I can't believe we are here. It feels like yesterday I was saying 2013 was going to be a great year. Now 2013 is coming to an end and 2014 is upon us. It has been a year full of experiences. Today I was on Facebook and saw something kind of neat. It was a review of your most popular posts and pictures that were shared of you, so I decided to do that on her. A recap of the years events.
This time last year I was still recovering from my surgery that removed my Fallopian tubes. I was trying to come to terms with not being able to afford IVF and looking into alternate ways to build our family. I tried to start 2013 with a positive attitude. You know what I mean. "This year is going to be different," "This year is going to be our year," "God will bless us this year!" I think people start every year with that kind of talk. I don't know that I've ever heard anyone say "this year was great I hope next year is just as good." Sorry for the rambling. 2012 was a difficult year so we had something to hope for when wishing 2013 would be better. We had been diagnosed with horrible fallopian tubes and the ovaries of a 40 year old.
We started 2013 in the RE's office. January 2nd 2013, we saw Dr. D and he told us that time was of the essence. We knew that money was of the essence too; and money we didn't have. So we decided to wait for God to tell us what to do. We would wait until July, pray about our situation, and see where God took us. In the months between January and July, I prayed for God's will to be done. I came to terms with the fact that God's will may not be for me to have a child of my own. I accepted that God's will may be for Kevin and I to adopt an embryo that was the biological child of someone else; God's will may be for Kevin and I to adopt an already born child; or God's will may be for me to be the best aunt to every child that comes into my life. We decided that we would wait until July. We would retest and decide what to do then. If my results went up or even stayed the same, we would try IVF. If they went down, we would look at adoption of some sort.
In February of 2013, I saw the worst part of infertility. Unconceivably Blessed did another frozen cycle. She called me at work the day of her transfer asking me for advice about how many to transfer. They had three embryos left and their doctor was willing to transfer them all. I said "Go for it. You can carry trips." So they did and they got pregnant! I can't describe to you how happy I was when she told me! A couple of weeks later, on the day of their first ultrasound, she texted me and told me that she was no longer pregnant. I was sitting in my car heading back to work from my lunch break. Brokenhearted doesn't accurately describe the way I felt. I wrote a blog about it that night and I posted a song that I had heard on the radio earlier. The song was "Worn" by Tenth Avenue North. I just took a minute to listen to it again and it is still just as powerful to me and it takes me straight back to the same emotional place I was that night.
In May of 2013, Unconceivably Blessed and I started a support group for women with infertility. We both understood the importance of having a companion walking with you on this journey and we wanted to make sure other women had that same company. There was no support group, that we could find, in any surrounding county. So we decided to change that. We met on the second Thursday of every month at the public library. Our first meeting had six or seven women in attendance. Since then every month we have kept the company of amazing women, some traveling as much as an hour to attend. I look forward to every meeting because just as much as I hope I help those ladies, talking to them gives my heart such relief. It's like a heaping dose of infertility medicine (finally, one that I don't have to pay for).
In July, we retested and got good news. My results went up. So we decided to try an IVF cycle. We still had the task of paying for it though. A friend of ours told me about borrowing money from their retirement and suggested we look into it. So we did. We discovered that there are rules to borrowing from your retirement account. One of those rules was that you could only borrow up to half the amount in the retirement account. That month's contribution made half of the total amount just enough to pay for the IVF procedure. We raised the rest of the money with yard sales. Out of the goodness of their hearts, our friends and family donated items so that we could raise more money. God provided!
In September, Unconceivably Blessed and I were contacted by a journalism student who was doing a project on the science of infertility. She wanted to talk to us about our infertility journeys and see if we would be willing to participate in her project. We decided to open our lives up to her and share our stories. It's still a work in progress.
In October, we did our first IVF cycle. It was a different part of the journey. There was territory that I was unfamiliar with. I felt emotions that I had never felt before. These emotions were difficult but important. On October 28th, Dr. D took 13 eggs out of my ovaries and helped us create 10 lives from those eggs.
On November 2nd, we had 5 embryos still developing and we chose to transfer 1 embryo into my uterus. We were able to freeze 3 embryos that made it to day 6 of development. On November 11th, we heard the words that we thought we would never be blessed enough to hear. We were pregnant. That feeling was amazing. It was surreal. It didn't sink in right away but it didn't take long. But it didn't last long either. November 19th we found out that we had miscarried. I thought that was the hardest day of my life. Little did I know how hard the days to come would be.
But November wasn't a total wash. On November 11th, the same day we found out we were pregnant, we found out that my little sister was pregnant. I was going to be a real aunt. Now, I have always been honest on this blog and this is not a time for exception. I have to be completely honest and say that I didn't know how to feel. Of course I was excited and glad that my sister didn't have any issues with infertility and didn't have to go through what we had been through. But I must admit that I was a little bit of a brat at first. I did feel like a little baby rain shower whose thunder had been stolen. For a minute I thought "are you kidding me, we just went through hell to get pregnant, we finally do and we can't have it to ourselves for five minutes?" But then the happiness of me being an aunt, being pregnant at the same time with my sister, and knowing she didn't have to experience the hell that we had just gone through replaced those feelings. I felt terrible for not being elated from the beginning, but I made the conscious decisions to change those feelings.
Over the two weeks that we were pregnant together, we texted back and forth sharing what different symptoms we were experiencing. After Kevin and I found out that we miscarried, I couldn't tell her. I couldn't tell her because I knew that she would feel guilty that she was pregnant and I wasn't. I so badly didn't want her to feel anything but happy for herself. But more importantly I wanted to feel happy for her. But I didn't. I couldn't feel happy for her because I felt so sorry for myself. I had to learn how to deal with my emotions from my miscarriage while she got more and more pregnant. I started to feel myself getting more and more bitter and resentful. I found myself feeling the same way I did about pregnant women in general when I was first diagnosed with infertility. But no matter how hard I tried to change my mind, I couldn't change those feelings. No matter how many times I prayed for God to take those thoughts captive and change them, they remained. But this wasn't some woman walking down the street. This was my sister. What kind of person was I that I was hurt and jealous that she was pregnant and I wasn't. I can't tell you how many times I said to myself "get over yourself girl." But I couldn't tell her that I had all of these feelings because I knew it would break her heart and that would re-break mine. I knew her heart and I knew that if she thought she had hurt me, it will kill her. So I decided not to tell her and suffer quietly, alone. But that fixes nothing.
So I set out to fix it. I refused to stay like that. I refused to be what made her feel guilty for being pregnant and I refused to be quiet about this experience. My main problem was that I wanted to deal with the pain of the miscarriage too quickly. I wanted to cry a good ugly cry, pick myself up and move on. That wasn't going to happen. This non-superhero that sometimes forgets she's human was expecting too much. I was putting too much pressure on myself, not letting myself go through the grieving process and heal properly. It's ok to be mad, sad, jealous, and hurt. But it's not ok for me to stay that way forever. I have to go through each one of those emotions to come out healthy on the other side. I haven't stopped feeling mad that I am no longer pregnant, but I don't feel it everyday. I have certainly not stopped feeling sad that we will never meet our first baby, that we will never know if it was a boy or a girl, or that God took him/her to heaven before letting us enjoy them on earth. I have cried almost everyday since November 19th, but that is better than crying everyday.
The blessings are what I have to concentrate on. Some days that is soooooo much easier said than done. Nonetheless, that is what I have to do. One of my fellow infertiles told me that she was clinging to her faith because that is all she had left. I am so blessed that I am a child of God and He is strengthening me. I am blessed that God gave me a husband who is strong, steadfast, and extremely patient with me. I am blessed that I have family and friends that love me through this. I am blessed to have a niece or nephew on the way. I am blessed to have an amazing support system in my infertility family. I am blessed that we have 3 more embryos waiting to become babies. I am blessed that now, because of this horribly painful experience, I can tell another woman who miscarries that she will be ok. I will know that it is enough to just sit and wait until she is ready to talk. Without infertility I don't know if I would appreciate just how blessed I am.
At the beginning of 2013 I wrote a post similar to this one, recapping 2012 and looking forward to 2013. At the end of that blog I wrote: "So here's to 2013, the prosperous year of the 13! A year of less bad news for all of us, bigger hopes, smiles all around, more what if dreams, and maybe, just maybe, our baby reality!"
Now at the end of 2013 and the beginning of 2014 I have this to say:
It was 13 months after being officially diagnosed with infertility that we had 13 eggs retrieved from my 40 year old ovaries. It was 14 days after those 13 eggs were retrieved that we found out we were pregnant, almost 14 months after we were diagnosed with infertility. It was also in the same 14th month that we found out our baby was born into heaven and resting in the arms of Jesus. On January 1 of 2014, my little sister will be 13 weeks pregnant and I will be happy for that! I don't know what 2014 will bring but I do know that '13 and '14 are mysteriously intertwined. So I pray that 2014 will be a year where God's will is done. I pray for healing, strength and understanding through that time.
Don't forget to "consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." James 1:1-4
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