Encouragement Through Defeat

 

Dave and I decided a while ago that we didn’t want cable in our house. I really see no need to pay for trash and I certainly don’t want my child seeing it. We do keep up with the news online, but I even try to limit that because of all the negative stories I hear. I am usually good at not letting what I do hear get to me too deeply but some things hit your heart and it takes a while to let go.

The other day I turned on the computer and saw a picture of hundreds of women fighting for late term abortions in Texas. It hit me like a mac truck. I was shocked, sad, and angry all at the same time. I am so saddened that these are the same people who will scream till they are blue in the face that we need harsher gun laws because even if it will “save just one life” it will be worth it. What cowardly hypocrites! How many millions of lives are you ending by fighting for late term abortions. You get so so upset and claim that people are trying to take away your freedom of choice, but you seem to forget that you had the choice to not have sex in the first place. You seem to forget that there is a living being inside of you with a heart beat that can feel pain. You seem to forget that pregnancy is temporary and there are so many precious families wanting and praying for a baby to adopt.

At that moment I felt so defeated and so sad that it really kept me down for a few days. I think what makes me so sad is that some day I will have to explain to my daughter that there is so much hate and evil and sin in this world that sometimes it does seem like a dark place to live in.

I get my strength by remembering that God is good. He is so good all the time and he has not abandoned us. Even when all we see around is anger and wrong doing, He is good. God can take our sadness and it use it for good. He can take our fears and turn it into faith. He will not let go of us, even in a world that’s letting go of Him.

      

That Darn Cat

 

A few weeks ago Abby was out back with Dave while he was cutting the grass. I was inside washing dishes and she came in the back door and said “ mommy, come look at my baby”. I usually don’t drop what I am doing and go see her babies because then nothing would ever get done, but for some reason this time I decided to put on my shoes and go with her. She takes me to the back porch and points down at this little black ball of fuzz. My first thought was that the cat brought us a dead mouse…because she’s thoughtful like that, but when I bent down I realized it was a bunny.

Yep, our cat found a bunny den or hole or whatever it is called and decided we needed another pet. We took it inside and wrapped it up. I looked around online and found a lady about thirty minutes away who rescued bunnies. So yes, of course we drove all the way out to this house to save an orphaned bunny. Praise the sweet Lord this little guy made it because I really didn’t know what you do with a deceased baby bunny and how you explain it to a three year old.

Ikea

 

Last month we made a trip to Ikea with some friends from Oklahoma. A few things to point out here: said friends have no kids. Said friends wanted to go to lunch and then go shopping. Said friends have no kids and therefore do not grasp the concept of nap time.

Dave and I have not been to Ikea since 2006, when we went then it was Super Bowl Sunday and it was empty. This trip was on a Saturday after lunch. Lets just say there were a few more people this time around.

I had honestly forgotten how massive the place is. Seriously, this.place.is.huge!!  We started upstairs, grabbed some carts, and we joined the mob.

Said friends are building a house, so they had a lot to shop for. We were buying Abby a bed (because she has been on the floor for over a year). All went really smooth for the most part…and then we found the big sections of beds. We let Abby out of the cart while we looked around to find hers. I thought Dave had Abby and he thought I had her, turns out she climbed into one of the beds, under the covers and all, and was just relaxing. Yes, my germ-a-phobness kicked into massive over drive. On top of that the lady working there gave me a not so nice stink eye. Obviously Abby knew it was nap time.

We finally reached the elevator to go downstairs. Dave got so excited and says “ well that wasn’t too bad, I thought it would take a lot longer”.  O sweet husband of mine, don’t you know this is a marathon, not a sprint. His friend looked at him and started laughing. “ Dave, this is the half way mark”.

I must say, the girls at this point were definitely holding up way better than the guys. Even Abby was holding it together better than the adult men. In their defense though, they really had no reason to be there other than to push the carts. They pretty much have no say in the decorating and honestly I don’t think they even care.

Mom of the year did not bring any snacks,water, or any form of entertainment(proof kids can live without smart phones and other gadgets), but I did remember one important item…

BLANKET!!! O yes, my sweet girl fell right asleep and stayed like that for an hour! Can you believe it?!? #lovethatgirl

The guys were beyond thrilled when we were done, and we decided that next time we will do a girls only trip, I mean I really can push my own cart.

I really think Ikea could make the “experience” a little more pleasant for men. For instance, about every 50 feet or so there should be a beer fountain with frosted mugs and beer on tap. They could also put in some big screens and have any and all games on. Now, I do see how this could become a hazard when they are pushing the carts, don’t worry, I have thought this through…bumpers! Finally, to keep the good Christian men from complaining, they need to have this verse written every where in the giant warehouse

“ Do everything without complaining or arguing” ph 2:14.

Two Years (part two)

the first part of this is down a few posts, not sure how that happened and I am not patient enough to try and change them around

When it comes to dealing with fertility issues there are so many aspects of your life that get effected and I have been through them all.

Money Money Money

To begin with there is the financial part. We knew from the get go that our insurance, like most others, does not cover any of the treatments. They cover any diagnosis but no treatments. Another sucky part, our taxes are going up and you know what we are paying for? Abortions. We are now funding late term abortions for people who cannot keep their legs closed and feel we should pay for them to murder their unborn innocent child.  The Clomid is not too bad, around 20 bucks, the Ovidrel shot is 120 bucks, and the IUI is 430 bucks (unless it falls on a weekend or holiday, mine did, and its another extra 30). Add all that to the 50 bucks (plus another thirty for the weekend) and you are looking at 1100ish bucks for the whole cycle. Not sure if you have been in our backyard lately, but our trees are lazy and are not growing money like they should. The other day Abby and I were at a friends house and her dogs were both very sick, like verge of death sick. She was so upset because they could not afford the surgeries the dogs needed and she said “If I were a millionaire my dogs would not be sick and in pain” I thought how ironic, if I were a millionaire I could afford fertility treatments as long as we wanted. We have also discussed doing IVF, but last time I checked no one is dropping off 15 grand on our doorstep.

Friendships

In the two years we have been trying to get pregnant I have had close to a dozen friends get pregnant and deliver their child. Am I happy for them? Yes, of course. Does it hurt? Like holy hell it hurts. I have backed out on baby showers like it’s my job because I could not bare to go. I have made excuses not to go see them in the hospital or even at home. Selfish? Yup. Do I love my friends and their babies? Yes,more than they will ever know.

Marriage

Husbands hurt too. For a long time I wondered why Dave was not a mess like me. I thought that maybe he didn’t really want another kid and he was just going along with this to keep me happy (he’s pretty awesome like that). False! The truth is more often than not your husband hurts right along with you, they just don’t fall on the floor crying about it. They deal with emotions differently, and that’s ok. My husband hurts with me and he hurts for me. He would love nothing more than to add another life to our home, but he is also so thankful and grateful for what we do have. Infertility has shaken us up a bit, I don’t think there is any marriage that has dealt with infertility that has not been shaken. We have had our hard times but in all honesty it has made us so much stronger. My husband is my rock and my support, without his love and understanding I would be a much bigger mess than I am.

Abby

My daughter is darn near perfect, seriously, I wouldn’t change a thing about her. We have our rough days and we have our rough, rough, rough days. More often than not we have our great days. I love my daughter more than I ever thought I could love someone. With that being said (and at the risk of be judged) I will say that there was a time a long time ago that I was angry with her. Seriously, I was so angry at her because I thought that since I had such an amazing daughter I was never going to have another child. Crazy thought? O yes, and there are so many more where that came from. These feeling and thoughts did not last long, but they were there and I still get mad at myself today for even having those thoughts. The truth is we are beyond blessed with Abby.  Sometimes I think she makes it harder. Having a daughter like her makes me want to have ten more. She’s awesome, so of course I assume all my kids will be like her! And then there’s her brothers and sisters. For a while now she has been talking about her brothers and sisters. They go every where with us and they even get in trouble. It breaks my heart that she sees all her friends with siblings and she doesn’t have any. She also loves babies, like more than me maybe. We were in Target one time and she said “ Momma, go get that baby”. I had to explain to her that it was not our baby and we cannot just go get someone else's baby from them. I know she would/will make such a great big sister.

Stupid People

They are everywhere aren’t they? I am not really the best at filtering what comes out of my mouth(shocker right?), but I will say that this journey has helped me big time. Bottom line people.suck. Honestly, I don’t think that most people really even know that what they are saying is hurtful or ignorant, but when in doubt…shut it! I have heard everything from “ just pray about it” to “ I don’t think you should be doing any of these treatments because its just not natural”. I had one lady tell me that since I only have one kid it makes sense that I can surround myself with kids at the preschool. OOO, is that right??? Or maybe, just maybe, I really enjoy kids?? Maybe I really like that I can teach the word of God to the littlest most innocent people too. Crazy, I know, but maybe me working at a preschool is not my cure for “only having one kid”. I also hear the one about “ well with only one kid you can do so much more…travel, eating out, buying things” News flash!!! Dave and I are not “stuff” people. Having children is much more fulfilling than traveling. I have traveled to places that people only dream of, and you know what? Being pregnant and holding my baby was way way more amazing that any of those places.

Doubt

Satan is a sneaky little sucker isn’t he? In the past two years I have convinced myself of many things. Many wrong things, but it has taken me two years to see the truth. I am a horrible mother and God knows that I do not deserve any more kids. About two months ago I finally woke up one morning and realized this is insane. Am I perfect? No way! Being a mom is hard stuff, no joke about it, but just because I am not “that mom” who has everything all figured out and perfectly organized does not mean I am a horrible mother. I also convinced myself that Dave probably regrets marrying me because had he married someone else he would be able to have all the kids he wants. Crazy thought? Yep, I told you there were a lot of them. I know my husband loves me for me and not for the amount of children I can produce. I am broken. Well, truthfully we are all broken, its just part of being human. We are born broken and born into a broken world. In many ways my body does not work the way it should, sucks for me, but could be a lot worse. Satan did a great job of planting these thoughts in my head and worked non stop to keep them growing. I can finally see the truth and I know that I am a great mom, Dave loves me no matter what, and yes, my body may not be working right, but I know it can do what it needs to do because I have Abby. I will say that one doubt that remains on my head is why in the world I would want to bring more innocent children into this world the way it is now. On December 14 ( the day of the shooting) I had an appointment at 1pm. They were running behind so I sat in the waiting area for over half an hour and watched the news coverage of the shooting. I was thinking to myself ( and still think this way) that we are nuts for wanting to bring more kids into this world. As of now, the desire to have more kids is still stronger than the fear I have of what’s happening in our society, but it’s a close race. For now the desire, the want, the longing for another kids is stronger than any fears and doubts that are running through this crazy head of mine.

 

Hello Neighbor

I will admit that I still have Abby’s monitor in her room. Yes she is three, and yes, I am an over worrier. I am ok with this.

A few weeks ago I was doing housework when she brought me the part of the monitor that I have in my room, the part with the screen so I can see her room. She handed it to me and said “is that my crib”? I wasn’t paying attention, so I said “no honey, it’s your bed, you don’t have a crib anymore”.  She wouldn’t stop saying its her crib and so I finally looked at it. Sure enough it is a clear picture of a baby crib! I could see every detail in there, sheets, stuffed animals, and blankets. We now continue to have a monitor in her room, but I put about a gazillion pieces of tape over the camera part so you cannot see in her room. Creepy much?

Question

What do you get when you give a sick child red Gatorade at 4am?

A: Red carpet at 4:30am

Saturday night I told Dave that we are going to church tomorrow no matter what, unless someone is throwing up. Yup, I said it. Yup, she did it. I hate to admit it, but we haven’t been to church in a long long time, and I was determined we were going, no.matter.what. Well, the best laid plans, right?

Two Years (part one)

Two years, 24 months, 104 weeks, 730 days. Two years ago we started trying to grow our family.

just a note, this may be long, but this is for me really, so that hopefully, one day I can look back and see how far I have come

It all started Dec 26, 2010. We were putting away Christmas decorations and I felt something. Something I had not felt ever before except when I was pregnant with Abby. I remember looking up at Dave and saying “ I think I am pregnant”, I just felt it. Obviously I was not, but that got the ball rolling. From then we decided that it was time to start trying again, it did take us two years to get pregnant with Abby. We tried that whole year with no fertility treatments until December. My doctor found a cyst growing inside my left ovary and it had tripled in size in three months, bottom line, it had to come out. During that surgery he was able to remove other cysts that were around my ovaries and burned out all the endometriosis he could find. The bright side of this surgery was that he was almost certain we could get pregnant within 3-6months afterwards. Obviously that did not work either.

Around April I went back in to talk about the next step and what our options were. He told me he thought we should start basic fertility treatments, and I of course said no. Here's the thing,I don’t like medicine, like at all. I have weird reactions to it, usually opposite from what everyone else has, so I really didn’t want to start going down that road. I love my doctor and he knows how I feel about all that so he simply said he would recommend me going to a fertility specialist by August if we were not pregnant then. So it was set, Dave and I had agreed that was what we were going to do.

Funny thing happened when August came around…Dave got laid off. Yup, the exact same week I was going to make the phone call too. What did we do? We went ahead and set up the appointment, the consultation is free, so why not?

The consultation went really well, we loved the doctor and he was really optimistic. He made it seem like once we were ready to move forward it would be so simple and I would be pregnant in no time. I will never forget Dave looking around at all the pictures of babies and then saying “ wow, there sure are a lot of twins”.

We were so blessed that Dave found a job right away and they only made us wait thirty days before our insurance kicked in. The same week our insurance kicked in was the same week I needed to start the treatments. Our original plan was to do Clomid, and Ovidrell and nothing else. After a couple of appointments and some sonograms the nurse thought we would have a much better chance of getting pregnant if we did an IUI. This was on a Friday morning and I had to make the decision by noon. The odds were really looking good at this point. At the last sonogram they saw that I had 6 good eggs, so of course I was thinking that there was no way this could not work. Some more info to know, every time I walked into the doctor it was fifty bucks, unless my appointment falls on the weekend and then it was eighty. Of course most of mine were on the weekends, because why not? So I went in on Saturday and had the IUI done. Two weeks later they tell you to take a pregnancy test and come in for blood work if its positive, if not, you start the whole cycle again. One cycle like this cost us over 1100 dollars. Yep, insurance covers nothing!

Round two. During all the visits you don’t actually see the doctor, I am ok with this because the nurses are awesome, super sweet,and most of them have actually dealt with fertility issues themselves. After a sonogram the nurse tells me that they are cutting my Clomid dosage back because, come to find out, they were actually afraid I was going to be the next octomom with me having 6 good eggs. They had started me on the lowest dosage to begin with so now I had to start cutting my pills in half. The next sonogram showed that I had four or five really good eggs and again talked about doing another IUI, but decided against it. Round two…FAIL.

Round three. From the get go, we had decided that we would do this three times and give it a break, so this was it. I had decided that we would do everything this month, so that if it didn’t work at least I knew we had tried everything, no regrets sort of thing. At this point they had put me on half a pill and only for three nights. Normally they have you take it for five nights. When I went in for my sonogram where they see how many eggs I have I pretty much lost it when I got the results. One egg. I lost it, not in a making a scene sort of way, but in silent,heartbreaking, gut wrenching sort of way. I held back the tears while the nurse was talking to me and tried to remain optimistic. Then it came out “ Erin, we actually think you have been getting pregnant, but we think it just isn’t sticking”. Their reasoning…most women on Clomid have issues with their lining getting thinner, I did not have that issue, exact opposite in fact. She told me that we might want to consider a D&C to get rid of some of the lining that may be to thick for actual implantation to take place. Uhhh, no thanks! On December 24 I had another IUI. This time the doctor himself did it. The nurse told me she asked him to come in that morning specifically to talk to me and do the IUI because they knew I was frustrated and discouraged. I asked the doctor if he thought this was a waste of time (and money) since I only had one good egg. He told me he tries to get women to have one, sometimes two eggs, but no more than that. In fact he told me that doing an IUI with anything above three eggs would be reckless. WAIT, WHAT??? So why was I allowed to have an IUI the first go around with 6 good eggs? Still don’t know the answer to that one. Round three…FAIL. So now what? Now we take a break and step away from what has dang near consumed me for the past two years. How long of a break? Don’t know, maybe a few months maybe a year.

All I know is this. God is good. He is in control and I am not. I am beyond blessed with Abby and Dave and actually feel selfish sometimes for wanting more. God is bigger than science and medicine and all things infertility.