I was recently watching an episode of Guiliana and Bill that we had taped earlier in the year, and have not been able to get one scene out of my head.
They have both decided to hold off on IVF, and while Guiliana is in LA commencing their ‘year of fun’, Bill gets a call from a buyer interested in purchasing their recently built dream home.
I wanted to turn back time, fly to Chicago and beg Bill not to do it, and here’s why: while he was negotiating the sale, Guiliana had a very tender scene with one of her friends newborns, and the look in her eyes brought me back to a defining crossroads for Lisa and I early in our parenthood pursuits.
Lisa had been accepted into a full ride Phd program at University of Minnesota, complete with a teaching job. After only a few interviews, I was hired by a regional bank to handle their mortgage operations. To make it seem even more perfect, my grandma’s older sister was in a nursing home, and wanted us to live in her home to help us get our start there. It all seemed so easy.
The only problem is, when I got home from the job interview and told Lisa about the great offer, she hugged me and thanked me and her eyes began to tear up. Then she looked up at me, with the same look in her eyes that Guiliana had when she looked at that baby, and said “I want to stay here and have our baby.”
My initial reaction was “yeah right”. It made no sense at all. The Phd, the job, the place to stay–it must be meant to be. We would be financially set, even ahead the way things were looking.
I searched her eyes for any doubt about her decision and I couldn’t see any. I realized all of the doubt was mine. The certainty of the Phd already being accepted, the job, the place to stay all appealed to my male need to have it all fall into a sensible order.
But Lisa was connected to something bigger than all of that. Or perhaps it was something smaller, the spirit voice of our baby.
Looking back on it, I thank God we stayed. Much like Bill, I wanted my child to be around the family and community I had grown up in–my town, my people. Moving away would have made me feel out of place, in a foreign land, and further away from the baby that would eventually find her way into our lives about five years later.
The home that we had built a nursery in was filled with the late night cries, tender early morning feedings, and zombie like bliss that every infertility patient yearns for. If we had moved to Minnesota, that home never would have been filled with those magical memories.
If there is any advice I could give to Bill, it would be to listen to Guiliana’s heart, and not your head. Her first reaction was no way was she going to sell that house. I believe that it was because she is connected to the spirit of her baby, and that house was part of the path that baby was taking into your life.
Another path will reveal itself, and hopefully, you’ll open your heart and eyes up to what your wife is telling you with her heart and eyes, and find your baby’s spirit.