Game. Set. Match.

Six weeks before our third round of IVF this fall, I literally woke up one morning and decided I needed to do something completely out of my comfort zone. For three straight years, every decision I'd made revolved around beating my infertility rap and turning into a fertile Myrtle.

In no particular order, I stopped running, stopping drinking alcohol, stopped drinking Starbucks short nonfat lattes, stopped drinking soda, stopped eating anything cold out of the fridge ('cause The Infertility Cure told me that my particular deficiencies demanded warm or room-temp foods), stopped using beauty products with potentially bad crap in them, stopped eating refined sugar, stopped eating anything with white or wheat flour, stopped doing sit-ups, stopped drinking water out of plastic bottles, stopped accepting new freelance projects so that I could keep my stress level down, stopped, stopped, stopped.

After all that stopping, I was ready to go, go, go. So, I jumped out of bed, went to the computer, found a tennis club near my house and signed up for private lessons. Why was this so monumental? Because I've never been what you'd call a super sporty gal. Heck, I wouldn't even say that I've been a mildly sporty gal. Sure, I go to the gym, but that's about fitting into my $200 jeans. Competitive athletics that require score keeping, where there is a winner and a loser, not my bag.

My first memory of sweat-inducing fear around sports is from 3rd grade gym class. One word sums it up: Dodgeball. I just don't think that a game where kids throw balls as hard as they can at each other has any place in civilized society. Especially when you're the kid that everyone tries to hit first because you can't dodge the damn ball. From there came softball and kickball and basketball and volleyball and all kinds of other games with balls. The panic was never ending.

Whether my sports trepidation was (is) about a fear of losing or a fear of winning or a fear of people yelling at me because I did something wrong doesn't really matter. But if I had to guess, I would say it's all the above.

The truth is that I don't like to do things unless I can do them well. Scratch that. I don't like to do things unless I can do them perfectly, even if it's something I've never done before. Talk about setting myself up for failure from the get-go. But I'm working on it. And that's why tennis was so huge. Not only was I going to willingly pay money to play a sport, but I was also going to walk straight onto a court of imperfection. It seems my desire to hit the crap out of something was trumping my fear of failure.

Knowing myself like I do, I was quite aware that I had to have a tennis coach who understood my fragile state and knew how to keep my confidence up. Someone who would follow the pro-con-pro approach: Great swing. Don't forget to follow-through. Good job on the footwork. Lucky for me, Terry showed up for work on my first day of lessons. Talk about patience. I wish I could record Terry's encouraging voice and carry it around with me all day long.

In so many ways, my tennis lessons are the best therapy I've ever had. Did you know that the reason people try to hold their racket so close to the head is because they're trying to control the shot? I didn't. Can you guess where I like to hold my racket? Yep. I play tennis like I play life: If I hold on tighter and with all my strength, I'll control the shot. But, guess what? When I let go of my iron-grip, my shot improves. In fact, the ball actually goes over the net. Fancy that.

Away we go...people like us.

Flying back from a long week of meetings in Seattle last Thursday, I settled into my roomy seat (I heart Virgin America) and decided to clear my head by watching a movie. Preferably a lighthearted comedy that required no thinking whatsoever. Something that would have me floating off the plane and into our first adoption workshop that night.

Scrolling through my options, I realized pretty quickly that the cards were stacked against me. While I loved The Proposal, watching it for the third time in a month sounded like a waste of 8 bucks. No matter how much I loved Ryan Reynolds' abs. So, I clicked on the one movie that the Mr. and I had been consciously avoiding since we first saw the trailer this past summer: Away We Go.

Going through IVF, the last thing I wanted to do was watch a quirky little film about a couple that got pregnant without trying. I mean really, when my bloated belly looked like a pin cushion from all the shots and my boobs were the size of the Good Year blimp times two and my moods were a swinging pendulum, is it any wonder?

But there I was. Staring at the screen. Before I knew it, I clicked "buy" and the movie was mine. For a solid 98 minutes I was going to follow Burt and Verona and her pregnant belly. From the start, I noticed something amazing. I didn't care if she was pregnant. Not that I didn't care about the character. I did. I actually loved the character. I loved the writing. I loved the story. But I didn't care that she was pregnant. This was their journey. Not mine. Until they got to Montreal. That's where they stayed with their friends, Tom and Munch (that's a girl btw), and their adopted children.

To set the scene: Burt, Verona, Tom and Munch were out on the town for a little adult fun. Tom and Munch seemed so in love with each other and their children. Their life seemed perfect. But that would be too... perfect, right?

Tom: She had another miscarriage.
Burt: What? When:
Tom: Thursday.
Burt: This Thursday?
Tom: Yeah. This is her fifth. I know she loves all those kids like, like they were her own blood. But, I wonder if we've been selfish. People like us, we wait 'till our thirties and then we're surprised when the babies aren't so easy to make anymore and then every day another million fourteen-year-olds get pregnant without trying. It's a terrible feeling, this helpless feeling. You just watch these babies grow and then fade. You don't know if you're supposed to name them, or bury them, or...

People like us. And there's the rub. But you know what, I don't think Tom's people and my people are the same people. My people, we're ready to stop pushing our bodies to do something they simply don't want to do. That's why my people and I get along. That and we all have a deep appreciation for Ryan Reynolds' abs.

I know this is painful...

After seeing The Blind Side last night, I had a lot of tears. Tears for the beauty of the story, tears for our own journey, tears just for the sake of tears. I woke up this morning feeling strong in my belief that adoption was my journey... our journey. I felt that strength in the Mr., too. Sitting on the couch, he started searching for books on adoption and we found a good one on Amazon. But rather than purchase from a faceless website, I thought we should go to a good ole brick-and-mortar store. Talk to someone in person who could help us.

The plan was to go to the gym and stop by Barnes & Noble to see if they had the book we wanted, and also to see what other books on adoption they might have. When we got to B & N, I immediately went to the Family Care section, assuming that the books on adoption would be with all the other family planning, pregnancy, etc books. At first glance, we found nothing.

Still feeling upbeat, I went to the information desk and asked the nice man behind the counter to look up the particular book we were searching for. They didn't have it. So then he did a general adoption search. The first books to come up were about adopting a dog. Hmmm. Not a good start. He narrowed the search to child adoption and a couple of books came up, so he took us back over to Family Care to find them. And there on the second to the bottom shelf we found a label for Divorce/Adoption. You're reading that correctly. Divorce/Adoption. On one shelf. Like they go together. Mixed in with books on how to survive a divorce and how to parent a stepchild, we found one book, "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Adoption." Okay... so what exactly is the universe telling us here?

Still feeling upbeat, I headed back to the nice man behind the information desk and asked if there was a comment card or something I could fill out with some feedback about expanding their adoption section. He said, "Well actually, let me introduce you to Laurel." (Laurel happened to be walking by. Lucky me.) "Laurel," he said, "this young lady would like to talk to you about a stocking issue."

Well, I should have known by her body language that Laurel really wasn't into getting feedback. She stayed a full 4 feet away and only half turned her body towards me. If you've ever taken kick-boxing, she sort of had that stance about her, you know the one where a sidekick is surely followed by an undercut punch. But, still feeling upbeat, I said, "Hi Laurel! I just wanted to give some feedback about the lack of adoption books and the fact that the one book you have is filed with divorce." To which Laurel said, "I know that it's really painful, but that's just how it is."

I know it's really painful...
I know it's really painful...
I know it's really painful...

Laurel, honey, you don't know shit. Not only is this NOT painful, but quite frankly, I find it incredibly peaceful and wonderful to embrace where we are and to know that we are going to give a child a home. And in turn, that child is going to give us the chance to be parents. It's not painful, Laurel. It's exactly the opposite in fact, and if it wasn't, then we sure as heck shouldn't be adopting.

The Mr. ended up finding 3 more books on adoption, bringing the grand total to 4 on a shelf with 30-plus books dealing with divorce. I'm just guessing here, but there was also a stack of about 5 shelves, 30-plus books deep, covering fertility and pregnancy. That's around 150 books, and I'm being conservative. And yet, there were four about adoption. And one of them was The Complete Idiot's Guide.

Needless to say, we left B & N without a book. Amazon. Here we come.

Welcome to my life. It's a good one.

Married for 4 years, we've been trying to have a child for 3. Technical difficulties, as the Mr. likes to say. Similar stories are repeated on thousands of blogs; ours is not unique in that sense. But because it's ours, I find it worth writing about. I sorta wrote my feelings, thoughts, anger, tears, etc. down throughout our IVF adventure, but not really. I wish I had. But I didn't. So instead of wishing I could go back and do things differently, I'm just going to jump into our story now. With both feet. Heck, maybe I'll even jump in over my head and see if I can swim.