Big News Update

Wow,
I can't believe that it has been four months since my last post. A lot has happened. In Febuary we recieved our biography packets from the state and I contacted my caseworkers voice mail to get some questions answered on the packet.... I still haven't heard back. Note to anyone trying to adopt (with no money out of pocket) the squeaky wheel gets the grease. You want to be proactive so they remember your name, but not annoying so your name is put on the bottom of the pile on purpose. Why haven't I followed up? Well that's a funny story...

On Febuary 8th 2012 I went in for a partial disc-ectomy. My back had been injured for about 3 years. I tried every other option before surgery. Around July of 2010 a surgeon was put in my path and with careful consideration I declined surgery in hopes of becoming pregnant. Little did I know what was ahead of us and I never honestly considered the intense pain being pregnant while having my injury might cause me. I knew it was what my husband and I wanted and I would do whatever it took to make that happen.

In November of 2011 we got the news that we would not be able to get pregnant without invitro. Shortly after a 2 week cruise and many mornings crawling out of bed with tears running down my cheeks from the pain, I decided it was time to make a change. My mobility and lifestyle was so limited, I couldn't sit on my own couch, lay in bed, or even walk around a mall. After all, I wanted to be healthy for my children. Adopted or Biological, I wanted to be able to the kind of mom who plays with her children and has adventures. Not watches from afar. So I went for it. It was the best decision I have ever made short of accepting a blind date with my now husband. I literally woke up pain free, aside from the inscisional pain.

Five days after the surgery on Febuary 14th 2012 I went to the bathroom and found my Valentines Day surprise. We were PREGNANT! How this happened I have no idea. Other than you never know what God has in store for your life. I was late, tested on a fluke and a positive result popped up in about 30 seconds! I swung the bathroom door open full force, and yelled at the top of my lungs "DAN! Look at this, do you see two lines?! I think i'm pregnant!" I did wake him from a dead sleep so, I scared the crap out of him. He jumped up and looked and we just held each other tight, partially in disbelief.

We immediately called my doctor and I had a BETA test done. The numbers came back right on track. I then got another BETA done two days later. This number should double every 48 hours. It did. I stopped my pain medication the day we found out. Tylenol and Ice were my best friends, going off pain meds five days after surgery is not fun. But, most deffinately worth it. My infertility doctor did two ultrasounds. One at 7 weeks where we heard the heartbeat for the first time and another at 9 weeks, before releasing me to a regular OBGYN. I saw my OBGYN Dr. Donald at 10 weeks, had the typical PAP and "meet and greet". I'm now all the way at 14 weeks and I can't believe it. In two and a half weeks we have an appointment on May 5th for an elective ultrasound so we can find out the sex early. We are so excited we can hardly stand it! I will update more as we go along. We already love baby Thompson and we cannot wait to meet him/ or her.



Letter to my future son or daughter

To my Sweet Pea,
Every day I long for the day I can finally hold you in my arms. I pray for you every night before I fall asleep. "Dear Lord, I don't know where my Sweet Pea is tonight. Or if he/she has even been born yet. As long as this road feels for me, I can only imagine how each night passes for my little Sweet Pea. Waiting for their mom and dad to sweep her/him up and hold them tight. To never let them go. Give them patience and calm their hearts knowing we are here waiting to bring them home."

Your dad and I have had a hard road to get to where we are now. Many tears have been shed and many more to come. Every tear that falls and how my heart breaks missing you, I know it will be worth it...... When I watch your dad hold you, kiss you, and make you laugh. When you take your first steps and shoot your first basketball. When I can tuck you into bed and stand in your bedroom doorway for a little while watching you sleep.

I miss you everyday you aren't with us. I can't comprehend why life has to be so hard sometimes. I hope that these lessons are preparing me for when you feel like life is just too hard. I can hold your hand and  tell you that God has a plan in the darkest times. That you are proof of that plan and he will never give us more than we can handle.

I love you more than I could ever put into words. I am so lucky to be your mom, whenever that may be.
I want you to be funny and confident like your father. It seems no matter how far along in life you are, there is always someone who wants to tear you down. You can be and do whatever you set your mind to. We will always be there to support you and cheer you on. Be a hard worker and don't do the bare minimum. I want you to respect others and show kindness, it goes a long way in a world where common courtesy isn't often shown. I want you to be organised and clean like me, don't worry if these things seem boring and are a last priority at first. You should have seen my first apartment! I hope I can show you all the things you want to learn and that we are the kind of parents that you want to be someday. I'm sure if your dad was writting  this he would want me to add a love for basketball, Nike and a huge Jordan shoe collection. Patriot pride, and of course the Oregon Ducks. We love you and are counting down the days until we can bring you home.

Love always and Forever,
Your Mommy

Our Adoption Begining

It all started a few months ago when I had a meeting with a co-worker who recently adopted through a private agency about an hour and a half away. The meeting to say the least, REALLY overwhelmed me. I could barely make it past the office doors before tears started rolling down my cheeks. The process seemed so long, expensive, and honestly judgmental.

Infertility has its own battle inside of me, of weather or not God wants me to be a parent, why can't I have children? Yet, all of these other seemingly unfit people can get pregnant at the drop of a hat. Now I need to write a bio and a "letter" showing us off as a couple and a family waiting for someone to think that we are worthy of their baby. Not to mention the price tag of 20+ grand, which at this time in our lives is an impossible number. To us 20grand is almost two years of house payments and two years of me being able to stay home full time and raise our kids instead of having them in daycare. Just to get our baby..... Overwhelmed is an understatement.

After two more failed cycles of injections and IUI. We were faced with the news that our doctor didn't think we would get pregnant without doing IVF. We are currently doing one last cycle while we have full insurance coverage just as a last ditch effort without any expectations. We decided to contact an acquaintance that we knew had fostered and adopted through DHS through the state of Oregon. We wrote down a list of questions and ended up spending 45 minutes talking to her and feeling more embraced and like that was the path that was meant for us.

We are not interested in fostering at all. Right now the hurt from all of our failed fertility attempts, I just don't think we could handle the loss that comes with fostering. You are only a temporary placement, while I think foster parents are wonderful strong people that we need in this world, right now I don't think I’m cut out to be one. We are going straight for the adoption route and while we are waiting we are going to do something called Respite care. It's a break for foster parents. If they need to leave their foster child with someone for the weekend or the day or a set amount of time, we would take them. It's like when our God-daughters stay over or our nephews. We will love and care for them, like they are our own. We also know that it's is only for a certain amount of time, which helps to keep disappointments low. Respite care is also a great way to come in contact with newborns who may eventually be put up for adoption down the line.

We called the 1-800 number the next day and asked for an informational packet in the mail. With it came the contact information for our case worker Sarah. I called her and she sent us our preliminary application and background check forms. We filled them out in a day, and had our fingerprint appointment scheduled for Monday the next business day. I think Sarah was impressed (or annoyed) at my quick response. What can I say, I’m organized and on the ball. Sarah will be sending out packets to our four references we listed to ask them preliminary questions about: Our marriage, if they think we would be good parents, and a list of other deep questions to try and get a better picture of us as people from the outside looking in.

As of right now we are waiting for our background check paperwork, and our fingerprints to come back clean. Then she will send out our second packet of paperwork. This will be our biography and essay questions. They will help her form the questions she will ask us when it comes time for our interviews and home study. We are currently on a waiting list, which Sarah told us would probably be about six months before our name's came out on top. Then we go through a three month process of interviews together, and separate, a look at our home and our environment. 18 hours of training classes. Before we can be approved. If we are we are eligible to adopt and will be given a website of all of Oregon's waiting children. If we see one we are interested in they will send our home study packet to their case worker for approval.

Sarah said all in all, it could be 1 to 3 years before we actually find a child to adopt and bring home. Right now we are doing everything we can, and prepared to be patient and know that our Child is out there somewhere.

2dpIUI

The rest of the Follistim cycle has been surprisingly easy and going right on track. I ended up with seven mature Follicles. EEEK! Blew my first two Follistim cycles out of the water. Dr. Chang said normally she would be VERY nervous about continuing on with a cycle producing that many mature Follies, but my first cycle I had six and I still didn't get pregnant. She ended up upping my dosage the last three days to 250IU. Which is a big injection every night. I gave myself my trigger shot of Ovidrel at 10:00pm on Thanksgiving night.

The holiday was awesome. My sensitivity to our infertility (or my infertility) is getting easier. I'm not crying all the time or even unhappy. I still make snide comments and jokes about "Empty womb syndrome". Although I did go see Breaking Dawn with my husband and my sister in law. The scenes with Bella and Edward cuddled up talking to their baby inside her, effected me in a way I didn't expect. I had a little bit of a melt down in the car after we left and Dan and I just hugged each other and talked it out like we always do.

Dan's mom thinks we are going to get pregnant now that we are moving forward with the adoption process and I have my appointment set up for my pre-op for my back surgery. I'm pretty conflicted actually. I would love to be pregnant and have our throw away/give up month be THE month. But I am hurting so much lately and I am really excited about getting my back fixed. It would be just our luck to get pregnant right after we have given up hope. I'm neutral. I don't want to go through the devastation the last couple months of trying has brought into my life if it's negative. I'm just going to assume that it won't work and be thrilled if I get surprised.

Saturday was our IUI. It went well. Just like normal. Dan's sperm count was 20 million post wash. They only need 10million to be happy with the number, so he is impressive as usual! lol. As he likes to say "The bullets, match the gun." I have never had more bloating/cramping before this month. It was so painful to wear pants and to even move. I was miserable and sick to my stomach for the aching. I bought Midol for the first time and it was a life saver!

I am having a bit of a quarter life crisis. I am gaining weight like crazy. The injections all these months sure help to pack on the pounds. I won't even weigh myself. All I know is I'm really bloated and none of my clothes fit. I have probably put on at least 30 pounds since we started trying. I guess almost a full year straight of fertility meds will really kick your ass, plus the whole issue of low self esteem. It really doesn't help my perception of how much I like myself right now. I am eating like total crap and I hate it all. Since my back has gotten increasingly worse, I’ve totally stopped working out too. I am just looking to the bright side of things, getting my back fixed, dropping this depressing weight gain and working on myself while we wait and go through the long adoption process. I sure am good at putting these goals off though.

Starting the progesterone tonight and play the waiting game for ten more days. December 8th we will have the results and take the next step in our baby journey. Either with a positive test (not likely) or working towards adopting and getting my ass looking like it used to.

Overdue update

My last post ended just after our second IUI. We left a few days after for our Honeymoon to the Caribbean. That was such a wonderful trip. It was so relaxing and gave us lots of time to spend together and talk about our future and what we are hoping for ourselves. I brought some home pregnancy tests with me and took them the last couple days of us being on the ship. All negative. My heart sank, although I was saying it might be too early I knew deep down that this month was another failure.

We docked on November 10th, 12dpIUI and also my CD28. I found a local hospital. I don't want to spend a lot of time on this part of the story. But that hospital was a nightmare. 30$ cab fare, 2 hours of incompetence later I had my blood drawn. I waited all day preparing for the bad news. Luckily I called to make sure they faxed the results. After another 45 minutes on the phone they tracked down my blood work, my order from my doctor, and the correct fax number.

My doctor called about an hour or two later. Dan and I went into the bathroom and let her talk. She basically had a heart to heart with us. She said that everything was working like it should be, and I should have been pregnant by now but I wasn't. She said she couldn't figure out anything else that she could do and it worried her that it may be something she couldn't tell just by surface tests. That she wasn't confident I would ever get pregnant without IVF. Our hearts broke. We held each other and I cried for a half hour or so. No words, just tears and support. The next five days were really hard. Especially on me, I cried a lot.

I also used my emotion to drive me into finding some positivity for us and a new plan. Since the one we have had for so long was coming to an end. I always had a feeling that it would happen, but I always prayed that I was just jaded. We decided to spend one last cycle doing injections and IUI. Not to get our hopes up, or because any of us thought it would work (our doctor included) but just as a last ditch effort. Because we felt like we have been trying so long, it would be too hard to quit before we sought it out to the very last try.

I also decided to go forward with my back surgery. I have had a bad spine injury for almost three years. I am in constant pain. By the time they figured out what was wrong, we found a specialist, and decided I needed surgery, Dan and I were already trying for a baby. We thought that I would get pregnant right away. Knowing what I know now, I should have just had it then. It's been a long time coming.  After a while we just felt like we had been trying too long to give up and now that we really are at the end of line, it's time I get it taken care of. I'm really excited at the prospect of being pain free but really scared. I will most likely have metal put into my back and it's such a dangerous area to alter. I just want to be able to run and play and carry my kids. I want us to go on family hiking trips and bike rides and right now it hurts for me to ride in a car or even walk around the mall for too long.

I am currently CD9 on my cycle. I started my Follistim injections on CD2 also my first ultrasound. No cysts, good baseline numbers. I did 3 shots of 175IU. Then had an ultrasound. There were quite a few getting bigger. Mostly 7-10's. Her and I also had a long talk that this was my last cycle, and she urged us to consider doing IVF next month while we have some form of infertility coverage. We just can't come up with the 5 grand minimum right now. The sad thing is that after next month it will cost us 13grand a cycle. Which is more than impossible. I told her it just wasn't an option due to the success rate being 50%. We just can't risk the money right now. If we knew it would work, we would spend it in a heart beat. I think after that conversation she started to concentrate on my current cycle more. She upped my dosage to 200IU. Then called the next day and upped it again to 225IU wanting to be as aggressive as she could without putting me in danger. I have another Ultrasound today to see how things are going. She suspects our Insemination will be on Friday or Saturday.

Last but certainly not least. We decided to start the adoption process. We sought out our options and decided to go through DHS through the state of Oregon. We realize we won't probably be getting a newborn and that our future child will probably have been removed forcefully from their biological parents and will have been in the foster system. Also there will be a lot of challenges that come with that history. We are really excited and after lots of prayer and long talks. We hope that maybe there is a child out there now, or in the future that needs us more than we need to have our own biological child. I will start a new post on our progress with our adoption and all the feelings that come with it soon.

CD16 IUI #2

Yesterday was our IUI! It felt like it took forever. In reality it had only been sixteen days since the start of my cycle. I think, the more frequent doctor’s visits really did a number on me. I was starting to feel like this IUI day would never come. I stayed calm and low key and everything worked out in the end. Just like it should have.

Our appointment for the IUI was at 9:45. Dan needed to be at Dr. Chang’s office by 8:15 to give his semen sample. We left Warrenton around six and got up a few minutes before 5:30am. That is the time I usually get up for work on the weekdays so I was used to it, although I really like my Saturday sleep in's. Something I will have to get used to missing after children enter the picture. Something I will gladly give up!

Our post wash semen count was 31million! Up ten million from last cycle. Go Phelps swimmers go! The IUI went well a tad more cramping during the procedure than last time, but no problems. Dr. Chang noticed I had a cold and asked what meds I was taking. She approved my Dayquil thank goodness! I also brought up the fact that I take quite a bit of Ibuprofen for back pain every day. She was unaware and wanted me to stop taking it ASAP. She said normally she would have had me stop taking it before ovulation happened. Instantly I felt like a failure. It helps me A LOT in my day to day. I have a herniated disc and it helps with my pain management. Although I knew that when I got pregnant I would have to stop taking it, if I had known it could affect getting pregnant in the first place of course I would have stopped. I started crying as soon as she left the room. Dan reassured me everything will be fine.

After the fifteen minute waiting period. I got dressed and headed out to talk to Dr. Chang for my post IUI game plan. I asked her point blank if I had ruined this cycle and if I should just give up hope  now and she said no of course not. That people do lots of things and get pregnant. But since I am at a fertility clinic they take every single precaution they can and make sure that I have as good of odds as possible. She also mentioned that drinking while on our honeymoon would be at my digression. She didn't recommend having more than a few cocktails. So as of right now I am uncertain of what I will do. I don't want to hurt our chances of getting pregnant, I don't want to hurt our baby, but I also don't want to miss out on partaking on our honeymoon and our probable last vacation for a few years and get a negative result. I still have some thinking to do.

I will start taking the progesterone supplements on Monday and take them twice a day, same as last month. Until I get word from Dr. Chang to stop. I packed some home pregnancy tests and will do my BETA blood test on November 10th, at 12dpiui. Same as last cycle. We will be just getting off the boat and staying in Florida for a few days. So we will just find a lab there and get them done. I am praying for a positive!

Dan is still really certain. I am just staying neutral and glad we are getting away to enjoy some time together. 1dpiui and the countdown to the dreaded two week wait has begun! I won't have any cell or internet service so my next post will be after I return home with my results in hand.

Ciao.

CD13 Ultrasound shot 12

Yesterday was my CD13 ultrasound and my fifth ultrasound this cycle. Well it's official I can drive to my RE's office with my eyes closed.  Luckily I had the company of my friend Kristina again for the drive and appointment. It all goes by so much quicker having someone to gab with and pass the time, instead of stare at my GPS and comparing the actual time with the estimated end time. Which is usually painfully off. 

We finally have our game plan in place! I'm pretty excited but scared as well. My ultrasound showed that yesterday the dominant follicle in my right ovary was up to 23mm and ready to ovulate. I had a bunch of small ones that were just chilling, pretty ordinary for women with PCOS. In my left ovary I had two medium sized follicles. I can't honestly remember their exact size but I want to say they were at the rang of 12 and 11. She is having me do two more shots of Follistim (last night and tonight) at the higher dose of 167IU. Along with some extras. Last night she had me do an injection of a medication that would keep me from ovualting. She wanted the other two smaller follicles in my left ovary to have a chance of catching up with the dominant one in my right before it ovulated on it's own. Tonight I will do my second and last dose of Follistim with my "trigger" shot (Ovidrel) to follow at 9:45pm. That way those smaller two get a little more time to super charge and catch up before they all ovualte 36 hours after my "trigger" shot.

My fear is this: That the other two won't catch up and only one will ovualte. Compared to last month that is devistating odds. I do have to tell myself that it only takes one to work. Dr. Chang seemed pretty convinced that two would deffinatly ovulate, but most likely all three will. I trust her instincts so completely that I haven't let myself give up hope, feel defeated, or any of my normal feelings. I trust her, and I trust God to lead us down the path for our lives.

Our IUI is schedualed for Saturday. That makes me SO happy. It is perfect timing for my work schedual (day off!) and it also leaves me at 12dpIUI on the day we get off the cruise. The day we did our BETA last month. I'm pretty pumped that this cycle has ended up streching out a bit longer. I really didn't want to find out on the ship. I want to be able to react and feel whatever I need to when we get those results. Not force myself to be happy or share our good news because I am stuck on a boat with everyone.

Dan is in a whole other world. He says that he just knows that this is our month. He hasn't even seemed to bat an eye at anything that could be considered negative news. He says that I will get pregnant this cycle and it's just a matter of us getting that positive BETA to confirm it. That's a lot of confidence when we haven't even done the IUI yet. lol! I envy that confidence and I honestly try not to think about it too much. After all who couldn't get excited over that positivity! He may just be trying to comfort me and if he is, it's working. Only time will tell and I hope more than anything he is right. Id love to be able to tell our kids "dad knew I was pregnant with you before I did! He's such a smart daddy."

I have a busy week ahead of me, a head cold, packing, lots of OT at work, and IUI, Injections, and then we head out for our honeymoon on Monday night! Halloween! I can't wait. I will post a follow up after our IUI bright and early on Saturday morning.