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Friends: The One With The Birth Mother

Those of you who know me know that I love the TV show Friends.
I not only own all 10 seasons on DVD and Blu-ray, I also own the Friends Trivia game and the Scene It Friends Edition game. I have watched every episode multiple times. I have watched the entire series from start to finish at least 3 times since I've had the DVDs. I can pretty much say every line of every episode before it's said in the episode.

As I've gotten older it seems that every episode, no matter how many times I've watched it before, I see or hear new things that didn't register before. There are many things in that wonderful show that now, as a married woman, I see differently than I did in my late teens and early 20s.

My husband knows that when I'm in a bad mood (thanks hormones & fertility meds!) popping a disc of Friends into the Blu-ray player will usually help get me in a better mood. Well, just yesterday I was in one of those moods so a Friends disc was put in.

It ended up being later in the series, after Monica & Chandler were married and as Rachel & Ross were preparing for their baby. As the episodes rolled on we got to the episode where Monica and Chandler, having started the process of adoption many episodes earlier, meet with their potential birth mother, Erica.

As I sat watching that particular episode I remembered how well Friends did at showing the struggle with infertility that Monica & Chandler went through. There have been many times over this past year that I have felt like Monica. The timed intercourse. Peeing on more sticks than I could ever have thought. When Monica & Chandler were trying for a baby they went through many of the same things, and we all know Monica's type-A personality was on top of everything.

After a year of trying they decided to get help. The One With The Fertility Test. That's when we found out that Monica had an inhospitable uterus and Chandler had low motility and a low sperm count. These are real life issues. These are things that couples are told daily. Both of these things combined made it impossible for Monica & Chandler to have children naturally. Thankfully these are not things that we have been told, yet. Thankfully we are still on a path that could lead to biological children, Lord willing.

One of the most poignant things that was said in the episode we watched yesterday was when Chandler was talking to Erica about how much they wanted a child. He told her that it broke his heart that he couldn't give this to Monica, that he couldn't give her babies. He begged Erica to consider them as adoptive parents, that he would work hard to be the best father to that child that he could be. Then, he talked of Monica. That's when he said it, "But my wife, she's already there. She is a mother without a baby."

That is exactly how this last year has felt. I'm a mother without a baby. The next few days holds the potential to change that. I'm praying hard that it changes this time. God's love is great and His mercies are new each day. I believe that I will be a mother some day, even if it doesn't happen how I imagine it.

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