Little Bear

Ok, ok, it probably wasn't fair for me to do that last post after months of not posting much, and then not give any details!

In short, here's the stats on Little Bear:

Due April 27, 2013

Currently 18 weeks

Can feel the Little Bear moving every once in a while

Am considered very high risk still because of my history

I have an MFM that I see monthly, and my OB has me on weekly checks

So far everything looks great, and Little Bear has measured ahead every check

We know the sex, but aren't revealing it quite yet (haven't on facebook yet either)

Yes, obviously a very unplanned, but joyous pregnancy!  I didn't do treatments at all

In April, my husband and I started CrossFit.  I hated it. I still hate it. But I love it too.  After 5 knee surgeries, it was something that I could excel at, sweat some, and see changes in my body.  I still have some hardware in my shin from one of the surgeries, and with the new workout routine, aggravated them, causing stress fractures around the screws.  The knee surgeon wanted me to have a bone scan done with contrast to confirm exactly which pieces of hardware was causing the problems.  

In August, I was booked for the scan, but since it involved the radioactive dye, they made me take a pregnancy test. Ha!  So the drew the blood and sent me to the waiting room where I began reading my book.  About half an hour later, I was called back, and started to be escorted to the procedure room, except we passed it and kept walking.  I jokingly asked "Am I going to glow in the dark after this?", and the doctor said, "let's talk in my office,".  Umm, ok.  My next question was "Is my cholesterol high?" (something else they said they were checking).  The doctor continued toward his office.  I stopped in the hallway, and asked "Am I pregnant".  The doctor stopped and said, "Ok, we can talk about it right here in the hallway." 

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

Nope.  He wasn't.  He handed me the beta results.

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So newly pregnant at that...

If you know my story, you know getting pregnant is not the hard part for me, its carrying the baby to term.  

I called my husband when I walked out of the hospital.  He asked how the test went, I told him it didn't go.  He asked why, I told him i was pregnant.  He asked if I was joking.

Really?  Would I joke about something like that.  Shock. Disbelief. Holy shit.  A call to the RE was in order.  But then what?  Wait for the other shoe to drop... like it always does?  

We did several more rounds of Beta testing, with each one rising appropriately.  At 5 weeks, saw a yolk sack right where it should be.  At 7 weeks, saw a beautiful heartbeat.  But we've seen a heartbeat before, so we still were cautious.  I was seen at the MFM and established as a patient there as well. 

I was seen weekly after that for ultrasounds at the RE's office.  When we lost our Sea Monkey, the tissue had started to deteriorate by the time I had my D&C, so they couldn't get much info from the tissue recovered.  By being checked weekly, if we lost this baby, we would know sooner, and hopefully get some answers.  Each week though, there was still a heartbeat, and appropriate growth. 

At 13 weeks I was sent to my OB.  That was a mindfuck.  Such a big office, so many people. After coming from my small RE's office that I'd been at for 3 years, with nurses and doctors who cheered with us and cried with us, it was more then I could handle.  My husband couldn't come to the appointment, so I went by myself.  Between the nurse getting my vitals and the doctor coming in, I had a complete meltdown.  I was a sobbing mess when the doctor came in.  I'm grateful he had read my chart, and knew my history, and was compassionate to that.  

We talked about my history, my fears, and my anxiety.  I told him I understood that I wouldn't be seen as often in this office as my RE, but wondered what anxiety meds they could put me on to help combat the anxiety that I knew was coming.  He said that he would rather have me keep coming in weekly then put me on meds.  That was something that I could deal with.  

We've had our NT scan at the MFM around 13 weeks, and weekly doppler checks with the nurse at my OB's office.  We go tomorrow for the long scan at the MFM tomorrow.

So far, everything is good. We are blessed.  We are still holding our breath. 

At my last OB appointment, we asked when are we 'out of the woods',  for most people it's 12 weeks.  My husbands thought all along was when we have the baby screaming in the delivery room, we're safe.  The doctor chuckled, but then agreed.  Though everything looks fine so far, they are going to continue to watch me closely, and celebrate with us in the delivery room.

We're almost half way there.   

Holy shit.  

Thanksgiving week

Thanksgiving week four years ago, I was recovering from a D&C after we lost our Sea Monkey.

Thanksgiving week three years ago, we were in the middle of a fertility cycle, which would be my sixth pregnancy.

Thanksgiving week two years ago, we were matched with a little boy due a month later, though the match failed.

Thanksgiving week a year ago, I was holding Isaac, amazed at how blessed we were.

Thanksgiving week this year, I felt a baby kick me.  From the inside.  Our miracle pregnancy.

  

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We threw out the birth control that Mother's Day Sunday, and were ready!

Being naive in the whole baby making thing, I listened to a friend who told me to have sex 14 days after my cycle started, because that's when I ovulated.  Ok. Easy enough, we can do that!

So we did.

But what I realize now, is that I truly wasn't ovulating regularly.  I had wonky cycles (that I now know is because of PCOS), but didn't think how that would impact getting pregnant at the time.

We 'tried' all summer, but getting closer to the fall, we found out that my husband would be deployed the next summer.  I didn't mind going through the pregnancy without him, but really didn't want him to miss the birth and first months, so we decided to get back on birth control, and just wait until he came back home. 

In October, we waited for my cycle.... and waited... and waited.... They always were off, so 8 weeks between cycles didn't mean much.  We found a house, and closed on it in the first week of November.  That Friday, I had cramps that knocked me out.  I took major pain pills, and it did nothing to them.  I even comment to my husband, "I haven't hurt like this since I was miscarrying my baby in college".

I said that not thinking that I could possibly be miscarrying again...

For those of you that have gone through a miscarriage, you can tell the difference between the 'discharge' of a cycle, and a miscarriage.

That afternoon, the first clues started, telling me this was something more.  When the baby passed, I knew.  We called my primary care physician, told them what was happening, but since we lived 45 minuets away from the base, and it was already 4:00 on a Friday, they told me to 'collect' what I could, and go to the ER.

The doctors confirmed that I was indeed 6-7 weeks pregnant based on what we were able to collect, and told me to watch my bleeding to make sure I didn't start hemorrhaging.  They sent me home with pain pills.  My husband called our families to tell them what happened. 

I cried.

My first opportunity to become a parent with my husband was gone.

 

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When I was little, I knew when I grew up that all I wanted to be was a Mom.  Maybe a teacher too, but defiantly a Mom.

Then I got pregnant in collage.  The guy I was dating had turned our 'love' into a very abusive relationship.  He 'guessed' he could marry me, since I was knocked up.  I embraced what I thought could be my happy little future.  But then it crashed.  Somewhere between 11-12 weeks, we lost the baby.  He was elated.  I was devastated.  For us, it was the beginning of the end... but that ending drug on for 6 months, taking most of my mental sanity with it.  The relationship ended when I the abuse went from verbal/emotional to physical.  He backhanded me.  I still have the picture in some digital file somewhere on my computer.  The bruises and swelling were all I had left of my love story.  I dropped all but one of my college classes, got put on academic probation, and tried to come up with a good way to explain it all to my parents.  They had no idea that any of it had happened.

When I married my husband, we talked quite a bit about having a family, but it would be a blended family. I never thought I would be a step mom.  I had never dated anyone with children before.  In our very short courtship (7 months), we drove out twice to spend time with his family, and I was able to meet his daughter. 

Six months after we got married, we moved 14 hours from the only place that I had ever known as home.  This got us within 3 hours of his daughter, which was the goal.  We started getting her on long weekends, and then over breaks.  She helped pick out a bed spread for her room, and started to get used to our house and our rules.  She called me Mom, which was weird, but I went with it.

Whenever the topic of kids did come up, we always ended up with another puppy.  That worked for us.  I had been ready to start trying as soon as we said "I Do", but Trav wanted to wait a while.  I respected that, even though I knew several women around me planning 'oops' babies... (is that a real world thing, or just a military wife thing).  After my experience in collage, I knew that no matter how bad I wanted a child, I wouldn't force that onto him if he wasn't ready. 

Don't get me wrong, there were the occasional whines about "I want a baby", and I did throw each of our dogs birthday party's, complete with goodie bags for the other dogs that came, and our friends kids.

On Mother's Day of 2007, I got a card from him (which I always did once I was a step mom), but this one was different.  The outside said "There are two types of families in this world, the type you are born into, and the one you create".  The inside had a simple typed "Happy Mothers Day", and below it, in my husband's handwriting, some of the sweetest word's I've ever read.

"I think we should try for our own family"

I was blissfully happy.

We were going to be parents in no time!

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.