A Small Spot of Beauty

Fall always tends to be a busy season around our house. Thanksgiving happens to be my favorite holiday and fall happens to be my favorite season. So I'm pretty much thrilled that cooler temperatures are finally here in Texas and the prospect of turkey and pumpkin pie are looming.

We've been putting off mulching our flower beds and getting some fall flowers because it's been SO DANG HOT here until this past week. I saunter into the nursery yesterday to buy what we need - basically mulch and mums - only to find that they have no mulch. Well shoot. And then the employee who's helping me tells me that the mums will only last a few weeks since the weather is so temperate here. My game plan was totally derailed and I have all this money budgeted for updating the beds. What's a girl to do? Buy a ton of flowers that should survive awhile is what. I bought some pansies, violas, snapdragons, sweet alyssum and silver leaf. Our front bed tends toward the green and it needed some color. I do not have a green thumb, despite my mom's fantastic skills with plants. I fully expect everything to be dead when I walk outside later.

(All pictures courtesy of google search)

Happy (If You Live In Texas) Start of Fall, Y'all!

Because I Said I Would

I promised I'd blog more. So here I am.

Sitting on the couch with a beer at hand, waiting for the words to come. The beer, by the way, is pretty stellar. Martinhouse Stars Above, a raspberry sour. Living in the land of craft breweries has opened up my world, y'all.

Ok, I'll dive right in. The whole "we're not having kids" thing? That still hurts horribly. It is physically painful at times and it can creep up on me even on a good day. Things that we used to hope would happen someday...that aren't happening now. An example would be giving Henry meds last week. E had to work late and Henry is on a liquid oral antibiotic. So I sat on the floor, pulled him into my lap, wrapped my legs around him and popped his mouth open. Easy peasy. And my first thought was "I would have been a good mom" which led to tears while feeding the animals.

Grief isn't a straight line. It's more like this:

(https://side-out.org/latest-blog/just-keep-swimming-grief-advice-from-finding-nemo/)

I don't know that we will ever come out on the other side completely. I believe, right now, that we will still have fleeting moments of grief as others hit milestones that we will never see. We never get to have a first day of school, a first smile, a first tumble from a bike, a first boyfriend/girlfriend, a first disciplinary failure (that was a guarantee). The list can go on and on.

Grief gets better over time. I logically know this. So on the bad days where there are more hits than not, I try to remember this.

And in the meantime we look for moments and days of happiness, or at least joy. Brief face snuggles from Evie, who has a new nickname - DJ Pickle. Enjoying spur of the moment days out. Netflix and chill with E. Going straight from work to the gym without needing to arrange for childcare. Staying up late and having no one to get up with early the next day.

None of it is what we would have chosen. But we don't always get what we would like.

I Don't Know What's Next

I've been putting off writing this post. E and I were able to get to our embryo transfer last month. Everything went smoothly and for once we had a little bit of hope brewing. Last Wednesday we had our blood test. Yes, a blood test. When you go to these lengths to try and have a baby there is nothing left to chance. No peeing on sticks and hoping for two lines. I mean, we could have. But there are too many unknowns with that method for us personally. If it's positive it doesn't mean that the number is actually high enough to indicate a viable pregnancy, and if it's negative then the number might still be growing but not high enough to trigger a home test.

Regardless, all this talk of pregnancy tests is moot. Our blood test was negative. It hurts to even type that word. Negative.

So that's it. Our attempts to be parents are over. And it feels like it's so sudden when in reality it has been three years in the making. This is the hardest experience of our lives. Even though it wasn't a guarantee that the transfer would work we still had hope this time around. Hope is a bitch. A royal bitch. (Sorry, mom. I know you don't like it when I speak French.)

This is grief, pure and simple. We lost our children. We lost the hope of growing old with children and grandchildren around us. We lost the vision we had of what our lives would look like and encompass. Every day is a myriad of tears, desolation, anger and feeling blank. There are moments of joy and laughter and feeling like maybe we'll be okay someday. Grief.

I know that some people will say "Why don't you adopt?" And to them I say "Why don't you?" Those of us who are dealing with infertility (and all the emotional shit that comes along with it) have sunk thousands of dollars into treatment. Most insurances don't help. We personally have no coverage so we've spent tens of thousands of dollars from our own bank account. I know women and men who have spent much much more than we have. No amount of money will guarantee you a baby. That is true of adoption as well. We don't have tens of thousands of dollars more to spend on hoping that someone would choose us as parents for their baby. Fostering to adopt has it's own emotional toll that we are not prepared for.

I feel that I need to be absolutely clear on this. Frankly, adoption is not the right step for us. Just because we can't have our own children doesn't mean that we should be happy with adoption. That's not how this works.

Some people might ask why we don't try embryo donation again. Aside from the financial constraints are the emotional ones. I can't put into words at the moment the sense of failure and shame that comes from having to fight your own body. There comes a point where it's not possible to move forward one more time. If we hadn't made it to transfer in our third attempt we were ready to call it quits. You can only try to grasp the impossible for so long before you're tired of falling short.

I've been pushing all of the feelings aside since we got the news as much as possible. I know that it's all going to hit like a ton of bricks at any moment. This post is the first step toward acknowledging that this is the worst moment of my life so far. As I even type this I'm sitting here crying silently. It hurts too much to touch it for long.

I'll probably blog more about the fallout of all this as it sinks in and I come to terms with not being a mom. I wanted to say thank you, too, for all of the support that you've given us over these last three years.

The Third Time Around the Block

I know I haven't been around much. The last time was when we were all excited because we thought making it to embryo transfer (FET) would be easy. That was two attempts ago. When we were cancelled the first time we were upset and angry. When we were cancelled this week for our second FET attempt it was devastating.

There are blogs out there that talk about baby dust and OMG! I tried for one month and I'm pregnant and swimmers and all the other cutesy words that people use for trying to have a baby. Friends, this ain't that blog. So if you're squeemish about body parts and how babies are actually made and what's needed to even attempt to have a baby for 1 in 7 couples that you know, you should log off now. Stop reading. Run from the computer. Shield your eyes.

If you're still with me, here we go. I am one of the 1% that have trouble not only with getting pregnant, but with being able to get to FET. Both times my uterine lining has not been thick enough fast enough. The first time around it was the typical protocol. By the time my lining was actually thick enough my labs were out of whack.

So we went more aggressive the second time around. Injections all around, in fact. I've reached a point where I can do them myself if they're in the stomach. The ones in the butt are just not physically possible for me, and the needles are big enough that I wouldn't want to do them even if my elbows bent backwards. The "should be fail-proof" protocol wasn't so fail proof. My lining never got thick enough. So second attempt was cancelled.

What none of this tells you is that it is emotionally draining, spiritually challenging, financially constricting to be here. It is hard. It hurts. You see everyone around you adding to families, having first babies, seeming to fall pregnant without even wanting to be. Looking at babies hurts. Looking at pregnant ladies hurts. This whole process hurts. And here you are, shelling out thousands of dollars on meds alone to try to have a chance at no regrets. You don't even really believe that any of it will work but you know you need to do everything possible so that when you're 60 years old you don't look back and wonder. As a woman and a wife you start to second guess everything. It feels like you have failed your husband, you've failed at the one thing you are supposed to be able to do. When the process has bumps and roadblocks, it makes you feel even more like a failure. Even with science my body cannot do what it should. If there is anything more disheartening in this process, I haven't found it.

So where does this leave us? We have one last shot at this. Literally one last protocol.  I have trouble even typing those words. But we've tried to be transparent about this process, about the failures, the successes, the struggles. It's hard to be so vulnerable but chances are we're not the only people you know who are struggling to breath some days, who are jealous of those who this comes so easily to, who wonder what else has to be sacrificed to pay for meds, who have learned to not expect good news at any appointment but to prepare for the worst.

If you're lucky enough to have children, hug them a little tighter tonight. If you know someone who is desperately trying to have a baby, love on them a little more the next time you see them.  In the meantime I'll be drinking wine and eating sushi until I can't anymore. Maybe I'll go jump on a trampoline too.

A Quick Update

Well, chickens, you know that E and I are trying to be pretty open about our trials and tribulations related to infertility.

Our embryo transfer has been postponed a few months. My body didn't react the way our doc expected to the meds. It's a very time specific process and everything has to be exactly right for us to have the go ahead to proceed.



We appreciate all the prayers and thoughts, and this seemed to be the easiest way to update everyone.

We hope everyone else's week has gone better than ours!

Slowly Getting There

The process of trying to have a baby is ridiculous when it doesn't happen naturally. Ludicrous. Outlandish. Insane. Undignified. Nonsensical. Bizarre.

And this is from a woman who isn't even doing IVF and all the harebrained but necessary hoops it makes you go through. (Which is weeks of suppression, thousands of dollars of injections to stimulate egg growth, egg retrieval under anesthesia, waiting to see how many embryos you have actually start and grow and survive, how many are normal genetically maybe and then finally transferring to see if any of them take with no guarantees of any of this working.)

I honestly thought that waiting for the embryos would be the hard part. That once we accepted them it would be a cakewalk from there. Oh Awn, how little have you learned in 3 years. See, I didn't count on my body rebelling at the last moments of this process. It's always been perfect on paper so these last two weeks were a surprise.

I don't understand everything about hormone levels, so I'm not going to try to explain it here. But basically in the last two weeks I've had 5 blood draws and 3 ultrasounds. Fun, right?!!? First my hormone levels were too high on the progesterone end of things. They came down over a week. Whew, crisis averted....but wait, there's more! (Please read that in Billy May's voice.) I thought we were completely home free at that point.

At my what-was-meant-to-be-the-last-monitoring-visit another issue popped up. Sorry if this is TMI but my uterus lining is not thick enough. Which means more meds and more ultrasounds. So where does this leave us? If things don't kick into gear then we'll have to wait another couple months to transfer the embryos. We want it to be perfect to transfer but if we have to wait it'll be rough.

So I'm sitting here trying to feel my uterus grow a lining and watching The West Wing while Evie sleeps and Henry tries to break into the kitchen cabinets. He's weird. I'm close to entering nutjob territory. Evie couldn't care less. That's our Saturday.

He's All I Need

Today is E and I's third anniversary. When I think back to that day, I remember how horrible I felt when I woke up, how great I felt after some Excedrin, how nervous I felt about getting everything done on time and mostly how ready I was to be his wife.



I thank the Lord every day for my husband. He is all that I need on this earth. E never is dismissive or demeaning. He is not selfish or a hoarder of his time. He is not fearful of our future or of where our lives may take us. He is not mean or vindictive. He is not stingy with his love. He doesn't leave me behind.

He is supportive in the best ways. He doesn't tell me what I want to hear but what is true. He brings me back down when I'm mad and he doesn't walk away from disagreements. He tells me that we'll be ok when all of our infertility options are over, whether we have kids or not. He doesn't tell me it will all be fine. He goes out of his way daily to make sure I know he cherishes me. He is protective and committed. He always has my back no matter the circumstance. He edifies me daily. He loves me second only to God.

When I look back on all the men that I dated and how my life could have turned out at the age of 37...well some of those pictures are downright ugly and others are just different. I am thankful each moment that I am married to the man before me. I would not have chosen as well as the Lord did when He brought us together. I would have chosen a life that was filled with uncertainty or grief, a life that would have be harder than it had to be, because I'm not able to see into the future. Only hindsight has provided me with this knowledge. I don't know if that other life may have been great in ways or if the bad would be more than the good.

I do know that it wouldn't have been as good as this one. As e.e. cummings wrote:

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                      i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

I love you, my dear husband.