Free

Mid-January Hammer and I decided to join a church plant that split off of our church. It was an intentional church plant that was sent out to reach young adults in their late twenties and thirties. We were really excited about the opportunity and God has really been blessing the church. Our opening Sunday we had 450 people! We are creating a great community of people which is a void that had been lacking at our old church.

For the lent season our church decided to do a bible study series called Free. They had everyone in the church divide up by the day of the week they were available to meet. This is a great way for everyone to meet more people in the church and develop an even deeper community. There was a bit of pre-meeting workbook preparation. As I went through it I realized that the underlying theme of what was preventing true spiritual freedom for me right now was the fact that I was not living my ultimate dream of being a mom and that it made me feel a bit that God was being unfair with me. I told Hammer that I had decided to do two different responses; one for me about our infertility and one that I felt comfortable sharing with the group. I was very clear with Hammer that I wasn't going to be sharing our trial with a group of strangers.

But God must have had a different idea. One of the couples who offered up their home for the group meeting shared that she needed freedom from worry after having suffered from three miscarriages. Afterward I felt strongly compelled to speak to her and thank her for sharing such a difficult and personal trial. And when I did, I found myself tearing up and thanking her for being brave and sharing something that I couldn't. She instantly understood and gave me a huge hug. We ended up staying after everyone else had left to talk to the couple and each share a bit of our infertility trials. Oh the irony that I wanted to remain in my safe, secure space and instead God brought someone into my life to help me live a little bit more free from my burden of infertility.

Playing Catch Up

Well there is a lot to update on since my last post. For ease I'll put it in bullet points:

• I had blood work to check my HCG levels the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. My RN called the next day to say that they went from 5,000+ down to 600 which is awesome.
• Hammer and I spent Thanksgiving with his family this year. It was a nice time but honestly his mom is a very plain cook and I really, really missed my family's cooking. I think I'll have to make my family's traditional stuffing just to get my fix. She also has an obsession with the giblets and puts them in everything, egh. I'm sorry but I know what the liver does and it's not something I want to ingest.
• The miscarriage bleeding lasted till Black Fr.iday which I was surprised but really happy about. I'm really hoping that I get my period soon so that I can get my body reset.
• As some of you know on Sunday my email got hacked through my facebook account but all appears to be well now. Except that some blogger named Dewayne left a weird message on my Hijacked post. Dewayne are you my hacker? Just wondering.
• I had to travel out of town on Monday for a Federal audit of which I was given a one month warning (surprise!) And then got a bigger surprise...I started bleeding again. I had to run back to my hotel to grab some feminine products which I brought but just didn't take some in my purse.
• I also had to find a lab to get my blood drawn while I was out of town. Fortunately there was one right across from my hotel. Unfortunately it took FOREVER to get it done as the lady was so slow and the computer kept rejecting my information.
• I got my results today and was really hoping that it would be zero and that the bleeding was my period but it was only 54. I say "only" but 54 is actually pretty good. I will need to get my blood drawn, hopefully, one more time to confirm that it's down below 5 which for them is = to zero. So the bleeding was probably not my period and it's gone as of today. I'll still need to be on the look out for it and this time I'm carrying 'supplies' at all times until it does.
• I'm really, secretly, hoping that I my body resets because I'd love to start trying naturally as soon as possible. I actually have some hope that maybe, just maybe the thyroid is the missing piece. I hate to get my hopes up but they are and I'm just going to go with it. I know I said my ute needs a rest but I really just feel that my tummy, my butt and my who-ha need to stop being poked and prodded by needles and probes.
• Finally, I have an IRL friend who is 32 and recently married for a little over a year. She has known that she has PCOS since she was about 18 years old. We have been talking about IF because she and her husband are going to start trying soon and she knows that it will be an uphill battle for them. She has been trying to eat healthier and loose some weight to prepare her body. But things are on hold until her husband can pass his nursing boards and get a job. Just a few weeks ago she and I were talking and she filled me in that her BCP were late so she could not start her new pack and had been off of them for two weeks. Now she has not been off BCP for about 8 years because it helps her body stay healthy due to her PCOS. She was describing ovulation symptoms which she thought were pregnancy symptoms but being the 'TTC expert' I told her that it was ovulation. She and her husband decided to just go for it because she had been told she would never ovulate on her own and if she was they wanted to take advantage of it and just see what happens. Well I think you all know where this is going, right? Yep she just called me moments ago and told me that she is pregnant. It's so bittersweet having just miscarried and shared the pain of that process with her. And then to suddenly hear that they are pregnant after just one random try. Although I am so happy for them because I really would never want anyone to have to experience IVF, it just hurts a bit. I wonder why they received this miracle so quickly when we have been praying for so long, we thought that maybe this last pregnancy was our chance only to have it taken away. I don't think I'll ever really understand why we have been given this trial or why we continue to be left behind by friends and fellow infertiles in the elusive chase for a baby. I wonder at what point will this journey end? At what point will God say, "Alright, it's finally time" and give us the blessing of a child. Oh what I would give to have insight into God's plan for our family! So my fellow IF's (and yes I even mean those of you who are now pregnant and or mommies) will you help us out? Hammer, my family and I are praying for our own miracle to finally come. We are specifically praying that God would allow us to get pregnant before we have to do our final IVF. I know that so many of you wonderful ladies have already been praying for us which I cherish so much already as you are all in my prayers as well. That's why I wanted to fill you in on our specific prayer if you'd like to pray along with us.

Unsteady Ground

So to begin, I headed into the clinic this morning at 7:10 am to give myself more than 30 minutes to make it in to the lab for my appointment a 7:45 am. I found a better route from our area and it took only 20 minutes to get there. I was so excited that this could be an alternative to our freeway issue. Except that there was a big construction sign stating that on Monday July 6th the main road would be closed for construction. Drat! So plan A will remain in effect for egg retrieval where we will stay at my parents who live closer to the clinic.

The blood draw went well and then I walked over to the IF clinic for my ultrasound. I had a bad feeling that I would end up with "The Woman" RE today. And I did. She has no bedside manner. Seriously. She didn't even ask me to scoot down to the end of the table. Instead she put a condom on the u/s wand, lubed it up and stood there just waiting. Her technique is...painful and she didn't speak a single word to me as she checked out my girls. I had to ask, "Soooo do I have at least one follicle?" and her reply, "Yes, there's at least one." Ordinarily I would think it would be followed by an explanation from the RE about exactly how many she had found on each ovary, but not "The Woman." To catch you up on "The Woman" RE, when she did one of our IUI's her technique was so bad I nearly jumped off the table and then ended up bleeding for the next 5 days. Even if we had gotten pregnant that month I wouldn't have had a lining left for the embie to implant! My biggest fear is that she will be one of the RE's who does our retrieval or transfer and we have been praying against that from happening.

Back to the u/s, "The Woman" finished, grabbed my chart and was running out the door mumbling something about the ART nurses calling me. UNBELIEVABLE, she was just going to leave without telling me ANYTHING about my u/s??? It was like a bad one night stand* - wham-bam and running for the door without saying a word. I at least deserved something after our intimate encounter as she did just put a wand up my whoo-ha. So I stopped her by just firing away my questions at her and, let me tell you, it was like pulling teeth. Here is the summary after 5 days of stims:

6 follies total
4 follies on the right
2 follies on the left

Follie sizes
1-13mm
5- less than 10mm

Lining
6.5 mm (6-14 is ideal for implantation)

Six. I only have six. Don’t’ get me wrong, I’m glad its more than one but only six? I was surprised at this. I thought I would totally rock the stims and have an egg farm brewing in my belly. Right now, if I was an egg farmer I would have to file for chapter 11 bankruptcy. I walked out of there feeling deflated, disappointed and basically…blah.

I then had to go to work and spent the whole day with questions rolling around in my mind. What if this is because I messed up on my meds? What if I single handedly ruined our IVF cycle? What if I don’t’ make anymore follies? Will we have enough for a fresh cycle let alone a frozen? What if we don’t have any mature follies? What if our cycle gets cancelled? Could I just be over suppressed?

This last question is something that I’ve been thinking about since my first u/s on 6/24. I went back and listened to the message from the ART nurse again and confirmed that my E2 was below 7. They wanted me to be at least below 80 but I was below 7. Doesn't that sound extremely low? Aren’t I supposed to have SOME estrogen? Could I just be taking a while because I was basically starting from zero?

I didn’t have time to research this at work. I had to endure talking about pregnant ladies, babies, breastfeeding and hot flashes. Yes, hot flashes. I was in a meeting while three 45+ year old women that I work with were going on about how I just don’t understand what hot flashes are like but that someday I’d know. I said nothing but inside my head ran the following scenario where I just went off on them shouting,

“NEWS FLASH, I do know. I intentionally am giving myself hot flashes in a desperate attempt to try and get pregnant. And because of this I have to run off to appointments all the time which make you all speculate that I actually am pregnant and therefore you drop hints to me all the time to see if I’ll crack and break the “exciting news.” Well I’m cracking but not like you’d think because I’m infertile and all these appointments are so that we can do IVF, so there!”

*sigh* It was a long meeting and as you can probably tell it did nothing to help with my current mental state.

To make matters worse my cell phone battery died and I missed the call from the ART nurse regarding my blood work results and protocol changes. By the time I got to my car to plug in my phone it was past office hours. I did have a message from them regarding my E2 levels:

6/24 E2 = 7 pg/mL
7/2 E2 = 107 pg/mL

107???? Isn’t this too low for 5 days of stims? I instantly went into a spiral of sobbing. I thought I would be higher. I called Hammer who immediately left work to come home because I was inconsolable on the phone going on and on about how I was too old, my eggs were old, we were too late etc. It was pretty ugly. While I waited for him to arrive I called my mom who is a walking medical dictionary and knows just what to do to make things ‘all better.’ She was able to talk some sense into me. First that I was on too many drugs now to be rational and I needed to listen to Hammer and her, she was sooo right about that! And that I was jumping to conclusions since I couldn’t get in contact with my RE until tomorrow. I told her that they weren’t changing my protocol which I didn’t understand. Her, being the rational one, (I, not so much) thought was that it was likely because everything WAS fine and I was making assumptions.

I was basing my freak out on the following chart from the Advanced Fertility Clinic in Chicago, IL** (below) which shows that at day 5 I should be around 400-500 pg/mL.

“How is the monitoring of the IVF stimulation done?

We try to stimulate the woman to get at least 4 follicles with sizes of 14-20mm diameter. Ideally, there would be at least 8 follicles between 13-20 mm for IVF. The goal is to get a good number (about 8-15) of quality eggs. Blood hormone levels and developing follicle sizes are monitored. Ultrasound is used to measure the follicles. Estrogen hormone blood levels are important. Estrogen (actually estradiol) levels are usually under 60 pg/ml at cycle baseline and rise significantly as multiple follicles develop. Peak estradiol levels in IVF at the time of HCG are usually between 1000 and 4000 pg/ml. The stimulating process usually takes about 8-10 days.

Usually, it is not difficult to get enough follicles to develop. However, sometimes the response of the ovaries is poor and a low number of growing follicles are seen… The minimum number of follicles needed to proceed with IVF treatment depends on several factors, including follicle sizes, age of the woman, results of previous IVF stimulations and the willingness of the couple (and the doctor) to proceed with egg retrieval when there will be a low number of eggs obtained. In our experience, IVF success rates are very low with less than 3 mature follicles (18mm). Some IVF doctors will say that you should have at least 5 follicles of 14mm or greater while others might do the egg retrieval with only one follicle. Most IVF programs in the US want a minimum of about 3-4 mature (or close to mature) follicles. Women that are more likely to be low responders to ovarian stimulation would be those that have low antral follicle counts, those women who are older than about 37, women with elevated FSH levels, and women with other signs of reduced ovarian reserve.”

And this is why I became irrational. I was convinced I have reduced ovarian reserve and tail-spinned into a sob-fest. And while all these things I’ve worried about throughout day may come into being it is as my dad, who was listening on speaker phone, said, “None of this is in our control, it never was and it never will be. You just have to trust that God IS in control.” Aren’t dad’s great?

Now that I’ve calmed down a bit, eaten some chocolate and pizza (stress food), and spent some time praying I feel better. That and I’ve found some better information about where I should be at:

E2 Day 3 25-75 pg/mL
- my day 0 was less than 7 so I was probably still way below this at day 3

E2 Day 5 100 pg/mL or 2x day 3 levels
- so that means I’m actually right on track, I freaked out*** for nothing

E2 Surge day 200-600 pg/mL per 18mm (mature) follicle

My RE is giving the follies five more days to cook. So that means on the day I take my HCG trigger, if all my six eggs mature I should be at least 1,200 pg/mL. That’s a lot of ground to make up. But if your E2 levels are supposed to double every day after the day 5 check then I would be around 1,000 (107x2 = 214 x5 days = 1070 pg/ML so it’s possible.

And Hammer made a very good point that maybe we have only a small number of eggs because God was protecting us from having to make difficult decisions. We don’t want to be in the position where we have an ethical dilemma. When we talked and prayed about IVF we did feel that God had led us to go down this road. We also talked a lot about how many eggs we would fertilize. Since the first cycle has so many unknowns we agreed that we would not fertilize anymore eggs than we were willing to have children. We both felt extremely at peace with our decision to only fertilize seven eggs and freeze the rest. There was a lot of discussion about the probability game and that only doing seven could mean that we have few or no eggs in the end. But since the first cycle is a game of probability we would rather play it conservative until we know what we are dealing with as far as my egg making abilities and what his boys can do in the dish. We’ve had three years to save up for our baby and that has allowed us to have the means to do two full IVF cycles, drugs and all. We would rather pay more in the end than be in the position of having to decide which embryos we would use or not use. And since we both felt we couldn’t ‘get rid of’ or donate our embryos that could mean the purchase of a school bus in the future and my uterus just trembles at the thought of all those potential babies.

So our schedule will change a bit. Instead of Monday being our estimated egg retrieval day it will be another blood draw and ultrasound. So that means five more days of stims with the hope that we will trigger that night or the next day for a new estimated egg retrieval of Wednesday or Thursday.

Now all there is to do is pray and trust that God is still in control, always has been, and always will be.

_________________________________________________

*I've never had a one night stand but I watch movies and therefore assume this is similar to a one night stand, 'cause movies are like real life, right?

**This is not my IF clinic but a great resource I've used in the past on IVF cycles

***For those of you who thought I was ridiculously calm, you now have proof that I can freak out with the best of them.

Current Meds: Lupron 5 units, Bravelle 1 vial AM + 2 vials PM
Side Effects: burning and redness at injection site (Lupron only), moderate agitation, hot flashes, FATIGUE, headache
Follie Report: Day 5 = 6 follies (4R, 3L), 1x13mm and 5x less than 10mm
Days Post Transfer: 0
# Eggs Transferred: 0
# Eggs Frozen: 0

Shots and Signs

I have been having a horrible time with my Bravelle shots. I don't generally curse but I've labeled this my Bravelle-hell. It's not taking the shots - they don't hurt. It's mixing the shots! I have to mix saline vials to reconstitute the Bravelle, change out the needle and then stick myself. The kicker is that on weekends I still have to get up to take the shot like I would on a week day. Monday-Friday I am normally up by 5 am and out the door at 6:30-6:45. So my plan was to wake up at 6:30 on the weekend to take my shot and head back to bed. The problem is I'm still groggy and totally sleep-stupid. Saturday I didn't get all of the mixed Bravelle out of the vial and had to go back with a second needle and restick myself - ouch! So I thought I'd come up with a plan - mix my shot and preload my 5 units of Lupron for Sunday morning so that I would just get up and only have to stick myself. Even that didn't go well. I ended up some how pulling out the Lupron needle before injecting the meds and had to stick myself twice to get it in there all while bleeding from the first injection site. Then when I went to do the Bravelle I somehow loosened up the needle so that it wasn't on tight. When I went to inject the meds it started seeping out through the reservoir instead of through the needle and into my tummy. I had to keep the needle in my stomach while I tightened it back on to the body of the needle to be able to inject the remaining med. I think I lost a LOT on the floor. Hopefully tomorrow will be better because I will be taking these shots after having already been up for an hour and a half. Sigh.

It's totally all worth it but I now have SO much more respect for my dad and cousins who have type I diabetes. I don't know how they do it.

The cool thing was that Hammer and I were driving back from church this morning and I was thinking about the next few days and all I had to do for IVF and getting to my appointments etc. We were passing an SUV and on the bumper was a sticker that said, "Expect Miracles" I have NEVER seen that bumper sticker before ever - what are the odds of that?

Current Meds: Lupron 5 units, Bravelle 1 vial AM + 2 vials PM
Side Effects: burning and redness at injection site (Lupron only), moderate agitation, hot flashes, FATIGUE
Days Post Transfer: 0
# Eggs Transferred: 0
# Eggs Frozen: 0

She Just Couldn't Stay Away

So the one thing I was looking forward too with IVF was the strong possibility that AF would not come or her stay would be uneventful and brief. Instead she gave it all she's got. Bummer. But on the bright side this could be the last time I see her for a while... So instead I'll think of it as a goodbye visit. I sure hope that's the last I see of her for quite some time.

On a funny note, Hammer said something over the weekend that cracked me up. We were riding on the ferry back to the upper peninsula just above Mac.kinac city. There were two families with infants who were cooing and giggling at each other. Hammer was observing this scene, turns to me and says, "You know, babies are like dogs, they bark at each other." I busted up laughing and then thought, should I be worried that my husband thinks babies are just dogs with less hair?

Finally, today we had our IVF counseling session. We passed with flying colors. I know it's not a test or a game on how to dupe the social worker. But apparently we are not crazy, having panic attacks, unable to handle the pressure etc. I think we're pretty well balanced and have a good perspective on the whole thing. We aren't do-or-die riding with our whole mental happiness on this cycle and are prepared that this may or may not work. Don't get me wrong, I WANT this to work, I WANT to be pregnant and experience all the joys AND discomforts (seriously). But I still know none of this is in my hands. No matter how well we time things, or the number of drugs we take, or eggs we fertilize, or embryos we implant; God has the last word. He always has and He always will. It will not make it hurt less if it doesn't work but at least I will know that it wasn't something I did or didn't do or that I was being punished (because it doesn't work that way). But it will help me get up, dust my self off and keep moving forward until His plan is fully revealed to us. I just hope that it's sooner than later! After this weekend we will be in the two week count down to egg retrieval. This really does move fast.

Current Meds: Lupron 10 units
Side Effects: intermittent nausea, burning and redness at injection site, moderate agitation, FATIGUE
Days Post Transfer: 0
# Eggs Transferred: 0
# Eggs Frozen: 0

Like Peas and Carrots

That's what Aunt Flow and I are like right now, peas and carrots. She showed up perfectly on time. I know that God is working in the back ground to take care of those details that I have no control over. Aunt Flow's arrival on Saturday means that my day 3 FSH will be drawn on Monday. If she had been even one day late it would have been impossible because of my travel. If she had been early, well I would have had to scramble to find a lab that was open on a Sunday.

When I called to find out if my blood test and Hammers SA was part of the IVF money that had to be paid up front before beginning any part of the process I discovered - it's not! That means we can do our pre-IVF testing that will help guide us to when we should do it without having to pull together the payment right away. God is taking care of our details.

On a cool note we had dinner last night with our friends who asked to pray for us. Before going out we spent time in prayer. She had borrowed a book called "Supernatural Childbirth: Experiencing the Promises of God Concerning Conception and Delivery" because it had a few prayers about asking God to increase fertility. So in addition to their personal prayers for us they also read these prayers and gave us a copy as well. I've included them in case you would be interested in them. They also have scriptural references.

Desire to Conceive:

"Father, we thank You that children are the heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is His reward. Children are Your idea Father; You thought up children, and family and home. You instituted the family in the Garden of Eden. You ordered children; You commanded them when You said to Adam and Eve, "be fruitful and multiply." You said that the barren womb is never satisfied. Lord, the Word declares that I am wonderfully and fearfully made by You; therefore I am perfect and able to conceive and have children. You said that I would be a fruitful vine by the side of our house and our children like olive plants around our table. We are not ashamed but happy because our quiver is full of children (or arrows as You call them).

Thank You, Father, that You designed and fashioned me to have children, that in the Bible barrenness was the exception, not the rule, not Your will, not normal, something against Your plan and purpose. And in Your goodness and faithfulness, every barren woman in the Bible was godly and believed in Your Word became pregnant; you opened her womb and blessed her, and she gave birth to a precious baby just as I will. You make the barren woman to keep house and be a joyful mother of children.

You said, Father, that because You are our God and are Your people and have a covenant with You, that You will love us and bless us and multiply us and bless the fruit of my womb and that neither male nor female among Your people would be barren.

Father, we are redeemed from the curse of the law by Jesus and being barren is under the curse of the Law; therefore, we will receive from Your grace and have children.

Father, no plague, no evil shall come nigh our dwelling. We are healed by the stripes of Jesus. Sickness of any kind is taken out of our midst. You said to ask anything of You in Jesus' name and it would be done; and that if two of us on earth agree as touching anything it would be done. So we pray and we agree with You and Your Word, Father, that we will conceive and bring forth a healthy, precious baby to Your glory and honor. We pray all this according to Your word and will. You said, this is the confidence that we have in You, that if we ask anything according to Your will, You hear us; and if You hear us, we know we have the petition we desire of You. We have it now. Thank You, Father, in Jesus' name."

Speaking to Your Body:

"Body, we speak to you in Jesus' name: You will come in line and agreement with the Word of God. You will respond to His Holy Word. You will function properly and perfectly, the way God intended you to. Every part, every organ of our reproductive system conforms to the Word and plan of God as we come together in pure, marital love. Body conceive! Be pregnant. Cooperate with God's plan: perfect ovulation, release of perfect eggs from the ovaries, thorough the fallopian tubes, penetrated and impregnated, fertilized by healthy sperm. Good solid attachment to uterine wall and nourished and protected for nine months (40 weeks) unharmed and unhindered. Grow to a perfect baby - spirit, soul, and body. Your Word says, Father, that none shall cast their young, nor be barren among Your people and the number of our days You will fulfill. This pregnancy will be fulfilled. We decree it in Jesus' name and receive God's best; we won't settle for anything less in Jesus' holy name. Thank you, Lord, that it is so and done to Your honor and glory. Amen."

Genesis 1:28; Exodus 23:25; Psalm 91; 113:9, 127:3-5, 128:3, 139:14; Matt 18:19; John 16:23; Galatians 3:13; 1 John 5:14-15; 1 Peter 2:24;

Bad news, Good news and Blessings

Bad News:
I woke up today with my temps starting to drop and cramping. Looks like Aunt Flow will be visiting and progesterone is still dumb. Bbs hurt even worse, hunger symptoms stopped yesterday, and I'm so bloated I look like I just ate a small village. IVF, here we come...

Good News:
I called my RE's office because I never heard back on my progesterone and found out it was 56. Yep, so now I've had a 75 and a 56. That means one of two things: I ovulated more than one egg causing two corpus lutems to bring my progesterone up, or I keep conceiving but not implanting. This would be confirmed by the cramping I got days 6-9. Will they do anything about this? No because I still don't have a positive pg test and they don't do an HCG blood draw without a call from me saying, "I got two lines," which I've never said before. Wait this is the "Good News" section? Stay positive. OK. No issues with progesterone = good news.

We can still rejoice in our victories this month: lefty works and Fertilaid makes a difference for Hammer. I'm going to order more after I post.

Also, I might be able to do another IUI this month because of how my cycle fell with my travel for work. I'll have to work these details out with the RE's office but I think I may have spoken too soon when I rejoiced over no more clomid.

The Blessings
I am actually not overly sad knowing that this cycle did not work, I know it's weird. Especially since I previously posted that I would likely be really crushed. When I told Hammer that Aunt Flow appeared to be on her way I had a moment. He looked at me and saw my face get all squishy because I was about to cry. He took my hand and said in a soft and calming voice, "Are you trying not to cry, don't cry, we'll be alright." And I knew in that second that it was alright, God was in control and we would be alright. I feel totally at peace and I recalled the verse:

Philippians 4:6 "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

I know that God has heard our cries, our prayers and pleadings for a baby. Our requests have been made known to Him for the last 2 years and 8 months. That fact is comforting but what is even more comforting is that He has given me the peace that is guarding my heart and my mind from overwhelming sadness. As it is human to do so I had my moments this month where I thought, "It didn't work" and "I think it worked" but I would stop and tell myself to guard my heart and prayed for God to grant me His peace. And now I am wrapped up in that peace, thank you Jesus.

The other thing that He's put in my heart is that we are very close. Yes, "very close." I have prayed over what that could mean. I wanted to make sure that it wasn't my own humanness to be subliminally banking on IVF and I can tell you now that it's not. Of course God's definition of close can be very different than our own. Very close to me is like going on a long car drive and after asking, "Are we there yet?," a bunch of times you finally get the answer of, "very soon", instead of just, "soon." And then 20 minutes later you reach your destination. If we look at God's definition it could be "Sarah-close" or "Hannah-close"

"Sarah-close" was God telling Abraham who was 75 years of age at the time that He would make a great nation from Abraham's line. Then 15 years later God comes down and say to Abraham who is now 99 years old that his 90 year old wife, Sarah, would conceive but it took 16 years from the time of the prophecy and one surrogate son before Sarah gave birth to Issac.

"Hannah-close" was one of the rare cases when God closed a womb. Hannah was at the temple praying fervently with a passion that only us IFers understand and so passionately that the priest thought she was drunk. While we don't know exactly how long Hannah suffered with infertility we do know that on this day the priest said, "Go in peace; and may the God of Israel grant your petition that you have asked of Him." And then shortly after that it is written that after she laid with her husband, "...the LORD remembered her," she gave birth to Samuel and then she went on to bear several other children. One other thing that I find comforting about Hannah's story is that she also brought her petition to God just as Philippians tells us to do and her petition was heard!

In my human brain "Sarah-close" would equate to "soon" while "Hannah-close" would equate to "very soon." I don't know exactly which one I'm dealing with but I do know that in each instance when God gave insight into his plan they all came to fruition. So that will be the knowledge that I will cling to whether I am "Sarah-close" or "Hannah-close" because I am another month closer to the completion of God's plan.

On a side note, when I first started blogging I had posted about an insight I had into why Sarah laughed when God said she would bear a child at age 90. At this time in my TTC I had hit a low point and felt that I needed to keep the pre-prophecy name of Sarai instead of Sarah because I felt like God had not given me the word of His blessing for our family. Today, I called her Sarah.

Moments That Make Us Feel Humbled

I'm sitting here thinking about my blood draw that I need to have done tomorrow. I'm not worried about it. I have to get my progesterone drawn because of my low lining (last u/s check was 7cm). I think I'll be ok because I've always had good levels anywhere between 27-75, yes 75. I have learned that there is no meaning behind a high number other than lots of progesterone. And every time I've had large numbers I have symptoms i.e., sore bbs, nausea, heightened sense of smell, etc. All the symptoms that make you think, "this could be the month," but it never was. I have some of those symptoms now and I'm not reading into any of them as I've been down this road one too many times. It's hard not to get your hopes up at all because all we have is hope and faith that eventually our moment will come. So I've been trying to put our month, our trial into perspective to make sure that while I have hope it's balanced so that I don't suffer another disappointment.

This weekend I visited my uncle (my dad's brother) who, at just the age of 50, is losing his battle with an extremely aggressive brain tumor. He is an awesome Godly man, husband and father of 6 beautiful children ages 22 to 7. He is a simple mailman who always chose to walk his routes instead of drive to stay healthy and fit. But our world was forever changed in June 2008 when what we thought was a stroke turned out to be a brain tumor the size of a baseball. Through surgery, infection, surgery to remove the infection, reactions to medications, failed radiation, arterial blockage, failed chemo, failed experimental drug trials, and seizures, his faith in God has not changed one ounce. Not one ounce. He has not question God's sovereignty nor why this has happened to him. While we don't understand this trial, we know that God is the same God and that He still loves us, that He loves him. My uncle will be leaving this earth in about three months. Leaving his wife, his children, his brothers, his sister, his parents, his nieces, nephews, cousins and friends. His courage has been inspiring in the face of his death.

I've been asking myself if I could be this courageous. I'm not even dealing with death, I'm dealing with creating life. And yet I've questioned why, why we have to endure this trial. Could I be this courageous? I don't know. And that is humbling. Every day is choice to be positive, a choice to see the glass half full, a choice to wait expectantly for God's plan to come to completion. I've had my share of doubting, questioning, anger and frustration. But I want to be counted worthy. I want to finish my race on this earth strong, knowing that I've kept the faith regardless of the trial. I believe that every trial teaches you something and this must be preparing us for something great. I think it was Mandy P's husband who, when hearing that they were part of 7% of couples unable to conceive in one year, said "Then God must be doing something really big in us." God IS doing something big in my uncle's trial - He is bringing their marriage closer, his relationship with his brother closer, my dad is realizing that being compassionate is better than gaining wisdom, and people far and wide are touched when they speak to him and see his steadfast faith. So I will take my trial as training for the BIG thing God is doing in us because I too want to be counted as a faithful servant.

"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.

Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize."

1 Corinthians 9:24-27

"His master replied, 'Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!'

Matthew 25:23

Awaiting Redemption

Man, it's been a busy week! I've had to play so much catch up at work and then the poo hit the fan on one of our projects. So I've been very delayed in posting.

During my week I've been "reading" The Shack via my iPod. I've really enjoyed it and while there are few things in the theology presented that I'm not totally in agreement about, it has brought about a lot of Aha! moments for me.

One thing that I had not realized I'd been doing was wanting God to justify why this trial of infertility was placed in our lives. By wanting that I was unknowingly making the statement that I believed God was the cause of our infertility. But if you study the word "barren," Missed Conceptions did an awesome job of it, there are very few times where God is the one who closed up the womb. Nine times out of ten God did not cause barrenness nor do I believe He has chosen to cause my barrenness. Barrenness is the cause of sin. When Adam and Eve choose to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they began a chain reaction. Our human bodies were never meant to die, to suffer things like cancer or infertility.

So therefore, since God has not come to justify His actions but to redeem and just has He has come to redeem our souls, He will also redeem us from our trials. God will redeem me from my infertility in one way or another because He works all things for the good of those who love Him. While God has the power to eliminate sin, pain and suffering the result would mean that we would not exist. It would mean that we would have never been created at all since sin began with Adam and Eve. Because God LOVES us too much to have never created us, this is not an option for Him. Instead He created us in His image and allows us free will to choose to love Him in return. God has chosen not to eliminate sin and suffering but instead to redeem it through His son Jesus. Jesus was born as a man to be the ultimate sacrifice for all the sins of the world, past, present and future; and to allow us to come into a relationship with Him and His Father. Without Christ's sacrifice and act of redemption we would all be lost and you and I would have no hope. But we HAVE hope!!!

God sees what sin has done to our frail human bodies and for many of us that is infertility. God is greater than sin and evil and He will overcome it. He will bring redemption. It may be that he will create life where there was no life, He may bless physicians with the knowledge to help those who are infertile, He may place on a woman's heart to be a surrogate birth mother for another couple, or He may touch family with the blessing of adoption. Either way He will redeem us; He will redeem me.

This Christmas season we celebrate the birth of Christ, our redeemer. Blessed be His name, Jesus.

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose."
Romans 8:28

"He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?"
Romans 8:32

New Look, New Attitude

I'm onto three posts already, can you tell I've been home sick all day? Since my post last week I've been feeling much better emotionally. I feel like I've turned a corner. So to reflect that I've spruced up my blog page: new layout, new format etc. I also have been feeling encouraged by some of my fellow bloggers who have been successful. Yes I am genuinely happy for all of them! I've been praying a lot for direction this past week and have been feeling very positive that IVF may work for us. I just have to have patience to wait until April/May when we'll be able to start.

I'm much more in the Christmas spirit too. My hubby wouldn't let me be Scrooge this year and not put up a tree. So he dragged me with him last weekend to Home Depot to pick out a tree. Five hours later we had fully decorated the tree, house and put the lights up outside. (Uh, actually my hubby put the outdoor lights up in the freezing sleet/snow...but I made him hot cocoa!)

So to confirm my new attitude here is a list of ten things I'm thankful for this year as 2008 is coming to a close:

1. My Heavenly Father and Jesus - who takes me as I am, the good and the bad. Let's me be myself and heals my brokenness. Who has a perfect plan for us on this infertility journey if I'm willing to be patient and trust him.

2. My incredible hubby - who also loves me for who I am. Who has stood by my side, held my hand through each procedure, and kept me laughing during the many hard times. If infertility has done one thing good, it has made us stronger as a couple.

3. My irreplaceable family - my mom who constantly prays for our infertility. My dad who, although struggles with the fact that he cannot fix our infertility problems for his little girl, prays for us everyday.

4. My awesome dog - yes my dog! Because he is that awesome. He gives unconditional doggy love.

5. My confidants - those friends that I've shared this struggle with and who continually pray for us and know that sometimes hugs are better than any words.

6. My new bloggy friends - who've read my ups and downs for the last few months and have been an encouragement to me.

7. My RE - who has worked with us to provide personalized treatments, has not wasted our time with excessive procedures, and has been conservative with fertility drugs.

8. My Ob/Gyn - who found and cleared endometriosis relieving me from years of painful cycles.

9. My job - that pays for parts of infertility treatments such as doctor visits and drugs and a boss that works with my treatment schedules.

10. My husband's job - having both great paying jobs (mine and his) has allowed us to try several IUI's and will allow us to do at least two IVF cycles. And if our plan is for adoption we'll have the financial ability to go down that road as well.

I'm going to post this on my gadget board to help remind me to be positive. I'm also going to start a new motto for 2009: "Expect Miracles."

I know that my last few posts have been less than positive. All I can say is that after 2 1/2 years infertility gets to you and I had a few weeks of sadness. For the most part I've had a pretty positive attitude. I started blogging because I was beginning to be invaded by sadness but I think that the process itself of writing out what I've been feeling has been therapeutic. So thanks for sticking with me, hopefully you have.

In the White Spaces

So I've been going through some inner spiritual turmoil. I was challenged by a fellow blogger's steadfastness in her constant positive and prayerful mindset towards her infertility. The challenge was because I don't always feel that positive and it made me feel a bit like a spiritual failure. Just to clarify I mean no offense to the blogger, I am envious of her constant positive outlook. I wish I could have one tenth of it. Instead I find myself on a rollercoster of emotions. One day I'm coping just fine with being infertile and trusting God's plan, then the next I'm completely devastated, feeling hopeless and forsaken. It could be all the drugs but more than likely it's the emotional toll that this is taking on me. And I finally hit my limit on Wednesday and let Him know about it. And then I regretted it because I felt like I failed in my faith.

I was mad because I felt like my hubby and I had done nothing to deserve this trial and that he had forsaken us. Somehow he had decided to deal bitterly with us while allow those who don't even acknowledge his existence be blessed with children. We have been faithful to him but what about our promise? "To the faithless He will remain faithful for He cannot forsake His own" Even in our darkest times He is supposed to stick by us? So why do I feel so alone? Why do I feel like He has been so silent? And so I cried out. "I'm right here! Have you forgotten about me? While you've spent your time blessing less faithful people with babies; I'm still here, barren." What a selfish, faithless moment.

But then, I'm not the first. King David, said to be 'a man after God's own heart,' spoke similar words of frustration and exasperation. I was reminded of this when listening to a sermon I happened to miss two weeks ago while being out of town. Now if I had listened to this two weeks ago it would have been a great message but the timing of hearing this while in my current state was a blessing. Our pastor spoke on how to worship when you were not feeling 'worshipful.' He was trying to write a sermon about how to worship in the spirit but was challenged by his associate pastor who, when reviewing his sermon asked, "What do you do when you don't feel that way?" This bothered him for several days and finally he began to feel convicted. Maybe there was more to worship than just singing and raising of hands and while He wants us to do those things what He desires more is our heart.

Mark 7:6 He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: "These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. 7 They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men."

He desires that emotion response by us, that we feel emotion for him and show it. So how do we revive a broken heart? My pastor's response was, "For one thing, we don’t deny it. We don’t deny or ignore our emotions." Because our God IS an EMOTIONAL God.

"The God of the Bible is not the silent, stoic type. He’s not like these statues of Buddha, sitting there, legs crossed, eyes closed, unmoved, unaffected by all that is going on around him. That’s not the Father God. That’s not the Great I Am, Creator,Maker,Savior,Redeemer. My God feels. He grieves and laughs, knows joy and sorrow, anger and disappointment, compassion and wrath, jealousy and passion. He has emotions and He’s given them to you!"
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The question is do we trust our emotions? Because some emotions are tied to sin. But emotions are neither right nor wrong, they just are.

"You were created in the image of God, which means you were created as an emotional being. Sure, that image has been distorted and twisted because of sin, but it’s still part of you. So know yourself. Know what you are feeling, or what you’re not feeling. Know what’s blocking any sense of remorse or regret, joy or compassion, as well as what’s causing such sadness and anger, discontentment or elation. If you’re going to ensure that there’s not a disconnect between the words from your lips and the emotions in your heart, ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." you have to know what you are feeling and you have to say what that is. God wants all of your heart. Not just the happy joyful part or the submissive, surrendered part. He wants the struggling, angry, lustful part as well. He wants all of you. When you give Him all your heart, that honors him. That’s true worship."

The example he gave is when a person shares with you their struggles, when they open up and reveal the dark places, the hidden secrets. It evokes a level of trust. It says, "I trust you with the knowledge of the depths of my heart; good or bad. I trust that no matter what I tell you, you will love me regardless. You will be faithful, tender and understanding." On the flip side what does it say if a person isn't open with you or puts on a facade.

"Worship, honoring God, genuinely declaring that He is good, might be most powerfully expressed when you aren’t feeling it and yet still come to Him."

And this is what we see in the Psalms. You can read 47 verses where David is depressed, in the depth of despair, feeling forgotten by God and then suddenly in verse 48 he's praising, thanking, rejoicing and celebrating. What happened? What changed?

One of our pastors calls it "God in the white spaces"

"In that little gap between verse 47 and verse 48—between 2am and 4am— between last Tuesday and today—God comes and He takes my heart and begins to renew it and restore it, heal it and fill it. It all happens—it can only happen if I give all my heart. That’s the worship He wants. That’s the worship we need."

And so that is where I find myself, in the white spaces. I came and poured out all the ugliness of my soul; my brokenness from this long road of infertility. And so now I wait for the healing and it has begun to come. Instead of rending my garments, I am rending my heart. God has shown me my heart, the pain that has been hiding deep inside and I'm returning it to Him to heal it, forgive it and cleanse it. This is what is supposed to happen in the white spaces, God revives and enables you to feel His joy, His peace, His comfort, and His love. It's a process but I'm getting there. I may never be the steadfast positive Christian who never falters in their faith, but I will be the one that keeps coming back to Him.

Call Me Mara...

Well I decided to not let the box of Clearblue Easy's leave our house unopened and used it today to test; three days before Aunt Flow is to show (on Thanksgiving of all days). I peed on them, just to spite them; if you can spite inanimate objects. Either way it felt good to get some sort of payback. Of course they were negative; they are always negative.

What I don't understand is that I consistently have cramping between 6-9 dpo. Most people would call that "implantation" and I was told that it was probably due to my endometriosis. Regardless I would like to have a blood clotting test done. There are suspicions that my mom might have a blood clotting disorder based upon her medical history. But because they didn't really do this sort of testing back in the late 70's early 80's when she had my brother and I, we don't know. We do know she miscarried a baby (between my brother and I) when she was in her second trimester. Her doctor said that if she wanted a third child then he would order the test but my parents decided two was enough.

Typically they only order this test if you miscarry more than two times. But I was curious if anyone ended up having a blood clotting disorder that also had never successfully conceived until it was discovered and treated. Maybe I'm going down the wrong alley but my other thought was that I don't want to drop $$$ on IVF only to have it fail, then get tested and discover it could have been prevented. If anyone reading this has any input I'd appreciate it.

On the flip side, I titled this post "Call Me Mara" because of a verse that popped into my head this morning while reading the very prominent "not pregnant" on the test. If you have ever read the book of Ruth you will know that Ruth's mother-in-law's name is Naomi, which means "my delight." When Naomi suffers great loss she changes her name to Mara, which means "bitterness." This was because she felt God had dealt bitterly with her by bringing her such sadness. This is how I felt this morning. But then I read a post by Think(+)Positive which helped to put my sadness into perspective. If you need some hope and have a chance to read it I'd recommend popping over to her blog.

She said to them, "Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. "I went out full, but the LORD has brought me back empty. Why do you call me Naomi, since the LORD has witnessed against me and the Almighty has afflicted me?"

Ruth 1:20-21

Side Note:

Last night my mom told me she had a dream that she took my old room and turned it into a nursery with all my old baby things because she needed it to watch her new grand-baby while I went to work. While I don't believe in signs I do know that one day this dream will come true whether its via my womb or the gift of adoption.

I'm not holding onto false hope with this round of clomid (day 5 - last day of pills!) but if it's our plan for this to be the month I would be more than happy with that outcome. Like I've said before, I feel like God may be leading us to adoption but even my husband does not feel that we would never have a child of our own. It's just that if we were not on this journey, would we even consider adoption? Probably not. And if this is part of that greater plan, then so be it. I committed to following God's plan back when I was only 7 years old and gave my heart to Jesus while spending the summer with my grandparents. I've tried to go my own way before just to find out that I was utterly lost without Him. I know from experience that there is no life apart from Him. And while I have moments where I want to pull away and shout that I don't like this path and want to find my own way to motherhood, I instead find myself back on my knees in front of His throne. Because when it comes down to it, I have no where else to go and there is no other path worth taking.

"You will make known to me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; In Your right hand there are pleasures forever."

Psalms 16:11

Survival Status: Unscathed

I was dreading this Saturday because I had to attend a baby shower for one of my coworkers who is due in December. She's just a few months older than I am, only married a little over a year and got pregnant 'by accident' while training for a marathon. While I could go into details about how unfair that is I won't since it's not going to be any help to my clomid-induced mental status.

I worried that my day would end in sobbing tears after warding off side comments and jests about who they would be hosting the next baby shower for in the office. I being the next 'eligible candidate' because I'm the only married women of child-bearing age who has yet to produce spawn out of the 50 people in my department. I already know all eyes are expectantly on me and this was a prime moment for all present to ask their questions without being deemed nosey as we were all at a baby shower i.e. baby interrogations deemed appropriate for discussion.

I must have been protected by my higher power because, I kid you not, I did not have one question posed to me regarding my current baby-making status. And, I did not cry AT ALL yesterday. When I had just one small moment of weakness and my mind began to wander down the road of, "When will I have [insert whiny infertile comment]," I caught myself and gave a mental cry of, "Faith!," which effectively squelched the stinkn' thinkn' that would have inevitably followed.

What was even more encouraging came later that day. The hub and I went over to my parents house for dinner. My parents were cooking up a Clam Bake which is an excessive over-indulged annual event where we take a massive pot and toss in clams, chicken, potatoes, corn, and seasoning. Then we feast and transport home leftovers to make clam chowder etc. My brother, Aunt and Uncle joined in the fun. My mom pulled me aside during the evening to see how I was doing on the clomid and just in general. Life had been so busy for the two of us we hadn't talked all week until yesterday. I shared with her my updates and filled her in on what God had revealed to me from last weekend. As I talked about the verse in Isaiah and how it was connected to last Sunday's service I started quoting the verse to her. My mom's jaw dropped and she started saying it word for word with me. God had given that verse to her years ago when she was going through a difficult time. It was just a cool bonding connection to share with one another. It also confirmed that, in this world where Satan desires to make us feel alienated and alone to push us into despair, God breaks through and builds connections, to shed hope and light and let us know that we do not carry our burdens alone.

Profound...

After my post regarding AF's unexpected arrival I showered and headed off to church. Now I love our church. Ever since we started going there I've just been so impressed by the teachings. I feel like Jesus is standing up there on the stage half of the time and saying, "Hey listen to this! I wrote this just for you to hear." So consequently I'm moved to almost tears during about 90% of the services over the past year. This is very strange for me as I grew up a Baptist which is traditionally a very conservative denomination. We don't clap to songs (or even after a special music piece!), we don't raise our hands to worship music and the most rousing thing is when the older men in the back make a quick, "Amen." Since college, my husband and I have been attending non-denominational Churches which have a live band playing worship music, people clap, some raise hands, and you even get "hallelujahs" popping up every now and then. As you may suspect this has taken me some time to get used to and I'm much more comfortable now. But still, to be driven to tears almost every service is weirding me out a bit. I just don't "get emotional" in front of strangers.

The reason is because I swear each message has been specifically relating to our struggles with infertility. Every service I walk in with my heavy heart, I hear a message that hits directly where I'm at (even down to the words I have been praying), I cry, and then I leave with strength to keep going in this journey. For example, I had been praying about really laying down this trial and giving it up to God. And what should happen that week but a message about laying down our burdens on God's alter. We got to physically write down our burdens, take them up to the stage and place them into a mini alter. The elders later burned them in a bonfire to symbolize how the Jewish priests would sacrifice burdens and sins up to God. It was another tear filled service for me as I wrote down our struggle with infertility and my husband and I took it up to the alter. And I have to say it's really helped me.

So this Sunday was no different. Today was about the purpose of God and how He uses all things to bring about His plan for His glory in each one of us. During the service our worship band sang a special song to drive in the message in between our Pastor's talk. The chorus went like this:

He knows my name
He knows my every thought
He sees each tear that falls
And hears me when I call

Now prior this week I had posted about the following verse that He had given me:

Isaiah 30:19-22 "O people of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. How gracious he will be when you cry for help! As soon as he hears, he will answer you.

I had to fight to not cry during that song. Not to mention the whole rest of the service. I felt like the second part of the verse was being answered for me, "Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them. Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, "This is the way; walk in it."

God is using our infertility for a greater purpose. I've known that deep in my heart but this Sunday really reassured me it was true. I need to focus on this as we continue on this journey. I don't know what the greater purpose is but if God has a plan then I need to trust in it. So how do I deal with those moments of doubt that come much more frequently than I'd like? I'm reminded of the verse in Matthew 17:20 "...if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, `Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you." I'm going to cling to this verse. Every time I heard that small voice saying, "I'll never know what it feels like to be pregnant," "Why can't we be blessed with a baby?," or "When will it be our turn?" I need to remind myself of this verse and counter those thoughts. My faith in God's plan and purpose for our lives will one day move the mountain of infertility.


I'm waiting, some what impatiently, for our church to post the audio and manuscript of the service on line as I'd love to update this post with more details on the service.

Video of the worship song:

Trick or Treat?

So we had beggars night in our neighborhood that ended just a few hours ago. We live in a 'young' neighborhood with young couples that have lots of babies. Almost everyone toted around their babies in all the cute little costumes they have now like pea pods, cows and teddy bears. I had the unfortunate situation of being alone tonight passing out candy and having to deal with the emotions that after 2 1/2 years I still do not get to dress up our child in an over-priced-only-wear-it-once-Halloween-costume. It sucked. And when it was over with I cried. Pathetic.

So I wandered up into our loft and pulled out my old bible. I have several; one I keep for more in depth studies, one that outlines prophecy, one in the common vernacular, etc. But I pulled out the bible my parents got for me when I was a teenager. It was like opening up an old friend with all the markings, notations and underlinings done from past trials. I sat there praying for some direction or hope. As I was wiping away my tears I opened it up and the following verse caught my attention:

"O people of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. How gracious he will be when you cry for help! As soon as he hears, he will answer you. Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them. Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, "This is the way; walk in it." Then you will defile your idols overlaid with silver and your images covered with gold; you will throw them away like a menstrual cloth and say to them, "Away with you!" Isaiah 30 19-22

You have my attention now, I'm listening...

Nothing Like a Near Death Experience to Put Things Into Perspective

So my blog has been a bit silent for a while because the hub and I had been enjoying a relaxing week on Marco Island. It was an absolutely perfect week, even with a little rain passing through on Thursday and Friday. Our last day may have been raining but because of the storms overnight it was a great morning for shelling. Hub and I got up at 7 am to head out to the beach at sunrise. We got to see a beautiful rainbow, gorgeous sunrise, dolphins, flying fish, stingrays and collected every shell native to Florida including a sand dollar. It was a perfect end to a much needed vacation week.

The one thing I was dreading was the flight home. I'm not the best flier but I'm better than the hub who has to drug up to even GET on the plane. I've just had some bad flying luck and it's shaken my confidence a bit i.e., hit by lightening, jet stream roll on take off and near air miss to just name a few. So please note that I hate to fly in rain. I'd rather have snow than rain. Saturday morning we awoke to a heavy fog but it appeared to be clearing up. Unfortunately the rain started about 45 minutes before take off. As we were boarding and preparing for take off I started to get some very bad feelings. First, the flight crew were just way, way to happy and positive (what were they trying to compensate for?) Second, they dimmed the lights for take off which is done to keep passengers calm and on all my bad flights the crew did this. Third, we had the token bad flight/bad passenger issues e.g., the cell phone lady that had to be asked twice to turn it off while taxing down the runway, the inconsolable crying child, the elderly man who got out of his seat while we were still climbing through the clouds because he could not hold his pee pee, etc. I started to have this out-of-body experience where my subconscious was screaming at me that we should not be on this flight. And while I kept telling my hub that I was OK when he would ask, inside I was full of dread. Take off was rough as our pilot worked to get us up above the clouds and out of the storm. I hid my face in the hub's shoulder and kept telling myself that God was not finished with us yet and that we would live to adopt and/or have our own children which helped to calm me down.

While I was unsettled for most of the cruising altitude part, nothing bad really happened so I started to think that maybe it was all in my head. It wasn't. The pilot came on the overhead speakers prior to beginning our decent to tell us that it would be a "bumpy landing." "Bumpy", that's what he said, "bumpy." Now I've had "bumpy" plane rides but this was beyond "bumpy." What he should have said was that there was a storm going on down below and while it would be a difficult landing they would make sure they would land the plane safe and sound. I would have appreciated that a lot more and it may have given me more confidence during our half hour of life threatening turbulence.*

Our pilots attempted to keep the plane above the clouds as long as possible. As the plane finally began to descend into the clouds we began to feel the bumps and shaking that we had been told about. But it began to grow more intense the longer we were in it. The plane was fighting the wind and weather for all it was worth. It swayed side to side and would threaten to veer off course to the right or left. The wing flaps were running on overtime as the pilots fought to land the plane. I buried my face in my husband's shoulder again and began to pray with all my might. We could feel the speed of the plane increase, then decrease, then drop suddenly and careen off to the side. Passengers screamed and babies began wailing. Suddenly we broke through the clouds and could see the ground below. Rain poured down upon our plane and there was hope that the runway was near. My husband began telling me that it was almost over and tried to wrap both his arms around me but the turbulence was throwing us around so much it was necessary for him to use his free arm to brace himself. I heard the landing gears drop and began to feel encouraged that this would all come to an end soon. Without warning the tail lurched to the left, screams erupted from throughout the plane and we felt the pilot compensate to the right in order to straighten us out. Suddenly the plane accelerated and it felt like we were gaining in altitude all the while continuing to suffer massive turbulence. Amidst the whirring of the engines and wing flaps, I began telling my husband that I loved him, kissing him; basically saying my last goodbye's. We found ourselves back up in the low lying clouds. The captain came on the overhead, apologized for the aborted landing and that we would have to make a second attempt. So the last 15 minutes of turbulence were repeated as we circled around to the emergency runway. I asked my husband if we could drive from Baltimore and not take our connecting flight if we ever made it to the ground, which he agreed. Then I began a solid 15 minutes of out loud prayer for the pilots to land the plane and for peace with what could be our death. We finally broke through the clouds for the second time and made our way down closer and closer to the runway. This time we hit it with a huge bump that threw us all up into the air and then braking that thrust us back hard against our seats. The captain came on the overhead and said, "Whoooooaaaaaaa, Nelly! Ladies and Gentleman we have landed." This time clapping and celebratory shouting erupted from everyone. The poor gentleman beside me asked if I was alright. "I am now that we've landed" I replied. But that was enough for me. I was white as a ghost, shaken to the core, my legs were jello, and I could barely walk.

Our connecting flight was to take off within 20 minutes and you could not have gotten me on that plane if you had paid me. Why on earth would I have made it to the ground only to fly right back up into that mess. I had walked away with my life so why risk it again. My husband is awesome because we cancelled our connecting flight and rented a one-way car to make the 6 hour drive back home. I drove since it was my idea and it was wonderful to feel in control after such an event. On that trip we drove through the awful storm we had just flow through. It was so bad you could not see the car in front of us and we almost had to pull over to the side of the road to wait it out. There were multiple car accidents and we actually witnessed one between a Fire Bird and a truck with a multi-car trailer.

We pulled into town around 9 pm last night, dropped off the hub to get one of our cars and I took the rental back to the airport. I was also going to pick up our luggage so we hoped that it made the connecting flight since there was only 20 minutes to spare when we had landed in Baltimore. I saw our luggage in the Southwest baggage claim room but the door was locked and no one was around. I wandered around looking for a SW rep but ended up just asking another airline baggage claim attendant for help. She suggested the paging desk. The "Paging Desk" ended up being an unattended Information Desk that I past by five time's and finally noticed that a small acrylic sign holder mentioned paging. It said that if I wanted to page someone to go to my airline baggage claim office. Great. That was no help at all. So I wandered up stairs to find the ticketing desk which I couldn't find and every desk was empty save a cleaning lady sweeping in the American Airline's booth. At this point all the emotion of my horrible day hit me and I just shouted "I can't find anyone from Southwest!" A near by security guard looked at me and then walked away, the nerve! While a pilot who had been wandering around stopped and asked if he could help me. He was a young Australian pilot who had been grounded for the last six hours and no hope of flying out anytime soon. I just exploded on the guy with a teary eyed rambled synopsis of our flight, rental car, baggage issues, and ended it all with a "and I just want to get my bags and go home." That poor guy, no wonder the security guard avoided me. But this was a stand up guy. He just said, "let's see what I can do for you." So now I have a Pilot on my side. Oh yeah. He took me to the SW ticking office which we found was also unattended, did some asking around and when we went down to the baggage area I had two people there to help me. So thanks pilot guy, you rock!

And I got the scoop. Apparently the storm we had managed to land in had ended up grounding planes all across the east coast. It had grounded his plane and no one was going in or out of any airport. I told him he should be thankful and recounted, in a much calmer tone, our trials with landing. He agreed that it was a bad day for flying but encouraged me that SW only employs ex-military pilots and if anyone could land a plane in that kind of weather it was them, we were in good hands.**

I have never been so happy to be home and see familiar places. As the hub and I drove back from the airport alive and with our luggage I began telling everything I saw that I love it out loud. For example, "I love you Wonder bread factory with all the yummy smells you tempt me with on my drive to work, I love you Greek Orthodox Church and the Greek festival you hold annually to fill my belly with delicious foods, I love you Smith Brother's Hardware Warehouse that isn't actually a hardware warehouse but just a really cool building with offices, you get the picture. And while most people dread going back to work after a wonderful vacation I am totally thrilled just to be alive so that I am able to go back to work. I'm seriously going to hug all of my coworkers on Monday.

*I want to note that I have all the respect in the world for our pilots and Southwest airlines. If not for them I would probably be dead. In fact I actually have more respect for the pilots who fly for Southwest because they are ex-military pilots i.e. very, very well trained. God bless you for saving our lives and if I ever get on a plane again it will always be with your company.

**I could not have agreed with him more.

On a side note: As I sit here DPO 9 I have to say that no matter what happens this month I am just happy to be alive to have the chance to try again next month. Funny how facing death will do that to a person. Although I don't really recommend it. Very scary.

On The Water

Today I went to Christmas Choir rehearsals and our worship band was having their weekly practice as well. We're having a guest worship leader this week so he was asked to speak to us on some 'reflective topic' of his choosing prior to starting practice. I was surprised but his words really spoke to me.

He told the story of his daughter who suddenly began experiencing seizures. When he was praying over the situation he thought of the Gospel story in Matthew 14 where Jesus walked on water. He likened himself to Peter who said, "Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water." And He said, "Come!" And Peter got out of the boat, and walked on the water and came toward Jesus." What faith Peter had to step out on the water and believe that he could walk on it as Jesus had done. Yet even though he was walking on water, when he saw the storm around him, Peter was afraid and began to sink.

It's amazing to me when you have a faith that would lead you out to walk on water that you would suddenly doubt the power of God when a little storm comes up. But yet we do all the time. I have been doing that. Infertility is my storm. Here I was, walking in faith everyday and seeing God show himself to me. But when the storm of infertility hit I was shaken and have found myself to be sinking.

The best part about the story of Peter is this, "But seeing the wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!" Immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and took hold of him, and said to him, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?" For someone to help you immediately they have to be right there next to you. Jesus didn't lunge and he didn't rush over to help; he immediately stretched out his hand. I need that mental image. That picture of Jesus right by my side ready to pull me up from sinking from my own fear and doubt, if I would just cry out. I have the faith to step out on the water, I just need the faith to not fear the storm and know that He is right there next to me.

Convicted

Ok so I've been blog surfing and I came across a blog where a Christian couple, actively dealing with infertility, was also strongly relying on prayer. And for some reason this annoyed me. Why? Why would this bother me? I felt *yuch* about it because it was so, so, well, Christiany. Sounds horrible to say but it's true. And I mean no offense to the couple because really they are in the right. Maybe we've just been doing this for too long i.e., this infertility thing. I've struggled with some bitterness but over all I haven't become angry with God. But I have had trouble talking to Him about things. Maybe because I'm afraid that if I prayed and didn't receive that I would become bitter towards Him. That sounds even stupider to say but I'm saying it. This blog thing is free therapy so let's just put it all out on the table.

So basically I'm saying that maybe we should be doing the Christiany thing that makes me go *yuch* and really pray about it. You see my warning light is going off right now. It's that realization that the only thing that would be discouraging me from talking to God would be the one person who wouldn't want me to do it, "could it be, SATAN?" (read with a SNL Church lady voice.) Most likely yes.

So thank you infertile christian blogger for convicting me. I'm sorry I said your blog made me feel *yuch* but it wasn't you, it was me. You actually helped me out just by blogging and being true to who you are in Christ. Go you.

Plan G - Blessed with the Challenge of Infertility

I admit that I am a type A person. I always have been and always will be. I plan EVERYTHING and everything usually goes according to plan. When it doesn’t, I have the ability to flex with the situation and turn things around so that everything ends up working out for the best.

For example, when I was in high school I took a course called “Career Mentorship” where I spent 10 -15 hours a week shadowing someone in the career I had an interest in. It was a great experience where I could figure out if a field was for me before heading off to college. I quickly discovered that advertising was a bit more cut-throat and eventually choose dietetics. That helped me to avoid changing my major and maximize my college time because the plan was four years undergrad plus 1-2 years grad and out of school by 2003. And I was right on track.

Now my family plan was to be married by 24 and having our first child by 26. While I met my husband at age 21 we didn’t end up getting married until I was 25. But we weren’t too far off schedule (my schedule). So when we started to try having a family I was 27 (not age 26 as I had hoped but, again, close). What I could not plan for was infertility. God had a plan of His own.

This is the biggest thing He has been revealing to me during this time. His plan overrules my plan. I have been trying to embrace this mentality for the last year. Let me tell you, it’s not easy. But what I see is this: God has a plan for our family. It’s not “my cousin’s-sister’s-friend from grade school got pregnant by…” or “I have a friend who tried x and she got pregnant.” It’s our plan. I am not your cousin’s-sister’s-friend from grade school and I have probably already tried x already and it didn’t work.

God’s plan for your life is not His plan for our lives. For example, we have friends who got pregnant on their first try. Am I jealous? No. She also suffers from multiple sclerosis and has a certain window of time to even try to get pregnant. That was the plan for their lives. Or take my husband’s family history, his parent’s tried for three years and then adopted a son and a daughter. Then when she was 39 years old she suddenly discovered she was expecting my husband. If they hadn’t had fertility troubles my husband may never have been born.

Now that does not mean I know what our plan is yet. If He revealed everything to me I probably would never learn to trust, depend and put my faith in Him. And this is really hard for a planner like me to have to go through. Now I have to set aside my plans. This past month I have looked back on everything we have done for fertility: religiously temping so that even on weekends I set my alarm for my regular work time to ensure consistency, spent wayyyy to much time examining cervical mucas and positions (I know – TMI), having to stomach quarts of robitussin, sneaking ovulation kits into the ladies restroom at work, manipulating my business trips around my ovulation schedule, eating a wheat-dairy-meat-free diet to reduce inflammation from endometriosis, taken ridiculous amounts of herbal supplements, tried accupunture and accupressure and displayed my who-ha to more medical ‘strangers’ than I’d thought imaginable as we explored the word of fertility treatments such as clomid and IUI’s. So what does this all tell me? NOTHING I HAVE DONE HAS HELPED US GET PREGNANT! Because this is all beyond my control and just because I have submitted my version of ‘the plan’ to God does not mean that He has accepted it. In fact, it’s plausible that He took one look at it and said, “Mine’s better.”

There is a reason that we are going through this struggle and the best way to look at it is to say that we are being “blessed with the challenge of infertility.” Crazy, I know. How can you be blessed by infertility? It’s definitely not the blessing of infertility itself – that is a trial. But it’s the journey through this trial that brings forth the blessings.

For one, my husband and I have never been closer. I love him more having gone through this trial than ever before. He is a spiritual rock and really he is the one that has helped me to center my emotions and see that God is not punishing us and that He is in control.

Second, I feel that God is leading us to adoption. My husband’s family already has embraced adoption and it makes such a beautiful environment to bring another adopted child in to it. Not only would we be blessed by the gift a mother would give us, her child, but we would also be a blessing to the child.

Thirdly, God has protected me from miscarriage. Yes I never have experienced pregnancy but I also have never felt the devastation of losing a pregnancy. I think He knows I could not handle that and I am very thankful.

Fourth, God has protected me from bitterness. I’m not sure if I mentioned it but I work for the Women, Infant and Children (WIC) program. We give out vouchers for limited food to help supplement low income pregnant, postpartum and breastfeeding women, infants and children up to age five. I literally spend my day focused on pregnant women. In addition, most of our participants are young, unwed mothers. I have met women who work for our program and are infertile, become incredibly bitter when working with these young moms. It is truly the saddest thing. But I have instead been moved to only feel compassion for these moms. How can you not put aside bitterness when you are faced with a 14 year old girl who had a 4 pound baby due to inter uterine growth retardation and her mom had just abandoned her into the care of her 18 year old brother so she could live with her boyfriend because she didn’t want to deal with her ‘baby momma’ daughter. All I wanted to do is hug this young girl. Do you actually think she wanted to be in that position? But for some reason her choices led her down this path and the plan was for this little 4 pound peanut to enter in the world. God ordained life for this child for some reason that is beyond my understanding but is part of His greater plan.

So here we are, onto Plan B or better yet, Plan G. “G” for God. Not my plan but His plan. I may not like being on this plan on every day of the month and you may find me on here releasing my frustration but for what it’s worth I’m going to follow His plan. And I’m going to keep trying to embrace the fact that we are blessed with the challenge of infertility.