There is an old saying, when life hands you lemons make lemonade.

There is another version of the saying that says when life hands you lemons grab tequila and salt.

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Either way, I despise these sayings.  Firstly, I am not a fan of lemonade and not a big fan of using alcohol to solve my problems.  But even more, I hate these sayings because when life sucks, I just don’t need to hear about how my life is like lemons and I should just buck up and move on.

When my life handed me lemons (ergo recurrent pregnancy loss), I actually tried living by the make lemonade motto.  The problem is, without the right ingredients I just felt forced to improvise.  And constantly improvising got tiring.

After a little while of mixing, and adding new ingredients you come to the realization that maybe just maybe trying to make make lemonade the old fashioned way was never going to work.  Simply, I started to realize that it is not as simple as add water, a dash of sugar, and some ice to my lemons.  The recipe to our family was never going to be that simple and to pretend it would be was just plain old stupid.

Instead, my lemonade required:

• One phenomenal counsellor
• An amazing family doctor and his team of nurses
• Multiple RE’s
• A few OBGYN’s
• Countless procedures and testing
• A few surgeries
• A trip to an out of country specialist
• Timed and scheduled sex
• Heartbreaking baby loss
• Intense research into potential treatments and ways to grow our family.
• Extensive soul searching and self-analysis
• Losing friends
• Finding support and making new amazing friends who get it and might just get us better
• Heartbreaking decisions

I don’t know the exact recipe for my lemonade, but it sure seems to be complicated and based on adding a dash of one thing and maybe removing a bit of something else.  It’s been a work in progress.  Some days it doesn’t taste great, other days it seems like we should start a new batch. And it has taken a tonne of effort and work to pull myself through those hard days.  And it’s taken a lot of effort to appreciate the good days when the good days aren’t what I ever expected of planned for.

Honestly, my lemonade recipe is a work in progress.  I am trying to write it all down.  It’s based in trial and error.  It’s not a traditional recipe. Others may never be able to follow it exactly. Infertility and baby loss just doesn’t work that way, it’s too personal to replicate.  But I hope by sharing, the good tasting moments and the bad ones, that someone else will be able to pull out tidbits that will help them create their own version of lemonade.

And whether or not we all discover our ideal recipe, at least we can sit together (even if only through the blogging world) and compare our ingredient lists.  And at the same time, share some tears and laughter and hope for one and other.

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