Redemption

After my long post yesterday, I realized that perhaps I should share another story. This is a story of a wonderful group of women that are near and dear to my heart.

Back in January I shared my story with you all. When we had decided to go through with IVF, I started to look for drug side effects on the web (there is never enough info from the Doctor's as I think they don't want to scare you). While searching I came accross a website, IVFConnections. I started reading some of the posts and continued to do this for about a week or so. Then, one day I decided to join one of the groups. I figured nobody knew me, I could always drop out if I found I didn't like it. So I started to post on a board for people going through IVF at the same time as I was. A few weeks into posting we all shared the city in which we lived, lo and behold one of the ladies was from Ottawa. She told me about an Ottawa specific board where I could meet others in our city going through with fertility treatments. Gutsy that I am (not), I joined that board.

What I didn't know was that these group of women would meet in real life for breakfast. What should I do?? Do I meet them? Do I drop out? I was so scared and nervous, I had never met anyone over the internet before. I sucked it up and went. I had the greatest time!

You would think that all we did was sit around and talk about IVF, but that was not the case. We talked about work, staying at home, husbands, everything you could imagine, with a little fertility talk just to remind us how we met.

Four years later, I am still friends with all these women. We chat through email, we meet for dinner (no longer breakfast, we need nighttime meals now), we go away on trips (although I only went once), we have playgroups and we chat. This mix of women is truly amazing, not all live here in Ottawa, but even those that are farther away feel very close. The group is made up of Career Moms, Stay-at-home Moms, Crafty Mom's and Organized Mom's. A little bit of everyone put together into the mix makes for the perfect bunch.

I truly love these women, they have made a huge impact and difference in my life. I don't know how on earth I would have gotten through the scarey fertility treatments without the support of all of them, they made it so seem so easy. And of course I got to meet all the kids who had come before "J" to show me that it does work.

I may have had one friend turn out to be not so great, well she did introduce me to matching underwear at LaSenza and Mexico, but that is about it. But, I have a whole group of friends ( I want to say 24, but that is a guess and it is too early to actually count) that have been so supportive and enjoyable to be around that I am truly Thankful that I met them all.