When you are going to have a baby,it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. you buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David.The gondolas in Venice.You may learn some handy phrases in Italian.It's all very exciting!

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives.You pack your bags and away you go!Several hours later the plane lands. The Stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland??" you say. "What do you mean Holland? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy! All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy!"

But there has been a change of flight plan. They've landed in Holland, and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they havent taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence,famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy different guide books.And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you have never met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flasy than Italy. But after you have been there for awhile and catch your breath, you look around....and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills...and Holland has Tulips. Holland even has Rembrants.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy...and they're all bragging about the wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life,you will say"Yes, that is where I was supposed to go. That is what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever,ever go away...because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But...if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special,the very lovely things...about Holland.