Back From Vacation

Here is a quick summary of our vacation:

We spent 5 days in New York City along with a day in Philadelphia. Our room had a futon bed, a shower, and a toilet; all in the same room. I ate 10 slices of pizza, 3 hot dogs (one footlong), 2 philly cheesesteaks, and rabbit. Veronica ate the Brooklyn Bridge. We saw 4 baseball games. We missed a walkoff home run because we had to catch a train. We saw someone beat up a homeless man with a canoe paddle. We saw a girl in a Yankees jersey get beat up by a girl in a Mets jersey. We saw the Yankees win 3 games. We saw Robinson Cano and Nick Swisher hit 2 home runs. We saw Dewayne Wise make a catch that he didn't make. We saw the World Trade Center memorial. We walked through Central Park. We went to Independence Hall but couldn't get inside. We saw Joe Girardi walking down the street. We shopped a lot. We were on the Today show. We didn't talk once about infertility.

That last one is the most important, we took a week off. Not just from work, we took a week off from everything. We didn't worry too much about what we ate, how much sleep we got, or anything else. We were still cautious, still took our pills, and are now ready to go into ultimate frugal mode as we try to save some of that money back and put off the weight we gained while feasting. The only rude reminder I had was when I took all 5 of my pills one morning before eating and walked around feeling like I was going to hurl until we finally found some breakfast.

This vacation was needed, not the physical break, our lives aren't that difficult. We needed the mental break, posting on here is pretty therapeutic because we are pretty much always thinking about our fertility issues. We write about the appointments, tests, results, medications, etc. That is almost easier because we are at least getting answers or taking new directions, the waiting and thinking between all of that is what gets difficult. That's when you start to allow the negative in, you start to think the worst of the worst is going to happen. We are house shopping right now, and on more than one occasion we have considered if we should buy a very big house in case we don't have kids. We quickly correct our thinking know it is wrong to even wonder that at this point, but it's hard not too. The wondering and waiting can wear on someone, it had been on us. The break helped.

My wife is so awesome, she gave me this trip and as you can tell from the above description it was mostly a Mike trip. I got to go to the new Yankee Stadium for the first time. I love New York City in general and it was awesome just to spend a week there. I remember how awesome it was to walk into Yankee Stadium with my dad for the first time. I hope to take my son there someday. It was an awesome week though, the best part was spending 6 days with Veronica. We spent every minute together and never got sick of each other (at least I didn't), we just enjoyed the trip.

We are back to reality now and that is fine. It 's good to return to normalcy and if I had eaten much more pizza I would never be able to get her pregnant. I think we both have a renewed sense of hope now. We are confident and excited for the next stage of all of this. This trip was physically exhausting but mentally refreshing. We feel rested and renewed. I like the verse below, we feel like God has given us our rest. We continue to take our medications and pray and wait. We pray constantly throughout the day and cannot wait to see God's awesome answer to our prayers. I am thankful for God blessing me with a great wife who planned a whole trip for me when she needed a vacation more than I did. We are both very grateful for everyone's support and prayers and ask that the prayers continue. We hope to hear good news soon.

Jeremiah 31:25 "For I have given rest to the weary and joy to the sorrowing."

Time for a Vacation

We've realized that our posts have been pretty negative lately. We've gotten a lot of yucky news and it's hard to stay positive, but we are still very blessed with what we do have.  I can't thank God enough for giving me a wonderful husband. I'm also very blessed with great family, supportive friends, a great church, and a rewarding career. We really just need some time away and we're really looking forward to an upcoming vacation. I definitely think it's exactly what we need. I'm not taking my infertility book, we're not writing in the blog, and we're going to focus on having fun. After all, once we have a house and a little one, it will be harder to take these trips. I think we need to enjoy each other. It's seems like our lives are so busy with work, church groups, softball, and family that we don't get a lot of time just the 2 of us. We have so many stresses in our lives not just including infertility, and we hope we can come back refreshed and ready to keep moving forward on having a baby.

Father's Day

For the past couple weeks, I get super sad when I think of the upcoming Father’s Day. Honestly Mother’s Day didn’t really bum me out like I would expect it, but celebrating dads is different.

First, I think about my own dad. I am definitely a daddy’s girl. I love my dad bunches and he is the coolest dad ever. He and I have always had a special bond and I would do anything for him. He is in the later stages of Alzheimer’s. It has been an interesting past 8 years and this disease shook up my life like nothing else. Whenever a big milestone like Father’s Day comes up, it makes me think. Will this be the last one where he remembers me? Or will it be his last? I hate thinking like that, so I’m going to keep on cherishing each great moment with him.

Secondly, I think of the kids of 2 of my friends that lost their dads the past year. They are all so young and I imagine that even as they grow into adulthood that they will think of their dads on this day and always miss him.

And third, I think of my husband. I know he will make such an amazing dad. I want him to experience a little one looking up to him and worshiping him as much as I did my dad as a kid. I have been reading a book on infertility and I know that he can become a dad, his problem isn’t as severe as mine. I know he is in pain with all of this and I feel so bad that I’m the one holding this process back. I really pray that by next Father’s Day he will either be a dad already or close.

Happy Father’s Day to my dad Ron, my father-in-law Steve, my Papaw Clarence, my Grampa Ken, all my friends who are dads….and soon to my wonderful husband.

Settling In For the Long Haul

Today marked our 3rd appointment over the last two weeks. We actually had a decent appointment today. The news was we had to wait longer. That may not sound awesome, but it's better than what we had been hearing. Nobody was diagnosed with some other infertility condition and most importantly no more drugs were prescribed. But still, we have to keep waiting.

I guess I'm looking at it as baby steps, or maybe the doctor just liked bringing in these $40 co-pays. God has taught me to trust him and have faith, and then he taught me to pray; both were through this experience. I'm starting to wonder if patience is next on his list.

I'm not a very patient guy. We started looking at houses and guess who wants to just buy the first house we can afford, me. We start looking at vacations and guess who wants to go the earliest week possible, me. If we are out and get hungry and decide to stop and eat somewhere, I am the one who wants to stop at the first resaurant we drive by, even if it is Arby's.

Patience has never been my strong suit, maybe God has that on his checklist. I'm OK with that and I'm sure Veronica is more than OK with that. I kept thinking throughout this entire process that we are just a few days away, the next appointment will be the one. That only set me up for frustration and failure. I'm starting to learn that I can't think like that, that this very well could be a long and drawn out process that we are just in the beginning stages.

Like I said, I want what God wants; I'm just not sure what he wants yet. On the brightside of all of this is that if I am patient and accept that it will probably take a while. Who knows, maybe God will surprise us.

James 1:2-4 "Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an oppotunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing."

The Waiting Game and 2 Week Intrevals

Life is funny right now with how we operate.  Everything is in two week intrevals, instead of waiting for weekends, holidays, and vacations to show up on our calendar; we are waiting for positive LH kits, doctor appointments, and that time of the month to not show up.

The other day we learned of a couple we are friends with that just found out were pregnant. We talked about how it is easy to get jealous or mad when that happens. It seems like it is happening to everyone we know, and I think it is only natural to get a little frustrated with the thought of "why can't that be us?" We've found it better to think about how exciting it will be when we get to tell all of our friends the news, and how great it will be having so many other friends and family members with young kids around.

In the meantime we will keep going in two week intrevals, where we wait and then go onto the next step. I pray every night that soon enough we will wait two weeks and find that the next step is not necessary because we are pregnant. I cannot describe the excitement I feel when I think about that day. Going into this, I was perfectly fine with going ahead and trying to conceive or waiting, it didn't matter; but now that we are all in on it, I am so ready for it to happen.

When Veronica starts taking those preganancy tests, the prayers get pretty intense. One positive coming from this is I have never prayed longer, harder, and more often to my God than I have over the past several months.

Some prayers are filled with questions: what is the reason for all of this? Is it to improve my prayer life? I feel like that has gotten better but maybe it's just not good enough. Is God trying to tell us to enjoy being a couple first? Or is this God at all? Maybe some people just have bad luck with fertility and there is no rhyme or reason for it, it just happens.

Like we've said before, we choose to believe that God has a plan. We are simply trying to follow His direction. Each step of the way I pray that God comforts us and leads us to the next step. He has never failed us and never will. It's easy for us to get annoyed or upset at things like bad news from doctors, but through it all I am thankful that God has kept us encouraged and reminded us of His big picture. I hope He understands our brief moments of frustration. I am thankful that we have such a strong faith to rely on. I couldn't imagine where we would be right now without God.

So we'll keep living life 2 weeks at a time, hoping the monotony of the 2 week intrevals is soon broken. Until then, we'll keep doing what we've done all along. There may be some bad days but we'll just look forward to the good days.

Job 8: 5-6 "But if you pray to God and seek the favor of the Almighty, and if you are pure and live with intergrity, he will surely rise up and restore your happy home."


UPDATE: I started this blog last week, since then we published a couple others. Last week was not a great week for us with the car repair, bad appointment, etc. Luckily this week is off to a better start. Nissan is going to cover our new transmission and we have decided that we are not missing our NYC trip. We are hopeful this new drug will work, luckily is has not negatively impacted Veronica yet.

Another Appointment

We had a pretty good day yesterday. After work we went to my softball game where Veronica got to hang out with some of her friends who also have husbands on the team and I got to help dominate the Beargrass Christian Church men's team.  We then immediately took off for the Yum Center for a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert. It was a fun show despite the fact that I am pretty sure we were the only two there with full-time jobs.

Looming over all of that was yet another doctor appointment this morning. So far these appoinments always begin with hope and end with despair. We have seriously gone in there every time thinking this will the appointment when they get us heading in the right direction, and every time we leave with nothing but more bad news.

To keep it short and simple, still, nothing is working. Her body isn't doing things right and the drugs aren't working to fix it. So the solution of course is more drugs.

It seems like so long ago when we thought I was the problem, and back then it seemed so simple to fix. The complexity of this whole situation just seems to keep getting larger.

I hear stories of people who went through this for 3-4 years with no resolution. If you are one of them you have my utmost respect. I don't know how you handle this feeling for so long. It's depressing to have so much hope then just 20 minutes later all the hope is gone until your next appointment. Anymore I have to constantly fight the worry and doubt that is creeping up inside of me. Everything within my faith tells me that our desire to have kids is something that God placed in our hearts because it is something that he wants for us too. But then I can't help but wonder what the purpose is of all of this; is it just this blog? Is it to help our faith? Does he want us to slow things down? Or is there no reason for this? Maybe it's just happening.

It's frustrating to read stories about a young girl who got high and left her baby on top of a car and drove off. Or to read about the guy who found an abandoned infant in an alley. Or about the guy in Tennessee that has 30 different kids with 11 different women and makes minimum wage so he gets out of paying child support. I read that story and the writer tries to get me to feel sorry for him. Sometimes I think it's OK to question God so long as we don't doubt God. I hope so because I can't help but question why fertility comes so easy to people like that when we go through this.

I know we'll be great parents that will raise our kids in the church and mold them into Godly people. We just need the chance to be able to do that.

Isaiah 41:10 "Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand."

Too Much

Yesterday, I was in a really low place. I wasn’t feeling well from my medicine, so I ended up leaving work early and just laying around the house. Mike took my car in for an oil change and to check out the weird noise it’s been making. He assumed it was the tires that soon need to be replaced. Well, yes, they do need to be replaced, but also the noise that needed to be fixed is the transmission. Ugh! The cost would likely be around $2500. That doesn't include new tires. That’s so frustrating especially since we have so much left to pay on the car. I’ve been strategic on working to pay as much as we can on the cars, but it seems like our finances are so stretched. The costs for our infertility are really adding up with all the tests, doctor visits, and medicines. Mike is finishing up his bachelor’s degree online and when he’s done at the end of next year, we’ll have a huge bill to start paying. Plus we have a spending problem we can’t seem to get under control. We're working on it, but it's so hard to not spend.

I think we were both a bit bummed and even last night Mike said that we keep getting bad news, so I think he was feeling my negative mood too. We really want a house and it doesn’t seem like we’re going to sell our condo anytime soon. We’ve considered renting it out and working on our savings for a down payment, but now we’re struggling to build that up.

My parents are also struggling with money and that stresses me out too. My mom could no longer handle having her daycare on top of caring for my dad, so in September she quit her job. My dad does receive retirement money, but it's not enough, so my mom has worked so diligently to get more help. She has had a little luck and her church has been so supportive, but it has been extremely tight. She should be fine once she receives money from a program that helps caregivers, but it looks like she might not get that until 2013 when she's had a full calendar year of no income. They think she makes too much, which is based on her 2011 tax income. We've jumped in to help a few times, but if anything big comes up I know she'll need our help.

We so want a baby and we haven’t gotten positive news on that and we just don’t know how much we’ll have to keep spending. Our health insurance doesn’t cover infertility and we are just now to the point of doing expensive procedures and more expensive meds. We’re praying that IUI works, but the thought of IVF and/or adoption is still looming out there. And those are really pricy. Estimated costs are $10,000 and $30,000 respectively. And that’s just the start of getting a baby…we’ll have to budget in daycare, diapers, clothing, and at some point the kid will want food.

I ended the day with the Season Finale of Giuliana and Bill. It’s currently my favorite reality show and a big source of my inspiration to staying positive through our infertility journey. They have gone through so much in trying to have a baby for 4 years and I’m so happy that they are finally getting their prayers answered. However, it makes me so scared that I may have to endure all the things they went through including failed IUIs, IVFs, a miscarriage, breast cancer, and a gestational carrier. Throughout all of that, they have stayed strong and are using their celebrity status to share their story with the world and encourage others.

Today is a new day and I'm hoping my personal pity party is over. Here is the verse that is speaking to me:

Come back to the place of safety, all you prisoners who still have hope! I promise this very day that I will repay two blessings for each of your troubles.

Zechariah 9:12