Today would have been my due date had I not miscarried. I’ve never remembered any of my other due dates but this time I thought things were going to be different, I honestly believed we would be bringing our baby home this time. Now here I sit on May 25, 2016 with empty arms and an empty belly. Infertility has changed me, it’s made me stronger yet weaker. It’s made me question who I am and who I will be at the end of this journey. It’s brought me closer to John because he’s the only one who can pick me up after the hardest of days. Nothing about this has been easy or fair. Besides struggling with infertility there’s something else that I’ve been struggling with and that’s praying about my infertility. For some reason I’ve never been able to pray about any of what we’ve been through….like physically I can’t get myself to do it and I don’t know why. I’m not a huge religious person but I’ll go to church when I feel like I need it and I have no issues praying about other things. This has been a topic of conversation with my therapist only to get no resolution so we just end up putting it on the shelf for another time.  It’s been weighing on me a lot lately and I finally had my break through when we were on vacation a few weeks ago. My tww was up when we were in FL so I took a test the second day into our trip and it was negative, another failed IUI. I tried not being sad or pissed off because I didn’t want this to ruin my trip but it was easier said than done. One morning I took a walk on the beach and about half way down the stretch I sat down in the sand, closed my eyes and had a conversation with God. These last few months have been really hard not only physically but it’s really been hard on my relationship. I mostly questioned all that I’ve been doing and if it’s the right thing. It’s so cliche but I wanted reassurance that all of this is worth it because I feel like throwing in the towel. Give me a sign…anything that I can grasp as any kind of hope. It felt good to get everything out and as I was walking back to the resort I saw a starfish that had washed up on the shore. Starfishes are so rare on this beach, in all my times there I’ve only ever seen one. I picked it up and brought it back with me. John was mortified that I would would take it out of its habitat and bring it home with him. I told him that this was the sign I had asked for, whether it really was a sign or not I don’t care it’s what I needed at that very moment. So that little starfish came back to MN with me and I now have it displayed on my coffee table along with 2 other larger starfishes that I bought, one for me and one for John. Although today represents something that should have been I’m not letting it get me down because I have hope that someday my little starfish will come home to me and when he/she does I’m going to share this story with them.