Hurry up, and wait. Mental Toughness and learning a new kind of fight.

All my life I have had an insane competitive drive. I am an athlete, and for   20 years of my life countless hours were devoted to practice and working out and learning techniques like combat visualization to reach goals and championships. Learning how to work hard for a goal, and loving how it feels to reach a goal is invaluable. I applied these skills to college and my career. I knew what I needed to do to reach those goals. There was a period of time during my career where I was thrown into huge situation after huge situation and my mom reminded me that I thrived best in back against the wall type situations. My whole life I had been prepared for that. I knew what it's like to hold your breath and dig a little deeper to finish the fourth quarter. 

For the past year and a half I felt like I was stuck in that fourth quarter, but I had no idea how to finish that game. I didn't know how to fight for this goal because the whole thing was out of our hands. And I love the fight, because I know that given the chance to fight, I will either win, or I will be at peace with losing. The hardest thing about losing Baby B, was feeling like I didn't even have a chance to fight for them to survive. In the passing weeks I've realized that I fought like hell to get them here, to create them. To carry them as long as I did. That baby was real, and they are one of my biggest accomplishments. I've made peace with it. 

Knowing how fragile that can be taken away from me, my desire to fight, and to protect, and to get Baby A here safely is incredible. And while the future is unknown, I refuse to let anyone or anything put negativity into my life. I don't have the emotional capacity to deal with doubt. Getting this baby here safely is using every single ounce of mental toughness and energy I have. Which is why I'm grateful to surround myself with people who are supportive and excited for us. 

And with this being a completely different ball game I've learned that the fight and the work is different. It's about resting, and staying down when my body needs it. It's about not pushing myself too hard. This week the fight included going to the nutritionist and learning how to get Baby A all the nutrients they need to grow big and strong.  It means accepting that I'm not in control. 

I haven't blogged in awhile because we're very much in the Hurry up and Wait stage of the process for the 100th time. You hit a milestone and then it's more waiting. Which is important. It takes a long time to grow a human. Both Scott and I keep having dreams about what our sweet baby is going to be. I'm very excited that we'll find out what we're having in the next few weeks.

I can't tell you how grateful I am to be writing boring filler posts about our day to day. That means the baby is still growing, and still healthy and I'm not high risk. Which is very exciting for us! 

This really is the greatest thing we've ever done. We're living a daily miracle. :)