Our journey to adoption...

I am starting this blog because I am proud of our story. I am grateful of all the things God has allowed us to go through, good and bad, to get where we are now. I have been changed in this and want to be able to share what we have been through and what we are going to go through with our family, friends and those of you who find yourself in a situation similar to ours.

 Now I do need you to know that adoption IS NOT a second option for us! I am telling you the story of my infertility for two simple reasons. 1. So you can see how God worked in our lives during this time and 2. For those of you out there who are going through the same things Joel and I went through. It was hard, but I wouldn’t be who I am now without it. 

I am the girl who has always wanted to be a wife and a mommy. For years I have dreamed of the day that I found out I was pregnant, imagined my belly growing big, wondered what it would feel like when my baby kicked, and watched my husband’s face the first time he felt it kick. Even imagined the day I went into labor and have my husband frantically drive me to the hospital so we can see the face of the child that had grown inside of me for 9 months. Then all my friends would come to the hospital to visit and meet what my husband and I created together. So two years ago Joel and I decided it was time, and we were ready for dreams to be reality.

Now for some reason I have always had a feeling that getting pregnant was not something that was going to be easy for me. I never had a good explanation of those feelings but I had them. I even shared these concerns with friends who I knew thought I was just being the paranoid person that I can sometimes be. So a few months into it I decided to go in and talk with my doctor because I knew something was wrong. The doctor was very confident that he had a very simple fix for me, a little white pill called Clomid. It gives you lots of eggs when your body just can’t make them on its own. So I was excited, give me the Clomid! A couple weeks later I had to return to his office for an ultrasound to make sure the Clomid was doing what it was supposed to. Lying in the dark room with the ultrasound tech and I could see it in her face, something was wrong. The simple question of “have you ever had an ultrasound before?” became so scary. As I sat in the doctor’s office waiting to hear my results, I tried to prepare myself for the worst (which I have a bad habit of doing sometimes). My suspicions were right, it wasn’t good. The doctor told me that I had a problem that complicates getting pregnant or even carrying a baby at all. He told me it would be best to follow up with a fertility specialist and so I did. With one quick look at the ultrasound pictures she was in complete agreement with my doctor. I was told that she may be able to help me get pregnant but if I did, I would not be able to carry a baby to full term. 

Over the next few days we prayed, our family prayed, our friends prayed, our church prayed. This was the first time I realized how blessed we were to have so many people in our lives who love and care so much. The nurse at the fertility clinic called a couple days later and said the doctor really wanted me to go for one more additional test just so she could have it on file. I wasn’t sold on this and asked a few times if this was really necessary, it was. They called us after the test was complete and asked us to come back into the office. The doctor walked into the room and said something like “you don’t know how lucky you are. You should go buy a lottery ticket”. What the ultrasound showed before was not what this test showed. My problem was correctable with a simple surgery! The doctor explained that these results were so unbelievable that she showed several of her colleagues the results of each test and their responses were “there is no way this is the same person” they even questioned why she would order the second test int he first place when the ultrasound so obviously showed the problem. LUCK?! HA! GOD is more like it! 

So surgery in July of 2010, recovered, and fertility treatments started in January 2011. Each month I prayed that this was the month that it was going to happen, and every month I convinced myself that it worked and I was pregnant, just to find out a week or two later that it wasn’t the month and I was not pregnant. Not to mention all the hormones I am taking that are making me an emotional disaster. After 4 failed attempts of artificial insemination, we were beat. It was time to take a break. I can not even begin to explain how hard it was to go through that time in our life, not only for myself but Joel as well. Little did we know that the next 2 months of fertility treatment vacation would be one of the best things that ever happened to us.