What I’m Most Thankful For In This World

This Thanksgiving is a special one, because my daughter turns six years old. Almost six years ago, she was born the day before Thanksgiving, so this is a year her birthday falls on the actual holiday.

Looking back, I would have never imagined this trajectory for my life. The time she’s been with us feels like it’s gone by in an instant, but at the same time, life without her seems like a distant memory.

How did we get here?

My husband and I spent most of our young adult years talking about not having kids. We had lots of friends who didn’t have kids, friends who traveled the world rock climbing like we did. At one point, a few of them left the fray to start families and tried to tell us how awesome it was.

We figured they were justifying their own choices by trying to convince us.

I never disliked kids, nor did I hold some ideological framework behind not wanting to have them. I just didn’t feel that longing deep inside me that I hear so many women describe. I figured its absence was a sign.

But when my sister and my husband’s brother both started families, a small inkling welled up inside… and we began to talk about the possibility. I was in the middle of residency, overwhelmed with work and on the edge of burnout. But at the same time, I was turning 35. And I had lost my period.

What ensued from this nonchalant curiosity about having kids was a multi-year journey to the depths of what I “knew” about myself, how I saw myself. My identities as a physician, an athlete, a wife, and a functioning human being were all challenged. And at the rock bottom, I had to focus solely on me in order to recover, both physically and mentally, from my brain tumor.

So again I pushed away any thoughts of becoming a mother. Time passed, and things got better. I had gained tremendous insight about who I really was while optimizing my health to the best of my ability.

Then one day, he said it.

“I want us to try for a child now.”

I began to cry.

“You don’t understand! I can’t now!”

At 37 and without pituitary gland function, there was no way I’d conceive. I figured we were done, and I was blind to any alternative ways to build a family. My body said No, and I had retreated into indifference about motherhood.

“But we can do IVF!”

Navigating infertility

He had no idea what that entailed, and neither did I, but after tears and fears and lots of talking, we agreed to just try. I agreed to try something I was very afraid of. I was afraid of the needles and procedures, and I was afraid of both failure and success.

An infertility journey is a whole other beast. Turns out that the mental aspects of it were far worse than any intrusion to my physical body. Ask any other person undergoing infertility treatments, and I’ll bet they’d say the same.

It took three years, several failed procedures and one miscarriage to get pregnant with our girl. I was lucky, compared to others. In my profession, the stress of infertility is compounded by myriad other stresses related to the balancing of schedules, patient care, being a team player in your practice, and the far-reaching consequences associated with any decision. As I research and prepare to give a talk to a large audience on the growing epidemic of physician infertility, I’m increasingly reminded of this.

More to come on what I’ve learned, but in the grand scheme of things, the time and money and resources I personally spent spent to have a child pale in comparison to others. I regret some of the choices I made during the process – like holding on too long to the idea that I could get pregnant with less intervention, wasting time… But if I had done things differently, I wouldn’t have this exact baby.

A strong reminder of gratitude

She’s what I’m most thankful for in this world.

Once she was growing inside me, I was so scared I’d lose her. That my failure streak would continue in increasingly drawn-out and painful scenarios. When you look into the experiences of other women who became pregnant after infertility, you find this is a common theme.

But despite an early arrival complicated by pre-eclampsia, she was born PERFECT, right before Thanksgiving.

Now I’m becoming one of those moms. You know, the ones who reminisce about cute little things their child said or did at a certain age. The ones who tear up a little when going through the old photos, toys, or art projects.

Like most moms. Like my own mom.

I love hearing her say, “Mama!” I love laughing with her, cooking food in the kitchen and tasting it with her, playing games with her, explaining things to her when she asks questions, reading to her at night and then turning out the light and hearing things like what she said to me tonight:

“I love you so much, Mama. You’re the best mama in the whole world. You’re the mama of mamas.”

So during this season and as I continue to learn more about the infertility experiences of others, I’m infinitely thankful I got the chance in this life to be a mother. Every time I’m annoyed by something she does, every time I’m woken up in the middle of the night, I remember this.

What are you so incredibly thankful for that you feel deeply in your core? Share it by leaving a comment below!