The Trifecta

I'm in search of The Trifecta. What is that, you ask? Oh well it's essentially my pursuit of happiness: a good job, a home, and a kid. I'm knocking on the door of 28.5 years and I'm still in search of The Trifecta. I know it's become the sad, sad, sad story of my generation that we're reaching milestones later, and later than we (or our parents) ever imagined. Sam and I appear to be particularly stunted... thanks infertility.

Suddenly it feels as if there is potential, potential to achieve The Trifecta. Unbelievable. Simply unbelievable. I won't get in to the employment thing because that just seems dumb to talk about on a public blog, but I'm EXCEPTIONALLY pleased to announce that the Greavus are house hunting! Eeekkkkk! I know, I know. Probably not that exciting, but to us, we're beyond pumped. The reason we're finally pulling the trigger on a house is probably a little premature and maybe the strangest reason ever to start the search. Essentially, if we decide adoption is our next step, we will have to move. No one, and I really mean that, absolutely no social worker would approve us for a home study in our current setup... we don't even have smoke detectors. When we started thinking about moving, we realized (once again) that rent is not cheap. We started crunching numbers and well, to get into a nice(r) place that will accept our 80 lb Weimeraner, our cat, and would pass a home inspection.... well it's not pretty. I exclaimed, "we could own a house for less than that!" And do you know what? We actually can!

Regardless of the decision to adopt, we would never feel comfortable bringing our child home to our current place, so moving is a must at some time. And now that we've started looking, we're both full three quarters steam ahead. We are trying to be EXTRA cautious with our choices. While we fully realize that the third part of our trifecta could come in the form of the two little embryos we transferred, we also realize that it might not. We could be years and thousands upon THOUSANDS of dollars away from a bring home baby. In order to save thousands, we need enough margin in our monthly budget. Which means the house of our dreams is not in the works, nor is the house we thought we'd buy when we got married... no this is the house of reality. The reality that says any child may cost $30,000+... literally. Dream homes are for later... much, much later. This will be a true "starter home"... and not like the starter homes my generation and those proceeding us thought were starters homes, no this will be a true starter home. But the cool thing is, we're still so excited about it. It probably won't even have five of our top ten wants, but it's still INCREDIBLE that we're even doing this.

As to the whole baby thing... I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought of the potential we have right now. The potential for a positive pregnancy test on Friday and a bring home baby in 36 weeks. I've certainly thought of how ASTONISHINGLY different out lives would look if we weren't expecting to spend the next few years saving for a chance at a baby. I mean obviously, our lives would look waayyy different just because we have a baby... that in and of itself would be ridiculously different. But in terms of finances, things would radically change if we weren't up against IVF or adoption.

The potential for big things, for life altering change is definitely there... as to how significant the potential is, I have no idea. What are the odds we actually achieve ALL THREE?!?!? Probably slim... our lives simply do not seem to work that way. But two out of three? Still amazing. One out of three? I'd still be thrilled with ANY positive thing right now. Particularly if that one is a BABY... literally, I'll live in a hovel and work for minimum wage for a baby.

Speaking of baby... test day is Friday. I'm giving myself about a 5% chance of a positive beta which is low even for me. My doubts are at an all time high because I had period-ish cramps on and off all day Sunday, all day Monday and most of Tuesday. They are gone now, but I still don't think this bodes well. But one way or another, we'll find out on Friday.

And even if all three fall through, our anniversary is next week... I'm reminded that we are abundantly blessed to have four years of marriage behind us. We have a small trip planned to get away and relax together over a long weekend and I'm ridiculously excited! Other than Florida for IVF (which was too stressful and sad to even consider a vacation) this will be the first getaway since our last anniversary. We're ready.