Catching up

It has been a while since my last post - so let's catch up! After my last post we completed IUI #4, which also failed. I wasn't as hormonal that month and I think that the injections had a lot to do with it. (I've heard they don't make you as crazy as clomid) During this cycle my nurses mentioned some options to me if IUI #4 was unsuccessful. Option number one was that I could be referred to an RE and begin further treatment with them or I could have an exploratory laparoscopic surgery done to check for any abnormalities with my reproductive organs, such as scaring or endometriosis. I opted for the surgery because I figured if I was referred to an RE that the surgery would be the first thing they would do anyways and why not do it with my doctor that I already know and absolutely love? My lapy was done almost two weeks ago now and while under anesthesia my doctor also went ahead and completed another dye test on my tubes. The lapy showed that I did indeed have some mild endometriosis that she burned out, but everything else along with my tubes were normal. Praise Jesus! We are praying that this is just another step in the right direction and that maybe, just maybe burning out that endometriosis will help us conceive. I go for my follow up appointment to make sure everything is healing properly on Thursday. I should also begin another cycle this week, so we'll start medications back up then, since I had to skip a cycle to do the lapy.

Let's try something different

IUI attempt #3 was a failure. My emotions have been running wild the past couple of weeks and I have been beyond hormonal this time around. I try to stay positive, but sometimes you just have those down right ugly days. I've had quite a few of those this past week. Its that time in the cycle of emotions, at the beginning of another cycle that you try to have hope again and say "We can do this." and We can get through this.". This cycle we are starting some new medication. We have started 50 mg of Clomid and will take that for a total of 5 days and will begin follistim injections on the 6th day and complete those each day until I ovulate. We may also do another IUI this cycle, but I haven't quite made that decision yet. Just praying for peace this cycle and for that baby we know the Lord has planned for us.

Pushing forward

I was told by my nurse that my last cycle was "perfect". Hmm.. perfect for me would have meant that I was pregnant, but I'm not. However, on a positive note my estrogen and progesterone were the best they've been since I started medication a year ago. I was also the most hormonal, crying mess of a woman too. There were days where I could have bitten someone's head off for no reason and other days where I cried off and on all day. Again, for no reason. I know my husband must have thought I hitched a ride on the crazy train. Because my levels were so good on the 150 mg of clomid, we are trying it one more cycle. Next week we will hopefully have another IUI done, in hopes that we will get pregnant with our take home baby. If not, I will move on to more extensive drugs and exploratory laparoscopic surgery. Praying those won't be needed and our dreams of being parents become our reality.


"Thy will be done."

Our journey continues...

It has officially been 2 years since our ttc journey began. Two years of emotions that I can't begin to comprehend. Since my miscarriage in April, my husband and I decided to take the Summer to just focus on us. It has been exactly what we needed, to just take a step back and stop analyzing every detail of every month. There has still been plenty of grieving, and no doubt there will be more of that to come as what would have been our due date approaches. We have faith in God's plan for our life and know that He has nothing but the best planned for us. Tomorrow I will begin another round of clomid, increasing my dosage to 150 mg. Lord help my husband! I am anxious to begin this journey again and pray that we will get to meet that sweet baby that God has planned for us soon! 

I have prayed earnestly for peace. Peace to overcome my heartache from my previous miscarriage, but also peace of mind for the future. Another miscarriage is a fear of mine that I am sure will be at the forefront of my mind when I get pregnant again. I pray that Jesus takes control of that fear and anxiety and replaces it with trust and hope. Our faith in the Lord has only continued to grow and we truly believe that Jesus has great things in store for us! 

Analogy from Trials Bring Joy

Love this analogy! So true. We can feel happy for you and sad for ourselves.

This blog post is a must read!!

house for sale.

JUNE 27, 2016 | CHELS819

*

I was stirring my coffee when my friend asked the question: “So how are you really right now?”

With the buzz of steaming milk and brewing espresso around me, I admitted my heart’s been a little weary. I touched on how 7 pregnancy announcements from good friends in 3 days drained me a bit. I tried to explain that while my heart was overjoyed for them, it made me a bit reflective of my own journey, which can be a hard, emotional path for me to walk down sometimes.

I could see in her eyes, as someone who doesn’t struggle with infertility, that she couldn’t quite grasp how someone could be happy for someone else but sad for themselves.

And that’s when this example hit me.

Let’s pretend that you and your spouse have decided it’s time to move from your small apartment. It’s time to expand! It’s not necessarily that you don’t like your current place, but you feel ready to embark into a new neighborhood, have the chance to mow a lawn, use a driveway, and have a little more space.

So you celebrate this big decision! You are going to sell your house! You tell your friends, you have a celebratory glass of champagne and list it. It’s time to sell!

Hmmmm. A few days, weeks, months pass. Why isn’t your house selling? You try to stay positive. Oh it takes time! You just have to wait for the perfect buyer! It can take couples almost a year before their house sells! Take a vacation – then it might sell!

In the meantime, friends around you decide they too want to sell their house and move. And you watch and celebrate as they immediately find buyers. It was our first showing! We hadn’t even listed it yet! A friend of a friend asked to buy our house! In fact, some of your friends who didn’t even take care of their apartment sell it right away. Huh?

What is going on, you asked yourselves. You paint the walls, freshen up the tile, and replace the old floors. And yet, months pass by and still, no buyers. Multiple showings, the promise of hope with each one, but a firm and audible NO after every one.

In the meantime, you’re invited to house warming party after house warming party to celebrate your friend’s new home. You are thrilled for them! What a beautiful new kitchen! Lawn! Bathroom! Is that a walk-in closet?? And you wonder what is wrong with our apartment??? You bring the wine, send the congratulations card, help move the boxes, all while dusting off your “for sale” sign. You pack away the towels you bought for a new bathroom. It hurts too much to look at them each day.

Do we try to get used to staying here forever? You begin to ask yourselves how you should approach this limbo. What does the future look like? Do you apply for that new position knowing it would be across town, near the city you want to move to? Do you redecorate the space and plan to stay there? Oh how your hearts yearn to be in a new place – and yet still, all the showings result in nothing. No. No. No. No. No. No.

So you hire a new realtor. The one who sold your friends house in just 1 day! And your heart breaks as he tells you that you may never sell your home. You see, because there’s this one part of the inside of a wall that is damaged. It’s not really your fault, but it’s your home and because of it, it may be a little harder to sell it.

How did I not know? What can we do to improve our chances?! He provides you with a list of things to do and you eagerly dive into them. You replace the trim, sweat over refinishing your floors; exhaust yourself with tearing out the old carpet. Still – nothing.

Meanwhile, you get the calls from your friends, We’re moving! We sold our house! It’s our 4th home in 3 years! And your feelings get hurt as some of your friends pull back from you as they are afraid to tell you they sold their house too. You find out when you get their Christmas card in the mailing with a preprinted announcement. Why didn’t they tell us? And yet still, you celebrate their new adventure, move the boxes, ‘like’ the Facebook announcement and wonder if you should take your house off the market. After all, it’s been 3 years.

Then 4 years. More announcements, more moves.

Then it’s been 5 years. You find some friends who too have a hard time selling their house, are stuck in limbo desiring a neighborhood, a closet, a stove with more than 2 burners, a chance to feel at home where they feel called. You relate to one another’s questions and empathize when yet another potential buyer decides to pass. Another lost chance, I am so sorry.

Then those friends who once understood, begin to sell their houses. More celebrations! And the conversations shift from questioning why your house can’t sell, to the frustrations of picking out paint colors for the new living room or the cost of the movers. They forgot what it’s like, you think. Then you no longer get together. I am sorry, I have a house now. There’s so much to do! More dusting, a garden to tend to, bathrooms to clean. Maybe when the house gets a little older.

And still every single morning you wake up, make your bed, clean the house, waiting for the moment you get a call about a showing. You can’t escape the fact that your house is for sale. It’s part of your daily life, reminders everywhere. The lockbox, the sign, the calls. Every day you are faced with the desires to hear the words “you’ve sold your house!”.

6 years pass. You switch realtors again, are given a dash of hope that this is the one! In fact, by this point you’ve had 7 offers on your home, but all of them have fallen through. It’s just been bad luck. This happens to many couples. There must have been a bank loan defect. Unpack your boxes, not this time. Don’t lose the faith!

More moving announcements from friends. We weren’t even thinking about moving but someone came to our door and offered us over market price for our house. And then we got an amazing deal on a new house – in the last lot of the neighborhood you were looking at! What are the chances? We were so surprised!

Housewarming party. Wine. Feelings of defeat. Questions. Did we misunderstand our calling to move? Everyone else thinks we are crazy, yet we continue to feel led is to sell this house. What do we do?

And now here you sit – with 7 more offers sitting on your home and you thinkthis could be it and you are terrified. Everyone around is asking you aren’t you so excited? And while, yes, you are, the truth is you’ve been here before. You’ve had the offers and they’ve all fallen through. You’re hesitant to get your hopes up based on these new offers, knowing what happened last time. And so you smile, nod, and pray harder than ever that one of these offers takes. Because you don’t know if your heart can handle any more. Most days you want to rip down the ‘For Sale’ sign, ignore the aches in your heart, and chuck the lockbox in a volcano. You are now known as the couple who has always had their house up for sale.

Just be thankful you have a house to live in! Everyone around you, many who just sold their house, says to you, as if you aren’t thankful for your apartment. You want shout back that you are thankful, you just hate living in limbo, are struggling to figure out what your future looks like, and that you can’t ignore that nagging longing to become new-home owners.

And still you wait, feeling foolish about the day you drank champagne and told everyone you were going to sell your house. You never expected this.

You get the picture. And while this example may seem silly, can you only imagine having your house for sale for YEARS? I get exhausted just thinking about it. And, oh friends, if only infertility were this kind of exhausting.

With infertility, you take these exhausted, confused emotions and add in the immense deep rooted desire to be parents – moms and dads– and combine it with mind altering hormones, emotions, surgeries, and real life dollars. Every month offers hope that everything might change and when it doesn’t, you have to reprocess what you’re going to do next. Did you hear God right? Why isn’t He moving?

So while your heart is so thrilled for the others in your life who move onto the next stage – first, second, third pregnancies – it’s still very real there will be emotional struggles involved. With every announcement, pregnancy related conversation, baby shower and tiny babies around, it reminds you of the current state of limbo you are in. And with God-given strength, you celebrate the answered prayers, clinging to the hope that next time it might be you, and rejoice that God gave them a miracle. And it’s okay if you still wonder why not me?

Friends, I don’t know why your baby hasn’t come yet. I don’t understand why a 15-year old accidentally becomes pregnant and you can’t get a positive test to save your life. I wish I understood all the specifics. But here’s what I do know –God knows why. And while that can be hard to understand most days, it offers reassurance that we don’t have to be the ones understanding the ‘whys’. We just have to continue to trust the One who does.

I wrote these words in In the Wait and needed to be reminded of them today: “God is not early or late with His timing. Instead, He is right on cue, creating “Ah-ha!” moments when the answers prayers finally come. Yes, it may look different than we expect it to, but we know He will pull through. Scripture reminds us that we can trust Him to stay true to His Word, character and promises. His love is always present. Breathe out a deep sigh with me today and rest assured knowing He is at work, even when we don’t see it.”

I know it’s tiring my sweet friend. But make that bed one more day, accept one more showing, and continue to communicate with the Lord. You never know when you are going to wake up and have your whole life change in one moment. That day of answered prayer is worth the fight.

Lord, I pray for each woman reading this today who understand what it’s like to be stuck waiting. I pray that you renew our strength, our minds, and replenish our weary souls as we wait. We trust that you have the perfect plan for our lives and we ask that you would help strengthen us to continue to celebrate the victories and answers to prayer that you are providing to those around us. Jesus, we simply need more of you to help lead us into the perfect path for our lives. Amen

Written by Chelsea at trialsbringjoy.com 

https://trialsbringjoy.com/2016/06/27/house-for-sale/

Thy Will Be Done

Cast all of your anxiety on Him because He cares for you. - 1 Peter 5:7

Yesterday was my two week follow up since the d&c. Everything seemed to go good, but I still left the doctor's office emotionally aggravated. We were told to wait a couple of cycles before trying again, and to be honest I could use the break. This whole year has been mentally and physically exhausting to say the least and I just want to enjoy the summer with my husband. August will be 2 years that we've been on this TTC journey, so to have a couple of months to not over analyze fertile days, endlessly having blood drawn, partaking in hormone medications, countless trips to Birmingham for ultrasounds, and scheduled sex will feel like a breeze of fresh air. I could use some of that fresh air. We still long for that baby that we get to bring home one day but the Lord has given me a peace that only He can. I know our family will grow according to his plan,  so for now I am resting in the fact that God has got this under control.