Hi! We are [His name] and [Her name] . We've been married for a little over three years, and have one biological child, a daughter.

 

We met later in life; I was 38 and my husband was 55. We met the old-fashioned way, doing something we both love - playing tennis! We were both part of an adult tennis league and just kind of hit it off. We actually got engaged on our way to the US Open in 2018.

 

Due to our ages, we knew pretty early on in our relationship that we'd have to start planning on children earlier rather than later. I have wanted to be a mom since I was a child. [His name] helped raised his ex-wife's son and, due to some health concerns with his ex, going on birth control wasn't a great option for her. [His name] ended up getting a vasectomy, which, in combination with my age, made having a child all that more challenging. [His anme] was hoping that I wouldn't have to go throughIVF, so we decided to try a vasectomy reversal. Knowing what we do now, we definitely would not have gone this route. It was very painful for [His name], and cost us a lot of time and money. Ultimately, the reversal did not work, so we started working with a fertility doctor, pursuing IVF. We are extremely fortunate that my company has fantastic fertility benefits. Our initial plan was to do two rounds of retrievals (my insurance covers two full rounds of IVF), have our wedding, and then hopefully transfer an embryo shortly after our wedding. I tolerated the drug protocol and retrievals really well! Which is another reason we would have gone straight to IVF if we knew then what we do now... it really was not hard on me. However, after two rounds of medicated cycles and retrievals, we only ended up with one PGS-tested "normal" embryo. Both retrievals yielded roughly 15 eggs, of those, only 4 in each cycle made it to day 5. And of those 8, one was tested as "normal". This was heartbreaking, especially to me. I know the odds of a healthy pregnancy, even under the best of circumstances, and was pretty convinced we'd never end up with a child. Luckily, [His name] is much more opptimistic than I am!

 

While we had initially planned a September 2020 wedding, with our transfer shortly after, Covid hit and put a stop to our wedding plans. We still wanted to get married on our original date, but decided it was safer to have a very small wedding, with just family and very close friends, while pushing the bigger wedding out a ways. Since we now had to plan a second wedding, we decided to get married on the tennis courts we play at! And due to the timing for the big wedding (not wanting to be extremely pregnant at the wedding, hopefully fitting into the dress I had purchased before Covid, etc.), we ended up transferring our one embryo about 6 weeks before our first wedding. Only 4 people at the wedding knew we were pregnant. Fun fact is that our daughter was technically at our first wedding and also at our second wedding!!

 

My pregnancy went very well, with no health issues at all. Because of my age, I was monitored closely by a maternal fetal medicine specialist, as well as my OBGYN, especially towards the end of my pregnancy. Due to Covid, [His name] wasn't able to come to any of my checkups, except for the 20-week scan. I was sad that he had to miss out on this experience, but we were honestly both just grateful that our baby was on track and healthy.

 

I was induced a couple days before my due date. My doctor didn't want me going past my due date (again, because of my age). The induction took quite a while... I was admitted into the hospital on a Wednesday and our daughter was born Friday morning at 4:04. We chose not to find out the gender of our baby until he/she was born, so that made her delivery extra special!

 

I was just saying to [His name] the other day that being a parent is the most fun thing I've ever experienced! Our daughter is such a joy and driving to pick her up after work is my favorite part of every day. It's fascinating to watch her learn and grow... at this age (2.5), it seems like there's something new every day!

 

Although having a child obviously changed our lives, we still both try make time for the things that we enjoyed before our daughter joined our family. Instead of playing tennis together a few times a week, we now each play one night a week, while the other is home with our daughter. I still try to volunteer at the parrot shelter a couple times a month. It's not nearly as often as I used to volunteer, because my time home on the weekends is much more important now.

 

In addition to our daughter, our family also consists of an amazing dog, Maggie, two cats, Blitz & Alfie, a Yellow-Shouldered Amazon parrot, Rio, and a 55-gallon fish tank. Both [His name] and I love animals and feel it's beneficial for children to grow up around animals. In addition to the unique bond humans have with animals, we believe it teaches children compassion towards all living things, not just humans. Our daughter has recently decided that it's her job to feed the cats and dog and takes this job very seriously. It's adorable!

 

I work in the Research & Development group at a large consumer goods company. My college degree is actually in Elementary Education (kindergarten - 8th grade) but I realized very late in college, that I enjoyed taking care of children much more than I enjoyed teaching them. I've always loved children and loved babysitting when I was younger. I also worked in a daycare in college, in the Infant - 15-month room and I absolutely loved it! Teaching just wasn't the same, and I unfortunately didn't make that distiction until right before graduation. Through a strange twist, I ended up working in an R&D role and I love it. I work with fragrances and fragrance houses.

 

[His name] degree is in aeronautical engineering, but like me, he's not currently in that line of work. [His name] works at a pharmaceutical company in global IT as a project manager.

 

When I was younger, I always envisioned myself being a stay at home mom. However, jobs just aren't as steady as they used to be when I was growing up (my mom was a stay at home mom). The first two large consumer goods companies I worked for both closed the locations I was working at and moved them to another part of the country. Since I didn't want to relocate, I had to find new jobs each time. My husband and I both felt that only having one income was risky, so we do both work. I was extremely lucky in that my company offers 6 months of maternity leave, so it was amazing to spend the first 6-months of our daughter's life with her! We did choose to put her in daycare when I went back to work. It was extremely hard (on us, she was fine!) the first week or so, but she really does enjoy it. Our daycare has live feed cameras in each room, so we can log in at any point of the day and see what she's up to. I definitely take advantage of this! I love to see her interacting with her friends, or doing group activities :-) The daycare we go to is right outside our neighborhood, so in the summer, we'll sometimes walk to pick her up.

 

Our evenings are spent playing with our daughter, cooking dinner, and getting our daughter ready for bed. We love to go for walks after school, when it's nice out.

 

Our favorite holidays are Halloween and Christmas and we have built a lot of traditions around these holidays, in particular. Traditions were a big part of my family growing up, and I still look back fondly on thowe memories. I'm so excited to build new ones with our daughter and my husband!

 

Our daughter is lucky to have 3 cousins on my side, all close in age! My brother and sister-in-law have one son, who is 7 weeks younger than she. They live about 45-minutes away from us, near my parents, who we also see often. Grandma and Grandpa are always happy to come spend time with their grand daughter! Her other two cousins (my other brother and sister-in-law) live outside our state - about 2-hours by plane. We just got back from spending a long weekend with them. Their kids are 1 and 3, so she is right in the middle. They had s much fun together!

 

Our daughter also has a cousin and second cousins on her father's side. They are two girls who are 4 & 7. They live about 8 hours by car, but we try to get out to visit them (and the rest of my husband's family) at least twice a year. We spend every Thanksgiving with them. Our daughter and the girls get along really well!

 

My husband and I both love being parents and would love to give our daughter a sibling! We both grew up with 2 siblings each and are still very close to our siblings. We'd love for our daughter to have the same opportunity!

 

Thank you so much for reading our profile! If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.