Adoption with IVF...Who knew?

This is tough to hold onto when you are in the middle of it all. There are so many ups and downs. You go through a test and you hold your breath to find out the result. You have to make so many life decisions. We spent an hour in the little back room of our fertility clinic trying to sign paperwork that says what we will do with the leftover embryos if both of us die. These are decisions, I am convinced, that no one is ever equipped to make. Believing that God is the creator of life, and believing that those little embryos, if given a chance to grow, would become human beings, there was no possible way I could sign anything that could give them to science or let them die in a lab. We discovered after talking with our doctor that this is what all of his patients have done. I suppose in one’s own mind you can make the case that they are not little humans, but to me, and I realize this is just me, they are. God holds the keys to life, and if blessed with the opportunity, who am I to say they should not be born. This is the major medical dilemma for Christians going through IVF. And while I will never condemn those that feel differently, I could not do it even if it meant donating them to another couple. This is a scary thought too. If we donated them it would be just like an adoption. We would have a biological child somewhere in the world that we did not know, that could even exist after we are both gone. These strange science fiction type thoughts are real to us now. Would the other parents love our children? Could they afford them? Would they have a good life? We could never know these things. I thought of how I would feel if I could not conceive my own child but was giving the opportunity to carry one. What a gift that could be to someone. I thought of how this would only be a small glimpse of what a birth mother would feel if they were put into position of loving their child so much to give them an opportunity. I can’t imagine the love that comes from adoption. When we told our doctor this is what we chose, to not destroy any of our left over embryo’s, that we would donate them to give them a chance at life even if we could not have them ourselves, he told us we were the only couple in his past 15 years of experience that chose this option. I was amazed and a little sad at that fact.

Turning Point

And then one day, on the way home from work, I talked to God like I used to. I poured my heart out to Him about how I was sorry for failing him in the past, and how I didn’t even know how to ask for what I wanted. So instead of asking him to give me child, I asked him to help me be okay with whatever His will for my life was. I haven’t always sought that, obviously, I have made a lot of mistakes on my own and taken a course He never laid out for me. But I have always believed that he forgave us and that he could bless the mess I have made if, and only if, I surrendered it to him. That was the only way we were going to make it. How then, was I going to reconcile everything I had to do for IVF with just surrendering everything to Him. The answer was clear. All I could do is put one foot in front of the other. Trust the doctors, trust God’s will.

In the medical fertility world all they ever can do is give you a chance. You can get completely overwhelmed with all the statistics if you let yourself. A normal couple has a 20% chance to conceive in any given month. We had less than 5%. For the IUI, we had less than 1%. With IVF you could have 60%. Of course this all depends on your age, your issue, your husband’s issue, and possibly your shoe size. There are tables and charts everywhere that tell you no more than this simple fact - you have a chance it will work, but you also have a chance it won’t. Does it really matter, because in the end, it either works or it doesn’t. So it donned on me that day in the car on my way home from work, that the reason why it would never be 100% is because of God’s will. Medicine and science can only take us so far in the ability to conceive. The creation of life is purely and solely up to God, whether you try to do it in a lab or not. When a life begins it is so beautifully and wonderfully made that only a God like my God can do it. I will go only as far as I can go, but God has to take me the rest of the way. So trying IVF is saying I gave it all I could and it just wasn’t in the cards for us, it isn’t the path God wants for us. I decided either way I was going to have to live my life and be happy for the blessings that I have.

Low Point

We decided to see a reproductive endocrinologist. They ran test after test on us, and decided the lack of sperm was our only issue. We decided to go with the last natural choice for us which was Intrauterine Insemination. I took hormones and tests to make sure I ovulated and waited for phone calls to come in. When we went in for the procedure we were so excited. I had pushed all my negative thinking to the back burner and was feeling pretty positive. The doctor came in to perform the procedure and it wasn’t our doctor. When I asked what she thought, she told us we were wasting our time that with that small of a sample it was near impossible. I thought we would both cry. We did the procedure, and it failed.

The strain of all of this was taking a toll on us. We talked ad nauseum about our options: Would we adopt? Would we try IVF? Don started to question if it was meant to be for us. Maybe this was God’s way of saying we weren’t supposed to have children. I could see the burden he carried on his face. If we adopted could we both love that child as our own? We definitely could. Could I live without knowing that we didn’t try everything to have one of our own? Maybe. Could we afford either? Probably but not without sacrifices. We looked at finances and options until we couldn’t talk about it anymore. Meanwhile the ticking of both our clocks got louder and louder. We stopped having fun. We stopped making love because we wanted to and started doing it when the test strip said to. I stopped praying and started trying to control what I could not. I was broken without a plan.

We made a plan to save for IVF, and that week, my truck engine blew up. In addition to the $12,000 it would cost us to go through IVF, it was going to take $6500 to fix my vehicle. This on top of everything. I was reaching my limit with what I could stand. Why was this happening to us? Was I being punished? Was God telling me, like he did Moses, that I would not enter the promise land because of my past sins? Would he give me everything I ever wanted EXCEPT this? And by the way, why did I feel like I even deserved it? I sank lower and lower.

First Steps

A month after we got married, Don had the surgery. It was a big decision and a big step for us. It really showed me how committed he was to our family. I will always remember sitting in the car in the CVS Pharmacy parking lot in an unfamiliar town in North Carolina after filling his prescriptions for the anesthesia. It was so many pills all at once, and he was scared. My heart broke when he looked at me and said, “How will I ever wake up after taking all this?”. This man, that I had never known to be scared of anything in his whole life; this man that had lost both of his parents and raised his little sister, was shaking as he took all those pills. It is strange that the moments you look back on and remember feeling a deep, deep love for someone aren’t the obvious ones. But he did it, and he did it for us and for our family. We anxiously waited six months for the result of the surgery, although we secretly hoped we would be like the stories that we heard of couples getting pregnant two weeks after the surgery even though you were really supposed to wait a month before you tried. A month after the surgery we went on our honeymoon to the Biltmore House. To this day, it was the best weekend of my life. We knew the time could be right and it was our first month of trying and we were both so excited about our new life together and the new possibilities. We tried for six months after that with no avail. My life became about testing for ovulation and testing for pregnancy. There was no telling how much money we spent on those kits. But we were so hopeful and so ready. When nothing happened in those six months, the doctor told us to do a test to see how the surgery went. The test results proved the surgery was a success, but the numbers were so low it may the possibility of conceiving almost impossible. They told us to wait another 3 months and test again that it could improve. It didn’t.

Here and Now

Soon after we got married, my Papa Dude passed away. My grandparents had been married for 62 years, and I was there the night he died with my grandma laying beside him telling him it was okay for him to go. It was the most beautiful and the saddest thing I had ever experienced. He was her best friend, her life. They had the perfect love and marriage. They had been through everything together, even the death of their last child. After he died, I became very upset not just with his death, but because it really showed the reality of my own marriage. Yes my motto was to live for today, but by forcing myself to believe that I never thought of how my own life would be without Don. I became overwhelmed with the thought of losing him. The thought that if we both lived very full and long lives, I would live about 20 years of my life without him haunted me. This thought was unbearable when I would see my grandma, who still to this day begs for her time on earth to be over because she misses him so much. I remember reading a book called “The Time Traveler’s Wife”. It was a beautiful book about a time traveler that falls in love with one woman throughout his life. Because he is a time traveler he ends up falling in love with her at all different ages. He couldn’t control when he time traveled, so he never could control when he left her or when he would see her again. When I read this book I felt the desperation that they felt not knowing how long they had together. I remember when I finished the book I was in the back yard of our new house on a blanket with Don and I cried while he held me. And the more he held me, the more I cried. How could I live without him? In the book, the woman’s sole comfort was the child that they had together. When she looked at her, she saw him and could feel his prescence. The child was a piece of him, the culmination of their love for each other, even after he was gone. The more and more I thought of this, the more and more I longed for child of our own. After a while, I realized it was definitely not healthy or beneficial to focus on the negative aspects of our situation, besides, we knew all this going into it. There was a quote in the book that really struck a cord with me, and I often think about it.

"What is it? My dear?"

"Ah, how can we bear it?"

"Bear what?" "This. For so short a time. How can we sleep this time away?"

"We can be quiet together, and pretend – since it is only the beginning - that we have all the time in the world."

"And every day we shall have less. And then none."

"Would you rather, therefore, have had nothing at all?"

"No. This is where I have always been coming to. Since my time began. And when I go away from here, this will be the mid-point, to which everything ran, before, and from which everything will run. But now, my love, we are here, we are now, and those other times are running elsewhere."– A.S. Byatt, Possession

This now has become my theme for us, and I have tried to focus on the here and now. I have failed miserable at this at times. There are times when I think we will never have a family, something will happen to him and I will be left here alone. I am sure everyone thinks of that at some point.

How we got here

Today is the first day I can write about what we are going through. I think it is because I feel a peace and presence about it now. Going through IVF is probably the toughest thing I have ever done, and I can see how most people lose their minds in the process. I have almost lost mine a few times so far. Our journey to this place started before Don and I even began to date. I had always wanted to be a mother, and I felt like if there was ever a purpose for me on this planet, it was to do just that. I never even questioned whether or not it would happen. I guess that is why, even when I started to have feelings for Don knowing he could no longer physically conceive a child without surgery, it didn’t scare me. Before we started to date we had long conversations about what I wanted in my life, and that I could not even begin to think about starting a life with someone who didn’t think they wanted the same thing. Of course, in the beginning, it is easy to make that decision. When you fall in love, everything is rosy, everything is easy, and at that point in my life, I was ready for something to be easy. So, at the time, it was easy for Don to say he envisioned himself as a father again, considering the situation was just right. And I accepted that because if the situation wasn’t right, we wouldn’t be together. Things became a lot more clear and upfront when it came time to decide to get married. I was so completely in love with him, but no children was a deal breaker. At the same time, I wanted him to want them and to not just want them because I did. We had lots and lots of discussions. When reality set it, we both had concerns. Don was worried, and it was compounded by issues with his boys. When his boys were small he worked away from home and because of that he missed a lot of things. He carries that guilt with him to this day. How could he be at such a better place in his life, and give another child such devotion when he feels like he failed his own? I could feel his hurt for this. He also worried about his age. At the time he was 47 and did the math on every major event of a child’s life. He would be 67 when the child was 20. Would the child be embarrassed about this? Feel completely jipted for having an older father? And although I could not answer these things for him, I could remind him of how we made the decision to be together despite our age difference. We loved each other, and we both knew from experience that we are never promised tomorrow. Could we walk away from a love deeper than we had ever experienced on this earth because of our age? Could we say that same thing in the case of a child? We never know what life is going to throw at us and all we can go on is what we know. Don could be a better father now than he ever was at 30. I think a child would be blessed to have a Dad that has learned those lessons. We have a beautiful home and love all around us to share with a family. These things are the things that we know. How long we have on this earth is something no one knows. We have this moment. We have now.

To be a mother....

Ever since I can remember, I felt my purpose on this earth was to be a mother. I first became a mom at the ripe age of six. Baby Heather was my daughter’s name. She moved, talked, and cried. She had to be rocked to sleep and fed with a bottle, it was even necessary to burp her. Amazing what a little robot baby required. I loved doing it all, and I took her everywhere. And I am willing to bet, if you asked Baby Heather I was a good mom (until I outgrew her). I never really thought I would have a problem becoming a mother, it always seemed pretty easy to me. So much energy and dollars are spent to prevent it from happening at an inopportune moment, I just assumed if I ever stopped trying to prevent it, it would magically and wonderfully happen. Life had such a different journey for me. I have always been the type of woman that had to find her own way. You know, make my own mistakes; learn my own lessons. It seems I must enjoy taking the hard and winding road rather than the easy yellow brick one, but never the less, I have… In life, I have always wondered about those that say that they have no regrets. I find myself at odds with that. In the words of the Avett Brothers: "I made decisions some right and some wrong, And I let some love go I wish wasn't gone These things and more I wish I had not done But I can't go back, And I don't want to 'Cause all my mistakes. They brought me to you. I have made some mistakes, broken some promises, hurt people I did not want to hurt. And I do regret those things. But in the end, all those things brought me here to the person I am today. They have taught me lessons I would have never learned, and they brought me back to my two truest loves – God and my husband. So in a way, I would not change them. I love what Maya Angelou says “When we know better, we do better,” and that is how I have decided to move forward in my life.

New Directions

Wow...it has been so long since my last post, and my life has changed directions yet again. Its funny when I go back and read how obsessed I was with the weight, while it was a very good thing that I lost all that weight, it really wasn't healthy for me to be so focused on one thing like that. But that is the way I am, must have something to focus on until I beat it entirely in the ground... Well, the weight loss seems rather insignificant to the new focus in my life. For those of you that read my blog for that purpose: yes the diet worked, I felt great, I gained some back, and will do it again in the future, I just won't let it consume me like it did back then. I finished one of my last blogs talking about my new adventure...having a baby. And while it hasn't been the fun filled adventure I thought it would be, it has been just that so far. I fought with myself on whether or not to blog about what I am going through, specifically if it ends badly, but all in all its therapeutic for me if nothing else, and if it helps one person going through the same thing, why wouldn't I share it? SO...here's to me losing it again....through IVF.

My before and after pics!!!

Round 2 Phase 2 Results - Words cannot describe...

So, I am sitting here at my desk thinking of how to describe this feeling...when you come to a place in your journey that you will always remember...A time where it is okay to give yourself credit, to thank yourself for the effort and the God given will to reach a goal. Four months ago, I NEVER knew I would be sitting here in my SIZE 10 jeans, having attained something that I never have before. My official LDW (last day of drops weight) and what I will maintain through maintance is (drumroll please...............................) 151.0 pounds. In case its tough to do that math I have lost a total of 40.4 pounds in three and a half months. I sit here in tears and in awe of what I was able to accomplish. I have been okay being proud of myself, but I am now. It was a long journey and there was anger and there were tears, but here I am!

Here are my official stats:

Starting Ending Total

Total weight lost: 191.4 151 -40.4 lbs

Total % of body weight lost: -21.11%

Inches in Chest: 40.5 35.0 -5.5"

Inches in Waist: 40.0 29.0 -11.0" (almost a foot!)

Inches in Hips: 47.0 39.5 -7.5"

Inches in Right Arm: 12.0 10.0 -2.0"

Inches in Right Thigh: 21.0 18.5 -2.5"

Total Inches: -28.5"

BMI change: 31.84 25.12 -6.72

Waist to Hip Ratio: 0.85 0.73

Here is something else that is amazing and very worth mentioning. We had biometric testing done for our work insurance on Tuesday - where they check cholesterol, glucose, etc. I knew that I also had that test done at the beginning of the year before I began the diet and some things were really bad (ie my cholesterol was atrocious). So as soon as I got the results I went home for lunch and dug up my ones from January to make a comparsion, and I could not believe what I saw...I truly believe I added years to my life!

January 4, 2010 Aug. 31, 2010 Total

Total Cholesterol: 292 152 -140

HDL: 58.4 60 +1.6

Triglyceride: 150 66 -84

LDL: 203 79 -76

Total Chol/HDL: 5.00 2.5 -2.5

So to all those out there that think this diet was dangerous and that I shouldn't have done it....I just cut my chance of dying from a heart attack IN HALF!!!!!!! It's just simply amazing to me.

I was three pounds away from being a healthy weight on the bmi chart, and I will make it believe me, but other than that I am a picture of health on paper and I love it. I could have never said that, before. I hope my journey, and I know its not over, will inspire someone to add days back to their life so that they can feel as happy as I do today. I am going to take some after pictures tonight so that I can post them, and I will continue to post through maintenance and after. I am so excited and ready for the next challenge....GETTING PREGNANT!