The cup

I've written before about not really knowing what to put into a birth plan.  All I really want is to make it through safely and have a healthy baby to take home.  Otherwise, I'm really flexible.  I mean think about it, after you completely give up on a romantic passionate evening with the love of your life being the moment-of-conception memory that you hold forever for your child, do the birth details really matter either?

But I realized that there is one thing that I do care about.  A physical object that has come to represent quite a lot to me.

And it's a big plastic cup.

On June 11, 2010, Dh and I had a monitoring appointment as we went into our second IVF attempt.  We had planned to take the day off from work to celebrate our anniversary, so this monitoring appointment was supposed to be something relatively positive on the baby-front that we did early in the morning before heading to the zoo to watch the monkeys. 

But this monitoring appointment did not go well.  In fact, it was terrible.  We were told that we only had one follicle after all the injections and surgery and cyst and waiting, etc. etc.  We were both upset but I was pretty devastated.  That was rock bottom and I was ready to give up.  If we weren't already so invested by that time, and already paid close to $25,000 on this baby project, I would have given up and walked away.  Licked my wounds.  Tried to pretend none of this every happened, that I didn't really want to have a child.

We went to the zoo as planned and ended up napping in front of the monkeys, just absorbing the news and not really talking about it.  We managed to have a really nice day that ended with margaritas at a wonderful mexican restaurant.

But the strange thing was that that one follicle turned into three, and one of those was the golden egg that is now little M.  My little M who is due TOMORROW.

We shared a drink that day at the zoo, one that came in a big plastic cup with a lid and straw and a giraffe on it.  One of those cups meant to be kept and used over and over. 

I started using this cup at work to help me keep track of how much water I was drinking over the last 9 months.

It reminds me of that day at the zoo, the day I pretty much gave up hope.  And it reminds me of how wrong I was. 

I brought that cup home with me when I left school the other day.  I want to use it during labor to keep hydrated.  I want it to be there to remind me how far we've come, how wrong I was that day, this crazy path we've taken to little M, and all of my blogsisters who have traveled this path before me and who will follow in my shoes hopefully very, very soon.

So my birth plan?  Perspective, gratefulness, and a take-home baby.