For awhile now, I’d been thinking about starting a new blog. Well, keeping all my content, but starting a new website solely for my blog. But the OG — Who Shot Down My Stork? — was an infertility blog. And that’s not what this space is anymore.
But Counting Stars came from that part of me who went through multiple rounds of in vitro fertilization (IVF).
Back in 2013, we did our first IVF. It was under this guarantee program where basically we threw a lot (some would say a shit ton) of money down, something like $25,000 and if we had a baby somewhere in three IVFs, the company would keep that money. If it didn’t work out, we’d get all that money refunded. (Fun fact: we were so hopelessly infertile that even a guarantee program didn’t want to bet on us and we did indeed get that money back, but I digress.)
During that time, Chris and I were in the car driving one day and this song came on, Counting Stars by OneRepublic. The lyrics… I felt those hard.
Lately, I’ve been, I’ve been losing sleep
Dreaming about the things that we could be
But baby, I’ve been, I’ve been praying hard
Said, “No more counting dollars, we’ll be counting stars”
Yeah, we’ll be counting stars
It became kind of our song. Our rallying cry during the endless slog of stress, heartache, and pain. “No more counting dollars, we’ll be counting stars.”
No more focusing on the dollars, the money we had handed over to our fertility clinic, so much money it made me want to vomit. But fuck it all.
We were all in. We were counting stars.
And that song has stayed with me over the years. It’s actually one of my favorite songs. My stars, my miracles, they’re here. Upstairs sleeping as I’m writing this, as a matter of fact. So, when the title came to me, suddenly popping in my head amidst the other (really embarrassing) contenders, I knew this was it.