Sharing with others

To piggy back off my last post- this will continue with sharing, and how I share my story.

My husband and I are willing to share our adoption journey with just about anyone who asks.  The time period before that, and what led us to adoption isn't shared as often.  The only reason for keeping it more private is because of how emotionally exhausting it is.  Reliving our miscarriages, testing, surgery, and fertility treatments take's us back to a few very, very hard years.

A few weeks ago, one of Trav's co workers was talking to him about the adoption (he needed info from her department about how to get the DOD adoption credit).  She and her husband are getting ready to start treatments, and since Trav didn't know all the details of what I did, he got her cell phone number, and told her that I'd call.  It seemed that every time I thought about it, I knew she was either at work, or it was late in the evening, after Isaac went to bed.

Last week, I finally had the opportunity to call and talk with her.  We had a great conversation, that lasted over an hour.  It went over every aspect of my diagnosis, treatment, side affects of fertility drugs (they have done a cycle since Trav talked with her), surgeries, and then onto our process of adoption.  Being a military family, I told her of some of the issues that we had to overcome, so that she could be aware of that too.

It was a great conversation, I'm so glad that we were able to talk with each other.  However, at the end of it I was emotionally exhausted.  Re-living all the pain took more effort then I thought it would be.  I think back to the times we were trudging through it, and I'm surprised how much we did actually go through.  Who would have thought I could survive 8 miscarriages, that our marriage could survive it?

But, it did.  We survived, and we're living our happily ever after.

With a knucklehead little boy.

How the journey changes

I'm a pretty open gal.  I guess you'd kinda have to be to have a blog, at least a public one.  Ya, I haven't really told you where I live... you don't know my last name... a girl has to have some secrets.  Overall though, I've been pretty open with our journey.

When I first started this blog, we were at the very beginning of fertility treatments.  This blog walked the path of injections, betas, miscarriages, and grief.  Once we decided to start the adoption process, I feel like my written journey went from being technical- dose of the injections on what day- to more emotional.  I suppose that makes sense.

When you're in the midst of fertility treatments, there is always an appointment to go to, a drug to take (or more likely-inject), an ultrasound, a blood test.  There is always something to do.

When you adopt, there is a flurry of activity at the beginning of the process, an application to fill out, fingerprinting, gathering birth and wedding certificates, letters of recommendations, assembling your profile.  But then, once you turn it all in, you're done.  The next part of the process involves a whole lot of waiting.  And waiting.  And waiting.

At this point in our journey, this blog changed directions, it became a whole lot more focused on the emotions of things then the 'doing' of things.  I guess when you're not 'doing' something, your mind starts to wander.

That was something I truly didn't expect.  I also didn't expect it to affect my husband the way it did.  So many times, I found that I couldn't say what I was feeling, but I could type it.  After I had written some of the more poignant posts, I would email him the blog before I made it live, so he could see it first.  At times he was shocked, sometimes he felt the same way, and other times he was unsure.  Unsure I should put those emotions out, open up that much, share the scars, the tears, the raw moments we navigated through on our path.

We're not at a rest stop on our journey.  A place that we can stop and have a picnic and enjoy the blessing we have been given, watching him grow and learn.  I'm not sure where this blog will go, but, more then anything, I will always keep it real.

How private are you?

Has that helped or hurt you in your infertility journey and/or grief?

Totally Him

This picture is such a perfect representation of Isaac's attitude/ personality right now.  I love it.