55 orange pills

It was quite a shock to take my pill this morning - not the automatic process that it has always been. This time, as I looked down and ran my fingers across my rows of pills, they didn't float off into infinity like they always have before. I take one pill each morning for eight more weeks, and then I stop. And then, after a while, for the first time in forever, I become fertile. And then we try to make a baby. Not by doing anything too differently, just with the absence of a tiny little pill each morning. Then perhaps, one day, almost out of the blue, we become parents. How terrifying.

How do I decide that I'm ready? That I'm all grown up and I know enough about the world to start teaching another? Am I an adult? How did that happen? I don't know how people do it. How they decide that they're good enough. That they're worthy.

The one thing that makes it not completely terrifying, that makes me think that it is also exciting and right, is of course my husband. I've never known anyone like him - so extraordinary. I love him, and I trust him. Not only his heart, but his head. His values, his ethics, his wisdom. I can imagine no better role-model for our child. We are a team, and I don't have to be everything, I just have to be myself. We have so much joy in our life together as two, it would be a delight to make it three. So with him beside me, I think that I might have the courage to soon stop taking these tiny orange pills.