The soft glow of my laptop cuts through the dim living room. I’m down to the final bug fix in the beta. Across the couch, Anh is half-asleep, his laptop tilted dangerously on his chest. We’ve spent months here—late nights, early mornings—pouring ourselves into this project. Every line of code holds something: grief, curiosity, persistence.
I nudge him gently.
"Anh," I call softly, "Em nghĩ nó đã sãn sàng." (I think it's ready.)
He blinks awake, brushing sleep from his eyes as he sits up beside me. "Thật sao? Cho anh xem." (Really? Let's see it.)
We scroll through it together—quiet, focused. The app has outgrown its original purpose. It started as a personal tracker, a way to make sense of cycles and meds. Now it’s something more: a support hub for navigating fertility from every angle—mental health, legal guidance, encrypted peer networks, even bilingual resources.
The next morning, we hit launch.
And then we wait.
The first messages come in faster than we expect. Women across Texas. A few from Florida. One from rural Georgia. Each message is different, but the throughline is the same: thank you.
Some offer feedback, others share stories that echo our own. I read them slowly, one by one, letting it sink in.
A month into the beta, we get an email that reroutes everything. A representative from a major tech investor wants to meet—serious funding, international rollout, full infrastructure support. It’s the kind of opportunity you don’t plan for because it always happens to someone else.
Anh and I start prepping right away—decks, projections, user growth curves. But somewhere in the middle of it, I notice something off. I’m late. Not dramatically, just enough to register. I assume it’s stress. PCOS has always made my cycles unpredictable, and lately, sleep and meals have been inconsistent too.
Still, something nudges at me. A whisper I can’t ignore.
So I test.
Alone in the bathroom, I wait. No timer. No app open. Just silence and the test on the edge of the sink. It feels strange—familiar but not. We’ve been here before, but this time, there’s no calendar counting down a treatment cycle. No hormone schedule taped to the fridge.
Just me, and this possibility.
When the result appears, I blink once, twice—trying to process what I’m seeing.
Two lines. Bold. Clear. Positive.
"Anh!" I call out, barely above a whisper. Anh rushes in, eyes scanning my face for something to fix. When I hand him the test, he freezes. His eyes flick down, then back to mine. Then he pulls me into his arms, so tightly I can barely breathe. "Anh, đến đây nào!" (Anh, come here!)
"Làm thế nào… Khi nào…" (How... when...) He stammers, voice catching on each word.
I laugh—wet, startled. Not out of certainty. Just relief. Or maybe disbelief. Or both. "Có lẽ đôi khi cuộc sống có những kế hoạch riêng củs nó." (I guess sometimes life has its own plans.)
The months that follow blur and expand in equal measure. My belly grows. So does our codebase. The investor meeting exceeds anything we dared imagine—full backing, a dedicated team, plans for a national rollout.
We work like we’ve never worked before—mornings filled with feature maps and API calls, afternoons spent at prenatal checkups, evenings debugging side by side with my feet propped on the ottoman and Anh talking to my stomach between lines of code. Two creations, unfolding in parallel.
Then, on a clear summer morning, our son arrives—wailing, furious, alive. I hold him close, stunned by the weight of him, by the strangeness of being on the other side of something we weren’t sure we’d survive. Anh’s hand is on my back, steady and warm.
A week later, I’m sitting by the window, nursing our son in the quiet early light, when Anh bursts into the room—eyes wide, phone in hand, grinning like he can’t contain it. "Mai, chúng ta đã làm được! Ứng dụng vừa cán mốc 100,000 luọt tải xuống.!" (Mai, we did it! The app just hit 100,000 downloads!)
I glance down at our son, then up at Anh, and a smile forms before I can stop it. "Xem chúng ta này," (Look at us,) I murmur, my voice catching at the edges. "Doanh nhân công nghệ và phụ huynh mới. Ai có thể ngờ được chứ?" (Tech entrepreneurs and new parents. Who would have thought?)
Anh leans in, presses a kiss to my forehead, then traces his fingertip gently along our baby’s cheek—barely a touch, like he’s still making sure he’s real. "Có lẽ chúng ta thực sự đã được nâng cấp, nhỉ?" (I guess we really did get upgraded, huh?)
I take it all in—the warmth of his hand on mine, the soft rise and fall of our son’s breath, the phone on the nightstand blinking with app alerts and user messages. This isn’t the life we mapped out when we started, but somehow, it’s exactly where we were meant to arrive.
We built something we needed—then watched it become something bigger. And now, here in this small, bright room, I realize we’ve done it twice.
I hold my son a little closer, anchoring myself in his weight, his warmth. And for the first time in a long time, I don’t feel like I’m waiting for the next heartbreak. I just feel here. Full. Whole. Ready.