Monthly Theme Post: Looking Back

(This post is part of PAIL Bloggers' Monthly Theme Post for June.  You can find other posts about this theme here.)

One advantage to having been a blogger for a few years is that I don't have to strain my brain to try and remember what I was doing this time last year, or two or three or four or more years ago.  I can simply look back at my blog(s) and figure it out.

This time last year, my sons were still pretty young: about five months old, three-and-a-half months adjusted age, since they were preemies.  I was back at work full time, and MM was home on FMLA leave with them, although he was preparing to go back to work as well.  Looking back at my blog, apparently my biggest challenges were back pain and my weight.  (These are still challenges.)

This time two years ago, I had just found out I was pregnant and did not yet know I was having twins.  (We had our suspicions, due to high beta numbers, but I didn't have my first ultrasound until early July.)

About three years ago, I wrote here about the crisis of confidence I was having in my life, brought on by infertility and uncertainty in the job I was in at the time.  I do remember that time as being a pretty low one for me.  That was during a time of "limbo" for us when we had recently found out that another treatment cycle had failed and we weren't sure what we were going to do next.

Four years ago, I was in the two week wait for what would turn out to be a failed treatment cycle.  That cycle was earlier on in our "journey," not long after we started intervention; it was only our second IUI with only Clomid and an hCG trigger.  Back in those days, I was still optimistic that we would just need "a little help" to get pregnant.  Ah, the naivete!  The optimism!

Five years ago at this time, MM and I were not yet married but were preparing to move in together.  We were house hunting in anticipation of buying a house together once he sold the house he owned and was living in at the time.

Six years ago at this time, I had relatively recently ended my engagement to my ex-fiance and accepted the job that brought me back to Phoenix. . . and indirectly led to my meeting MM.  )Actually, when I think about it, accepting that job offer indirectly led to almost everything in my current life: my husband, my children, my job.  Hmm.)

At that time, I do recall being pretty firmly convinced that I would likely never meet anyone else I wanted to marry while I was still young enough to have children.  Nonetheless, I had recently reconnected via the internet with a college ex-boyfriend I had always thought of as The One Who Got Away and was obsessing over that turn of events.  (I didn't know it at the time, but that situation would end up bringing me closure in a way that was wholly unanticipated.  A story that is complicated and completely deserving of another post of its own.  Suffice it to say: it was a very good thing we did not end up together.)

So in just six years' time, I have gone from a woman who was convinced she would never have a family to a married mother of two.  Life is funny.