Saturdays are hard

My egg retrieval was on Saturday May 24th, and our baby was concieved that day, so every Saturday is just hard because I'm reminded of where I would have been in my pregnancy. Today would have been 38 weeks. In 2 weeks is our due date, and it gets harder the closer we get to that date. Its hard not to think about what could have been. I've also been doing a lot of thinking about where we go from here and our plans for the future. We haven't actively done anything in regards to infertility since November and I know its only January but every day that ticks by without a baby in my life seems like a lifetime. My 30th birthday is also coming up and I honestly dread it. I hate the fact that I'm turning 30 childless. If you have the motherly desire there truly is a biological clock & mine ticks loudly. Sure I have 10 years but that's a very short amount of time when I look back at how fast the past ten years have passed. My desire to have a houseful of babies will never be and that's the raw truth that I live with. My dream of having 4 kids is gone, now I just pray for 1 healthy baby and I don't care how it happens, I don't even have to biologically have a child. I want the child the God has intended for me whatever way that happens.

It has been 5 months since my d&c & my body is still not regulated. We had planned to have done our last frozen embryo transfer by now, but we're still waiting. The last 3 years have been spent waiting. I'm back and forth about the plans for this year in regards to building our family. I will take things one day at a time when it comes to my decisions and I may change my mind. But I will do what I feel is best for my body and my peace of mind. Today I've done a lot of thinking about doing another fresh ivf cycle later in the year. I think I want to exhaust all of our ivf attempts before moving on with an adoption agency. If God places a child in our lives before that time comes we will persue adoption without a doubt. But I think I want to close the door to ivf before we open another in regards to getting involved with an adoption agency.

I pray for discernment & peace in the decisions on which path we decide to take. This whole process can take a toll on your mind if you allow it too, sometimes it's a difficult battle to stay positive. And in regards to that I'm not where I need to be, but Lord knows I'm not where I used to be & praise Him for that. Prayer is my defence against those horrible thoughts from the devil who is working hard to steal my joy.

And the break nears to an end...

I've tried to push my infertility to the back burner in my life & for the past month and a half I have been the happiest I've been in a while. The past few days I've been thinking and really not looking forward to going back to see my RE. In a approximately 3 weeks I'll be begin meds for another hopeful embryo transfer. Up until my last frozen embryo transfer I had high hopes that I'd one day carry my own child, but after losing 6 embryos in one day, my hopes aren't very high of that ever happening. We now have one embryo left & I truly dread starting meds again, feeling the way I feel on them for a month only to be told our last embryo didn't make it either. I want to to at least attempt this last embryo before moving towards adoption, if not it will be in the back of my mind & I'll wonder could it have made it? I've been so strong the last month that I dread the uneasy scary unknowing feeling that going through a frozen cycle entails. I'm scared of the finality of it, that after this it truly is over. But at the same I've been at peace with our decision & at this time I do not want to endure another fresh ivf cycle. My head hurts just thinking about it. My heart aches. I just want a baby whether I birth the baby or God sends me a baby through adoption I can honestly say I do not care, but I know I want to be a mother. I just have to stay strong, stay peaceful, stay happy, stay faithful until it is our time. I've said it a million times, I will never understand this. God give me peace.

Goodbye 2014

I'm happy to see a new year. I made it through 2014 even though at times I didn't think I would . Without a doubt I can honestly say it was the hardest year of my life. I lost a dream, I lost my baby, I lost 6 embryos, we lost about $25,000 toward infertility treatments, my husband lost his job & I lost my sanity at times. I've never seen sadness like I've seen this past year. In December things have finally started to look up, we've gained a lot, most importantly I found peace again, my husband found a new, better job & I found hope. I'm hopeful about what 2015 holds for us. My heart is still broken for the baby that I held for a short 10weeks, but I am excited about our journey in the coming year. I'll never stop missing our angel, but I know that God has great plans for us. We will do our last frozen embryo transfer in February, and the next step will be to pursue adoption in 2015. I'm nervous, excited, and scared but I know this will be a better year!

We've decided...

For now the plan is to transfer our last frozen embryo in the next 2 months if it makes it through thaw. If that cycle is unsuccessful we will move forward with our journey towards adoption. I've found peace and am excited about our new journey. I have grieved our loss of a biological child and I'm prepared to move in another direction. If it's in God's plan for me to bear a child He will make that happen in His time. But for the time being we will not pursue another IVF cycle. We will be open to adopting siblings. We would prefer a baby but would consider children 3 & younger. In the next 6 months we will be filling out lots of paperwork & getting everything ready to prepare our home for the home study & making sure we have everything childproofed. This is going to be a whole new direction that is going to be a long journey but I'm so hopeful that in the next couple of years we WILL have our family. Until then we have plans to do a little traveling & enjoying our time together. Whatever happens we are so blessed & I'm thankful for this journey as hard as its been, it has changed me for the better.

Big decisions

I get so angry when I make a post about infertility and some one who has no clue what a walk in these shoes is like posts an ignorant comment like "there's always adoption". Did they think we had never thought of that? We've spent the last 3 years of our lives down this journey, scraped and saved for IVF and that idea just totally slipped out minds. (Really?). I realize that by making our struggle public that there is always going to be comments from people that just dont have a clue, so i usually try to just keep my mouth closed when it comes to comments like those. The journey to parenthood can have many different paths you can't take them all at the same time. This is a process. For us our journey began like most peoples do we started trying to conceive our baby after a little over a year of being unsuccessful we consulted my doctor who shortly after medical testing had to refer us to the reproductive endocrinologist. Believe it or not we didn't just jump right into ivf we took steps to get to this point. We've prayed, cried, spent every day of our lives thinking and making these decisions. So when someone says "why don't you just adopt" it takes all that I have to not just bite their head off. It was our choice to take the path we've taken to make an attempt to have a biological child. We first have to be 100% confident we are ready emotionally and financially to start down a different path before moving into adoption. Adoption has its own road, its own stressors that are a completely different ball game from infertility treatments. If it were just so easy to say I'll just adopt & this whole problem will be solved we would have made that choice a long, long time ago. We never wanted the heartache we've been dealt. But adoption is not that easy, you can spend years waiting for a child, not to mention $25,000-40,000 to even get to that point. We are finally at the point in this journey that we are beginning to seriously consider adoption. But these are our decisions, no one elses. I don't share our story for your opinions or advice. I share our story to connect with other women who have been where I am at & for prayers from anyone that believes in the power of prayer.

We've been doing a lot of discussing about where we go from here, after we've had 8 embryos die. We obviously have a problem with the viability of our embryos. We have a couple of options to weigh one is PGD testing (pre-implantation diagnosis) which would test our embryos for genetic disorders prior to having them frozen or transferred. This will add an additional $5000-8000 to our IVF costs. So we are seriously considering ending our treatment journey in the coming months to pursue adoption whole heartedly. If we do make the decision to persue adoption I don't consider any of this a waste. This whole process has shaped me into a better person. We have a child awaiting us in heaven because of this journey & that alone is worth all the debt, all the tears, all the heartache we've endured. This is a huge decision for us that neither of us are 100% sure which option we will take. Just continuing to pray for Gods direction during this time. His plan will prevail & will be far beyond anything we could have ever imagined.