This post has been a bit of a surreal one to write. Because, to be honest, I still can’t quite believe where life has us currently. Nine months ago, we were newly pregnant and over the moon to be expecting a second IVF baby around my birthday at the beginning of May. We were celebrating […]

This post has been a bit of a surreal one to write. Because, to be honest, I still can’t quite believe where life has us currently.
Nine months ago, we were newly pregnant and over the moon to be expecting a second IVF baby around my birthday at the beginning of May. We were celebrating our 5th anniversary of living in Spain, applying for permanent visas to be able to stay much longer, and looking into purchasing our first home in the city. We found ourselves in such a sweet spot of daily life here in Barcelona surrounded by dear friends (including the cutest little circle of buddies for Teo), fulfilling work we both loved, and a happy return to post-pandemic traveling around Europe.
But shortly thereafter, our hearts broke when our doctor suddenly went quiet during an ultrasound one day. We ended up having a d&c just down the hallway from where we delivered Teo, which was unfortunately followed by months of additional complications, a barrage of doctor’s appointments, some truly awful medications, and ultimately one additional surgery. For months it felt like we were stuck in this frustrating grief time warp, finding it difficult to move forward emotionally while my body was still clinging to the pregnancy physically. Thankfully we eventually made it to the other side of things and were given the green light to continue again with fertility treatments if interested. So after talking with our doctor and giving things a lot of thought, we decided this spring to undergo a second full round of IVF in the hopes of bringing one more babe into our little family. (More on that below.) But in the midst of all of that, life took another sharp left turn that we didn’t see coming…
Our family is now moving back to Kansas City in June. ♡
To say this move is unexpected and bittersweet would be a understatement. I have to admit I’m still working to wrap my mind around it most days, since it’s just such a complete 180 from what we had envisioned for these next few years ahead. But Barclay and I have always said it would likely be our parents’ health that ultimately drew us back to the United States. And when things recently took a difficult turn for one of our families, it felt clear to us that we wanted to be back as soon as possible to help. So after taking turns making a number of trips back to the States over the past few months, we now have one-way tickets booked for our entire family in less than two months.
Our days are currently spent swimming in a sea of logistics, trying to piece together the puzzle of an international move with two adults, a toddler, our sweet elderly pup, and all of our belongings. It has been…a lot. (Especially in the midst of IVF plus everything else going on.) But our friends and family back in the States have gone above and beyond to help us sort through various details of getting resettled and have so generously welcomed us back with such open arms. And our wonderful crew here in Barcelona has firmly decided it’s not a forever good-bye and that we’re simply going to squeeze in as many good times as possible together here before we leave. So emotions are running quite high in our home right now, but we’re trying to remind ourselves when logistics get overwhelming that everything will somehow eventually sort itself out, and above all, we are counting ourselves enormously lucky to be surrounded by such a loving crew around the world right now.
Anyway, clearly, lots to catch up on! So for anyone interested in reading more about the latest chapter of our IVF journey, adventures in purchasing a house (and all the things!) from overseas, plans for our remaining seven weeks here in Europe, plus a special garden update from Mali, here’s the latest and probably final update I’ll probably sharing from here in Barcelona.

Our embryo transfer two weeks ago was such a happy day.
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