The Beginning

Winning the lottery. So many people have lost sight of what it means to "win the lottery." Winning the lottery may not refer to money. In my case it refers to life.

I guess I should start at the beginning.

I can honestly say I never thought I would have a child that I gave birth to. Much less two of them. I feel as though I have hit the lifetime lottery. But seriously I need to go back to the beginning for you to understand.

At 18 I was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. It took a while to find, I was misdiagnosed for a long time, yada yada. However, once I was diagnosed things fell right into place. I knew it wasn't necessarily life threatening but I did what I was told and moved on.

Over the years I struggled. With my weight, my emotions, I was just off.  I felt I had seen the light however, once I met my now husband. He helped me through a bunch of those issues and we moved on together.

Fast forward to two months after the wedding. The severe cramping and bleeding I had was enough to bring me to my knees two weeks a month. I knew something was wrong however I didn't know what. So begins the many, many, (did I say many?) doctor's appointments. Like a trooper he was right there with me. Well him on one side and my mom on the other.

I was tested for everything under the sun. The worst was the millions of tests and scan they ran for Cancer. Here I was under 30 just wanting to have a baby and I was told that my cancer markers came back abnormally high. Abnormally high? Ok so that wasn't the best time in my life but after retesting, many, many times, the markers came back normal.

So what was the issue? Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome was back on the forefront. I was immediately introduced to a Oncological Gynecologist. He proposed surgery. Surgery? No big deal. I could do that. Until he said "oh by the way - depending on what we see we might do a hysterectomy."

Before 30? I wanted children. Badly. So badly I could taste it.

But I was hopeful. I scheduled the surgery.

I came out of the surgery with 1 egg and 1 tube. He had to remove an entire side. But I woke up feeling good. We were happy, we could still try for children.

Fast forward again 4 years. We still aren't pregnant yet. We have been to two fertility clinics. One clinic told me I was too heavy to conceive and there was absolutely no way he would ever consider IVF. My body wouldn't carry a pregnancy and he wasn't willing to help me anyway. Needless to say that was a tear filled afternoon.

After the second clinic couldn't help we found ourselves back at the Oncological Gynecologist. He spouted four words that completely shocked us to the core. "You have another cyst." So it was back to Hopkins for yet another surgery. This time I came out with only half of my remaining ovary. Four months after surgery I was back at the second clinic. She was hopeful,  however IVF wasn't an option because what was left of my ovary was impossible to reach. It sat too high in my body.

We went back religiously every month for three months. Finally during one of our ultrasounds we saw a miracle. We were able to watch Peanut's heartbeat on the screen.

Four years. Two surgeries. And a half an ovary and we had a tiny human. We were beside ourselves.

After she was born, we knew we would be pressing our luck, but we wanted her to have a playmate. Waiting four years again though was not part of our plan.

So when Peanut was 5 months old we decided it was time.

When she was 7 months old we watched Beanie's heartbeat flicker across the screen.

When she was 16 months old we brought home a new playmate for her.

So here I am today thinking about what a miracle it is that we have these two babies in our lives. What brought this on? Today I overheard a conversation about winning the lottery. This nice lady stated that she needed to win the lottery and it would make her life complete. There are many different types of lotteries I guess, because mine has nothing to do with money.

Not one thing.