The other day, my son said his first word. Grrrrrrr. Well, more like a sound, I suppose. When prompted with the question “What does a dinosaur say?” he will make a low growl in the back of his throat.

“This is such an awful feeling… like you are in an alternate universe from the rest of the world. I feel like my body is always buzzing.”

So. I had a baby. When I was pregnant, I anticipated it would be a bit before I wrote again simply because I would be in the throws of sleep deprivation and overall deficits in my free time and cognitive abilities.

Every Thursday, my dad sends me a text with a number – how many weeks pregnant I am. It always makes me smile – Grandpa tracking baby’s growth, celebrating each milestone. I would typically respond with a “Yay!” or emoji that symbolized a similar sentiment.

So. I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant. I’ve said those words dozens of times at this point, and at times they still seem foreign, like I’m referring to myself as the wrong name.

So, a new train. A new path forward. After several rounds of feeling pressure to work on adoption stuff, then procrastinating, then feeling guilty, then doing something to avoid adoption stuff, then feeling relieved for a minute, then feeling guilty again, I finally got some positive momentum going.

So, the train station. The platform. I hate them, and yet they have become a source of weird comfort. They are familiar; even though the snack selection sucks and the bathrooms are gross, there is comfort in familiarity.

Dust fluttered into the air as I moved boxes around our storage shed. I had chosen to spend Day 1 of my spring break sorting through all my Boxes of Really Important Memories, hoping to make progress in widdling down my collection.

My hiking boots squished through the mud of early winter that covers the foothills of the Wasatch Front, the mountain range that lines the eastern side of the Salt Lake Valley. Seth walked a few paces ahead of me and our perfect specimen of a dog, Charlie, trotted in between us, blond ears flapping as he enjoyed the hike, blissfully unaware of the tension in the air.

I stood at the checkout counter of one of our local nurseries, my hand on three huge and overpriced flower pots I had purchased there two days earlier. “What do you mean I can’t return them?” I said, my voice rising to a slightly embarrassing pitch. “I have my receipt. I bought them two days ago. They can be resold. I’ll take store credit.”

The recovery time after finding out about the miscarriage included more ups and downs, both physical and emotional. People find out about miscarriages in different ways – either you start to experience the terrifying symptoms of one or you find out during a doctor’s appointment that the pregnancy is no longer viable, as we did.

I sighed as I opened up another bottle of Letrozole, a medication used often to treat infertility, as it encourages the growth of follicles (read: baby eggs). I muttered to Seth, “Should we even try this month? It seems like kind of a waste at this point.”

Early Easter morning, Seth and I stood at 11,000 feet, gazing over the Wasatch Range as the sun began to climb up over the tops of the peaks that surrounded us. Slowly, we watched as the shadows of the eastern faces were peeled back, making way for a new day.