Hello, friends. Sorry we've been a little MIA on blogging. I know a lot of you have asked me about what's going on and how the sixth IUI turned out. Well, no big surprise to us, it failed. There are no words to discribe our devastation. Not that we had tons of hope that it would work, but we knew that we didn't want to do another IUI again. Although the procedure, drugs, and doctor visits have been time consuming and expensive, it was always an easy decision on how to move forward. Now that's not the case.
It's been two weeks since we got the negative test and we still haven't come to a firm decision on our next plan of attack. We are debating between IVF and adoption. And when we come to a decision, we have to figure out timing.
If we do IVF, it's about a 2-month process that we both have to be completely committed to. There are lots of do's and don'ts, doctor visits, injections, days of bed rest, and prayers. If we decide to stop any fertility treatment, then we need to get started asap on adoption. We had an IVF meeting with our doctor a couple months ago. She partners with a Lexington doctor, who has the highest success rate for IVF around in my age group, which is 42%. When looking at all the numbers, we were excited that he had the highest percentage, but then again 42% isn't that encouraging. I want more of a guarantee. I need a higher statistic to give me hope that it would work.
Honestly, the hope of having a biological child is diminishing tremendously. I'm pretty sure that having a biological baby is stronger for me than Mike. Every time I look at him, I think of how adorable his baby pictures are and how much I want a little one just like him. I want the experience of being pregnant too. I know that with having PCOS, my ability to lose baby weight will be extremely difficult, but I don't care. I can buy bigger clothes, but it's not as easy to grow a baby in my uterus.
Before the pregnancy test, I was pretty sure I wanted to do IVF if it was negative. But after we got that negative, I spent the next couple days thinking I was over trying and maybe adoptiong a baby in need of parents was the way to go. But then I started thinking of this picture...
and I'm not sure if I'm ready to throw in the towel on a biological baby just yet. Plus I was quite a cute baby too, I have to admit.
Adoption could likely be something we have to do down the road, either for baby #1 or baby #2, but I just don't know yet.
We each made a pros and cons list for IVF and adoption thinking that would give us the answer, but it hasn't yet. So we're taking a much needed vacation. We both stay so busy and rarely get 2 nights in a row where we're together, so now we'll have over a week together. I'm hopeful that God will speak to our hearts on what we need to do.
We'll share details throughout our trip on social media, and our blog when we get back. Hopefully we can share where our infertility journey is taking us next.....
We celebrated Jeter's birthday last weekend. I did invitations, make a dog friendly cake, bought presents, and made bone shaped cookies. I was all about celebrating my favorite four-legged friend.
Honestly, I was very hesitant to get a dog and I was hoping that Mike would just forget about it. However, he was very persistent and I finally had to give in. It was one of the best decisions I've ever made. I've had several dogs growing up, but none that I bonded with quite like Jeter.
No doubt he's stinking adorable, but he has the best personality. He is super smart and luckily potty training was easy. He's also got some sassiness, but he's very friendly and lovable. If I'm ever having a bad day, it's impossible not to cheer up when I come home and he runs up to me so excited to see me.
I know it's a little silly how I treat Jeter like our kid and having a birthday party for him, but it has been a lot of fun. I do feel guilty about how much I obsess about him and how he has to overcompinsate for us not having a baby. Poor dog. I'm sure there are times he just wants to chew on a bone or play fetch, but I just want to cuddle him and treat him like my baby.
Some day, Jeter, I hope to make you a big brother. Hope you had a great birthday! I love you bunches!
Wow! What a fun weekend we just had. We didn't get much time to ourselves or just to relax, but it was great. We got to spend time with our church small group, Mike's family, and my favorite ex-co-workers. The weekend was to celebrate a friend's birthday. It was the one we've mentioned in our blog before, who lost her husband to pancreatic cancer last March and is raising 3 of the most adorable little girls ever.
Last year we celebrated this weekend with our group of friends who all came in to be together, so it worked out that we could all get together again this year. I hate that we don't get to see each other more often or for more time, but it was defintely special time.
After everyone left on Saturday afternoon, Mike and I made plans to come over to her house that night. Mike was going to mow her lawn and we were bringing take out for dinner. I had a fun time chatting and playing with the girls. After bath time, we were playing in the youngest one's room. This has to be the cutest, spunkiest, and sassiest little 3-year old girl I've ever seen. You can't help but love her instantly. Mike and I both loved getting some quality time with her that day as well as her two big sisters. While we were playing, Mike comes in the house and sits by the door to her room. This cutie pie yells out, "Daddy," and runs into his arms and says, "This is my daddy! This is my daddy!"
Mike and I were both speechless. I think mainly because we both were fighting not to cry. Her mom and one of her big sisters were in the room. Being a great mom, she knew what to say and asked her where her daddy was and she and her sister said he was in Heaven. She was only a year and a half when he passed away.
As Mike and I drove home, he brought it up and I broke down. When I looked up, we were driving by the cementary where their daddy was laid to rest. I can't describe how much it breaks my heart that he is no longer with us and he can't be there for his wife and girls. But then I keep having to think of the legacy he left and what amazing things he did in his short 34 year old life.
I thought about the incident several times in the past couple days and Mike and I talked about it again last night. He realized it was an ironic situation. That little girl wants to be able to call someone Daddy, and Mike wants some little girl to call him Daddy.
God makes everything happen for a reason. And sometimes, we don't always understand. As Mike mentioned in a previous post, our church did a series on Life Verses. For years, the verse that always came to me was Romans 8:28. (NIV) It's gotten me through some really tough times.
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, whohave been called according to his purpose. But after this series, I just don't think it fits me as my life verse anymore. I went on the search for a new one. I went back through our past blog entries reading verses that meant something to me that time and none seemed right. I've always loved Romans, so I skimmed the enitre book, but nothing seemed to fit. I also looked around in Hebrews, James, and Timothy.
For some reason, I was drawn over to Peter. Since we went to Rome back in the fall of 2011, I've felt a connection to Peter. We were in Vatican City in front of St. Peter's Basilica and Mike went to the restroom. The lines were very long, so I was sitting near a statue of Peter. I had a long time to talk to God and I gave Him thanks for great men like Peter and I was just in awe of what Peter did to share the Word. My new life verse is 1 Peter 1:21. (NLT)
Through Christ you have come to trust in God. And you have placed your faith and hope in God because he raised Christ from the dead and gave him great glory. Through the process of infertility trust has been tough for me. Well, to be honest, trust in general is hard for me. I've had to learn to have complete trust in God. This verse says so much about my relationship with God and where I am in my life.
I have hope that someday a little one will run into Mike's arms will be able to call him Daddy and I have hope that that adorable little girl will have a father figure in her life to call Daddy until she gets to meet her real Daddy in Heaven.
Well, we couldn't avoid it any longer. It was time for the tube test. We both knew it had to be done before we were going to move forward. I was definitely a little nervous. I didn't think Mike was until he followed me into the bathroom without thinking at the doctor's office.
The test was definitely painful and I was embarrassed that I had to scream out a bit. We were both very worried that we would find that the tubes were closed and we'd have to make a decision. If they are closed, it could mean that surgery is needed or we just skip on to IVF. But then sometimes the tubes can spasm during the test and close up, giving a false positive. So do we still go with those options or do IUI in case they are really normally open? Well, we don't have to worry about it, because both tubes showed to be open! We were both very relieved to see this. I know it might not seem like that big of a deal, but for a couple that only gets bad news, this is HUGE for us.
Mike took me home after the test to recover. The doctor gave me a pain killer to take, but I had to wait an hour to make sure I didn't get sick. It left me pretty wiped for the day, so I decided to just work from home. I had no meetings that day and I just wanted to be in my jammies.
One of my favorite things to do on a weekday when I'm home is to watch The Price is Right. If there's ever a chance, I'm off work, I try to plan my day around the 11:00 hour. Well, guess what? Ironically, on this day they were doing a special for pregnant women on the show! Are you freaking kidding me?! The audience was all preggos! I was very annoyed. I immediately sent a text to the husband, who made me laugh by saying, "You would think a show that is always trying to prevent pet pregnancies wouldn't openly promote them amongst humans!" Oh, well, such is my luck.
Life is just ironic sometimes...like I went to a baby shower on Sunday. It was for a very good friend that is pregnant with a miracle baby. I couldn't be happier for her and her husband. It's been awhile since I've had to go to a baby shower and I got through it great. However, after I got home my period started. I think just to remind me that I shouldn't get excited about baby stuff yet.
I just have to keep remember that God has a plan for us. It's hard to accept, that we have to continue waiting like Mike talked about in his last post. But we're trying to exercise patience and complete surrender to God.
I can't lie, infertility is rough and for the most part, the way I have reacted to it and handled it has made things even rougher. It is one of those things that you cannot be prepared for, nothing in life leading up to it can make it easier or have you better prepped to deal with it. You have to decide on your own how to react and adapt to it. The first decision we made was that we wanted to glorify God through this struggle, and that is one of the best decisions we have ever made. However, our initial goal was to show others struggling with infertility how much easier it is when you go through it with God, yet I read back on this blog and realize that I have stuggled through this process and have doubted God. I've lost faith and I have begun to hate the hope that is still in my heart.
Hope has been a buzzword for me, I can't decide how I feel about it. Every time we go to the doctor and get some good news or we do an IUI, my hope spikes for a few days or a few weeks, only to be dashed by another negative pregnancy test. I was really starting to hate hope so much that I tried to stifle it when I would feel it coming on. After I was able to resist my own hope, I began to hate my wife's hope. Doubts overwhelmed me along with frustration and exhaustion. I just didn't want to do this anymore. My heart grew cold towards everything about our infertility, I was fine with just stopping everything. My wife wasn't anywhere near that point and I could not figure out why she didn't see things the way I did. Why was I so sure about something while she was so far on the opposite end? Being a big movie fan, I am going to utilize one of my favorites in order to make my point:
I was siding with Red (Morgan Freeman for the 3 people left who haven't seen this movie). I found hope to be dangerous, misleading, disappointing, and depressing. All hope was doing was setting me up for failure, making me want something (that I thought) I could never have. I was choosing failure over hope, I was ready to setttle for a life of just the two of us because hope was wearing me down so much.
I've been a Christian my whole life, so I knew this wasn't right. But I also knew that so far, right wasn't working. I was presenting such a shallow and empty faith, two years of a struggle and I'm ready to abandon all hope, destroy my desires, and settle for less than I believe God has planned for me. The reason I have been so absent from this blog lately is because I did not want to reflect that to other people. I can't help how I am reacting to all of this, but I can control who sees it in hopes that no one else does. I could go on and on about this stage of my "hope-hating" for several more paragraphs but I am assuming you get the idea. It wasn't fun and it wasn't good for our marriage. Then we came to church last week and the sermon series was each preacher teaching on their "Life Verse". This week was Phillip Holland teaching, I posted the entire sermon below and it is definitely worth a watch; but I think you will see just how much we felt like we were being spoken to by the opening video in the message:
Hold on, I am supposed to be patient and wait?!?! Of course I already knew that, I just have never liked it. I hate waiting for things, I am all about instant gratification. I am always settling for something less now instead of waiting for something better later. If I really want the 160 GB iPod but only have enough money for the 80 GB iPod, then there is no chance I am waiting 2 extra weeks to have enough money for the one I want, I am settling for the 80 GB. I hate that about myself, I don't think it makes me a bad person, but I would love to have more patience. It really hit me when Phillip talked about settling, because I had never really thought about it but I settle all of the time.
Settling destroys my hope, hope requires patience. There would be no hope if we got everything we wanted immediately. Hope is not what gets you what you want, it is what keeps you going until you get what you want. I used to think I was wrong for thinking about having a baby, that would just get my hopes up. But then I realized why my attitude had shifted so drastically over the past few months and was now polar opposite of how Veronica felt. I had abandoned hope. And that is how a person without hope lives, they become cold and negative. They become pessimistic, doubtful, and their life gets mundane. I can relate because I was there, but I am happy to say my hope has been renewed and I think for the first time I am getting hope right. I am not going to let bad doctor appointments or failed pregnancy tests ruin my hope. They will still be very awful, and I am pretty sure we will still have more of them. But I will continue to hope for what I want. The only person who should take away your hope is God, and he is the one who provides us with hope, and I still want to be hopeful. I always have been, I chose on my own to bury my hope so I could avoid the anguish of the letdown. A negative pregnancy test is a lot easier to handle when you are expecting it all along. But I don't want a negative pregnancy test to be easy, I want it to crush me. Then, I will be that much more hopeful for the next one.
As I think about my life verse I can't help but think about hope, and my life is full of hope right now. I hope my grandpa gets positive results back tomorrow from his operation last week for skin cancer. I hope my mother in law and father in law can adapt as best as possible to dealing with my father in law living in the advanced stages of alzheimers. I hope the void Veronica and I feel is fulfilled soon. Hope is a great thing because all of these things seem possible. I went through a lot of verses that I love, but if I had to settle on a life verse at least for right now, it would be Romans 12:12 "Rejoice in our confident hope. Be patient in trouble and keep on praying."
In closing, I have to play another Shawshank clip to show how Red realizes he was wrong about hope. They found their hope in that movie, and I cannot wait to find mine!
We are now in a pretty weird place with our infertility. One that we feared would come up. And that's facing a tough decision. We've talked about them before, but we're soon going to have to make one. And it's one with no right answer or guarantee.
I called our doctor to chat about our recent failure and what's next. She talked for awhile about our past numbers and the science of it all and I asked her thoughts on IVF. She explained a little and said that the first step was having a discussion in her office. So we made an appointment for that.
After talking to her and thinking about it more throughout that day, I felt excited about it and ready for something new to try. But then the next day, I did more research on it and I got discouraged. First the odds of its success aren't as high as I thought and those odds start to go down after age 35. So then I'm thinking why attempt something with such a big price tag?
I stopped in one of my favorite places today. I went to Shane Co. to get our rings cleaned. Of course, I looked around while they were being cleaned and had the sales associate get out some diamond earrings to look at. They were so pretty! I'm not a big expensive jewelry person. I wanted a nice engagement ring and I'd like some nice earrings, but I'm good after that. Yes, the earrings were thousands of dollars, but they were cheaper than IVF. I even joked with Mike that the earrings were a guarantee. If I bought them, I would definitely get them. With IVF, we can't say for sure that we'd take a baby home in 9 months.
I'm currently reading Life of Pi by Yann Martel and here's an excerpt from it that relates to my feelings on this...
Some of us give up on life with only a resigned sigh. Others fight a little, then lose hope. Still others - and I am one of those - never give up. We fight and fight and fight. We fight no matter the cost of the battle, the losses we take, the improbability of success. We fight to the very end. It's not a question of courage. It's something constiutional, an inability to let go. it may be nothing more than life-hungry stupidity. As long as I have this longing in my heart to have a baby and be a mom, I'm going to keep fighting. As much as the emotions and rejection knock me down, I'm never giving up.
I really think my blog post last week was too negative and missing an important element. Our faith. Without a doubt, our faith has been challenged and I need to stay positive and know that my God is with me. I keep thinking about Job and all that he went through and his faith never waivered. I really need the strength of Job right now.
A couple weeks ago, we stayed in Mt. Sterling with my parents on a Friday night to get up the next day and drive on to Ashland, KY for my cousin's high school graduation party. Since Jeter had a 'sleep over' with his friend Bruno, we were puppy free and I was excited at getting to sleep in. Unfortunately that didn't happen. At 7:30, I woke up to hearing my dad screaming. I jumped up and ran to check on him. I saw his body going crazy and I screamed to Mike that he was having a seizure. I went to his side and he quickly stopped and I was able to calm him down. It really scared me.
I knew this was a side effect of late term Alzheimer's, but I'm tired of the new obstacle and I know it really upset my mom. He had another one a few days after that, so now we're going through testing about it. I'm not sure what the tests can tell us or what can be done to help. My main concern is that whatever we encounter we find the solution that makes things as easy as possible for my mom.
For some reason, this latest challenge has really made me wonder how much time is really left with my dad. I'm mentally prepared for it, but I just want so many more great moments together. I really feel the urgency even more to give him a grandchild. That thought made my tears flow so much last week and what continues to break my heart. I so want him to meet his grandchild. I want to see his face light up when he gets to hold our baby.
I don't know what plan God has for us. I am so anxious to know what it is. Instead of feeling an end to our infertility journey, I feel like we are walking backwards.
My mother-in-law passed on this verse and it really gives me comfort right now:
"The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit."
