The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

When Wendy and I decided to to start trying to have children, we had a very specific plan. It went something like this:

1. Visit Europe first (done, May/June 2007).
2. Time birth such that Wendy could take at least 6 months off of work.
3. Time birth to occur in October (our families have an unusually high number of births in October, we wanted to continue the trend).
4. Avoid a Christmas or New Years birth.

That was about 2 years ago. Oh how absurdly naive we were.... Then we lost a pregnancy. Then I got cancer. Then we lost another pregnancy. Then we "shouldn't have children" while I'm taking Gleevec. Then we could. Then we lost another pregnancy.

Now we just want a child. We don't care when it's birthday is, we don't care how the birth coincides with Wendy's work schedule and he or she will just have to make due if their birthday is close to Christmas or New Years. The only thing we were right about was getting a dream vacation out of the way before diving into all this. And I think I'd even go back and give that up if we could just get a pregnancy to stick.

As they say, "10 fingers and 10 toes", that's all we're asking for now.

For the curious, the title comes from the Robert Burns poem "To A Mouse". Though it's not exact, it's often quoted as "The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry".