Marriage was great. It was easy. We both agreed this was the time to focus just on us and our careers without thinking about kids yet, so that was what we pursued. Seth went to medical school, and I started teaching. We thought about our future family – but we felt no rush to start. I also never felt like I needed biological children and always talked about adoption. Either way – kids were not on our radar.
Medical school is a lot of work.  Teaching is a lot of work. However, we were each other’s haven in the hard work – the mess – the nights on call – the angry parents of students – the demanding schedule of residency – the papers, papers, and papers to grade.  

We eventually bought a little house and got our little dog, Lucy. I say little because she was a puppy when we got her, but she quickly grew into a full-size furball of love – golden retriever. That was us – that was our little family. Seth worked, I worked, and we came home to Lucy. I graded papers, he tried to catch up on sleep, we watched movies, we went on walks, we discovered fun restaurants, we took a few exotic trips, we had fun with friends, we cooked together, and we became youth group leaders at church. It was fun. Yes – work and residency were hard, but we both really loved our jobs and felt like we were fulfilling our callings. I even started to take some grad school classes, and I really enjoyed those too. Overall – we felt busy, fulfilled, and as residency started to wind down – we started to feel like there was space in our life to possibly add someone else to our family.

And don’t ask me why, but something deep down inside me told me that this was not going to be easy. There was no reason to think that. There was nothing to suggest that things weren’t working like they should – but I just had this feeling that life had been too easy. That this – the trying to have a baby – was going to be our big struggle. How could I have known that? What would make me think that? I don’t know. Seth just shook his head at me and basically said I was crazy to worry about that. That’s not to make him sound callous, but as a doctor, he knew that neither of us exhibited any symptoms that there would be any trouble, so why bother worrying about it. So I tried not to worry. But I’m not too good about not worrying about things. Especially when I felt like I just knew. I knew it.