So Cliche

A  while back I posted about how it's always someone else.  Well it happened again.  Last night I had a work meeting and before my meeting I was with a few girls in our managers office.  Our manager said "well Elvia has something she would like to share with everybody. " That pit in my stomach, that feeling that I hate, I already knew before she even opened her mouth that she was pregnant.  

It took all of my might to one not smack the shit out of her and two, not to open my mouth and say some words I would one day regret.  Of course it would have made me feel a hell of a lot better but instead, just like the other girls I hugged her and said congratulations with the shittiest grin on my face.

So why be mad, people get pregnant all the time?  I'm mad because this chick spreads her legs and gets knocked up by her damn boyfriend.  I get it, it's 2015 and people don't believe in the Christian way of life but I do!  Why is it ok that this can happen to her and not me.  I try every avenue sex, no sex, ivf with genetic testing, sex, ivf with a donor and NOTHING just nothing.

The catcher.... She's 18 weeks!  She was too embarrassed and scared to tell everyone so she's been keeping it a secret.  You guys.... I nearly lost my mind when she said that.  Of course you should be embarrassed!  Of course you should be ashamed. You just told an infertile lady you accidentally got pregnant.  Those words burn like sweat in your eyes after a long hot run.

 What happened to the normal life pattern.  So in essence I'm glad I hid behind my poker face because I don't think she would have been able to handle the kind of hateful truthful words I really wanted to share with her but that's life right now.  

Only a true infertile woman can understand what this feels like.  Just needed to vent!  Thanks for listening as always 😳

Not giving up

Just thought I would give you all a quick update.  I've picked myself up off the floor after I threw a tantrum like a baby this weekend.  Matt and I decided rather than sit around and sulk all weekend that we would at least spend the weekend enjoying each other's company and discussing what we want to do.

After a few glasses, ok bottles, and a few cocktails later with lots of tears and laughs we've decided to not give up on the donor process.  We feel in our hearts this is the right decision to one day extending and growing our family.  We would love to have more than one child and the donor process allows us to hopefully have more than one child who would be genetically linked.

It's not a perfect ending yet but we are searching for our new baby momma.  We've reached out to another girl and are currently waiting to see if she would be available this fall.  Not my ideal timeline because like a normal person I want things to happen now but she would have to wait a few months because she is currently finishing up a donor cycle for another couple.

Hopefully we will hear back this week.  If not Matt and I will continue our search and hope and pray we find a new match.

Thanks for all of the love sent our way this weekend!  I would also like to let you know I've enjoyed blogging and sharing our journey with both friends and family and many followers around the world. Although I just started blogging a few months ago it's been fun to also watch and see how many other people read my blog and where they are from.... Currently I have almost 12,000 views from people all around the world.

It warms my heart to know that I am not alone and my journey and openness will help others struggling in the same position.  Cheers!  Thanks for praying and continuing to support us on our long journey.

Skinned knees and another bump in the road

It's hard to imagine things not working out for us but I feel like I have fallen once again and skinned my knees.  Of course I will get up, brush them off, and once again pretend that nothing happened but until then I'm just going to lay here for a while.

So what does this mean.  I cannot even believe I am typing this but yesterday I got a call from our donor agency letting us know that our donor will no longer be going through with the ivf process.  I really didn't even have any words.  I just sat on the phone and cried.

What do you mean.  She just wasted 5 months of my time only to tell me no.  Are you kidding me.  Apparently after she and her husband met with their lawyer the husband was concerned about the donor taking ivf medication.  He thought it was going to harm her so he refused to allow her to proceed with the process.

Not only is that an insane thing but it is so irrational.  If it were going to harm her hello why in the hell would I have taken it 4 times.  What good would a donor agency, reproductive clinic, or any other person in this business be if it were harming women.

So after lots of tears and more tears I am once again sitting here with Matt trying to make a decision.  What do we do?  Why does this keep happening?  Is this real life?  

I cannot explain how hard it is to try and have children when you suffer from a genetic condition.  It's the hardest thing I have have gone through and yet the harder I fight the worse it gets.  There is no cure, no simple fix, and no surgical procedure.  All we have is luck and lately we have not had luck on our side.

Of course this is how it goes right.... Remember my post a few months ago about things going wrong. Well here we go again.  Matt said it was fate... Murphy's Law.  Well when is it going to be right? I cannot think of two more deserving people and all we get is nothing.  Tears of sadness never joy.  

I took the day for myself to wrap my head around what our agency told me.  I talked with our lawyer and we won't lose too much of the money if we don't pursue another donor.  I'm still waiting to hear back from my nurse from Dr. Miller's office.  So now we just keep weighing our options.  The good, the bad, and the ugly.  Part of our decision also weighs heavily of wanting a family and not just one child.

So if you believe in miracles please pray one lands our way.  I think if we ever have children it will be a miracle and not just because we "tried"

Emptying my pocket book

I don't talk much about our personal finances.  Matt and I have been blessed with two great jobs (he's an accountant and I am a nurse) but even so it sometimes feel like so much more money is going out rather than coming in.

Our agency required two installments for the payment of our donor agreement.  I paid the final part this week and oh my goodness I could think of about 100 things I would have loved to have spent that money on otherwise..  Down payment on a beautiful cottage, dream vacation abroad, saved up for our future kids college or weddings, the list goes on and on.

Our Journey through the infertility process has not been a cheap one.  We definitely have not chosen the cheapest route either but sometimes it is so frustrating to work so hard to get ahead financially only to dump thousands of dollars into trying to have a family with nothing to show.

At 28 and 29 most people that are married are living the DINK life.  For those that do not know what a DINK is it stands for Dual Income No Kids.  Matt and I had that for a few years post college and wooweee it was amazing.  Our friends that are currently experiencing that now I definitely am a little jealous of.

Now this post isn't to get pity its more just to share another aspect of infertility that most people don't see or think about.  In addition to all of the crazy emotions and stress I do tend to stress about the financial implications of IVF.  This January after I had cut back on my hours for work (by choice) and started freaking out about paying for all of the IVF bills I went a little crazy on "saving."  I always find humor in my pity/stressful life of trying to have kids so I started googling and pinning on pinterest ways to save money.

I started following some crazy blogs about families living off of $14,000 dollars a year and tried some of their tricks and techniques.  Matt was ready to kill me (just a little this past winter) but with some research and great ideas I started "frugally living." I might have gone a little over board (I cut the cable, bought a ROKU/OOMA, made homemade laundry soap, cut way back on groceries, created my own lean cuisines that came out to $0.27 per meal, to name a few.) but it worked! My mom and dad came to visit this winter and I think that they thought I had lost my mind but a girls got to do what a girls got to do to get those dang babies right!!

I really impressed myself and realized how easy it is to cut some corners.  I also started to do some new things to save or spend less because one day I would like to stay home with my babies and will eventually lose my salary so why not start early.  I will go into details another day on my "frugal living."

In addition to paying off the total amount with our donor agency I started my birth control last night.  We are inching forward and moving along.  Our next step is to finalize our agreement with our lawyer and hers to ensure full legal custody of the embryos that will hopefully be our future children.  

Hopefully in about 4 weeks we will start all of the medication and we will be making babies in no time!!!!

 

Losing my genetic link

I've been thinking a lot about how I will feel once I do finally fall pregnant again... It's hard to put it into words.  I will be beyond happy but so so scared.  After all, my last pregnancy did end at 5.5 months and the thought of that happening again brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. 

A few weeks ago as part of the donor process Matt and I had to meet with a psychologist.  At first Matt and I were pretty skeptical... I mean seriously if we can get over the death of a child and 5 miscarriages I think we are mentally capable of making an informed decision to use a donor egg but had to go anyway so we tried to go with an open mind.  

We first scheduled an appointment back in May with a local psychologist.  She did her evaluation in two appointments instead of one.  We had our first appointment which consisted of us telling our long fertility story and her asking a few questions.  We then scheduled another appointment with her a week later however due to an emergency she had to cancel on us.  Needless to say that Emergency turned into a long long leave and we had to find a new psychologist.  Although super super annoying I was eventually ok with it because she was a little nutty herself.

So we met with Dr. Silvia Fox in Glencoe, Illinois.  I really liked her.  Very knowledgable and very nice.  She even new what Balanced Translocation was.  Most people look at me like I am speaking in a foreign language and really have no idea just how horrible this stupid genetic thing really is when I try to explain it. 

You know it's always something with us.  So funny thing happened before we were about to meet her. We had about an hour drive from naperville to Glencoe. We left a little early and had enough time to grab a quick Starbucks before our appointment.  Coincidentally her office (so we thought) was the door right next to Starbucks entrance.  

So we walk open the door walk up the stairs to find two doors.  One on the left and one on the right.  Let me tell you it didn't smell pretty in here.... Very old and very musty.  The door on the right had a gaudy old ugly wreath on it and the door on the left had nothing.  I guessed the door on the left first but it was locked.  Matt opened the door on the right a low and be hold it looked like a psych office out of a horror movie.  Book harder galore but it had all of the right pieces: couch, desk, writing utensils.  Matt and I looked at each other, NO THIS CANNOT BE HER OFFICE.  Well she told us to make ourselves comfortable if she wasn't there so we decided to wait for her in the hallway (it smelled a little better).  I looked at Matt again and said we better make sure we have the right office I cannot imagine Dr. Miller would recommend a place this disgusting.  So Matt looks and sure enough wrong address. Whoopsie!! So we ran out and found the correct office.  So much nicer and normal looking.  No couch in her office just two nice comfy chairs.

I won't share all of the personal things we talked about but we touched on two really important topics. One how will I grieve the genetic loss with a donor egg baby and two how will we tell our children.  The donor egg process and bringing home a beautiful baby sounds so amazing but on the flip side you also realize how complicated it can be and realize that there are quite a few "things" to think about.  

I have not quite gotten over the fact that my babies won't hold my genetic material and I still cry about it but it does bring me comfort in knowing that I will never be able to pass on balance translocation to them.  At the end of the day Matt and I want a family and after three years of trying we think that this is the best next step for us to hopefully allow us to bring home a baby or two!  

We have decided to share openly with our children about the story of their life.  The psychologist had some great recommendations and suggested to start from birth rather than holding a "secret" until they are a teenager.  She said most people call the donor something like the "special egg lady" that had to help mommy and daddy make a baby.  I'm not sure what kind of story Matt and I will come up with.  We do know that we don't want our children hearing from someone else instead of us that they were a product of ivf.

And as always God shined his little light into our life and reassured me that this was all going to be ok.  She told us a story about how in a 9th grade biology class in Chicago they were talking about genetics and the subject of ivf came up. The teacher asked if any of the students had been conceived via ivf. She said about 9 out of maybe 25-30 students had raised their hands.  She looked at us and said although it may feel like it your children will not be alone. Sometimes in so many ways I think it was fate for Matt and I to live in Chicago.  

So on a spiritual note I do pray that with time my emotions and sadness will get easier and I can with each week of a pregnancy let go of the guard I will put up in fear of getting attached too early and losing another baby so late in a pregnancy.  

Just keep swimming Just keep swimming

Before I update you all on our progress I thought I'd share some fun pictures from our 4th of July vacation in Michigan.  We spent the first half with Matt's family in Muskegon (our hometown) and the second half in Alpena at my families cottage.  It was perfect!  We ate way too much food, enjoyed some adult beverages, hung around lots of family, and sat on our butts to relax in the sun.  It was a perfect vacation to relax before our next big In Vitro adventure.  

Here he is... Nothing says USA like a pair of American Flag pj pants!  

 Below is from the "golf outing" Matt, my dad, and I took Mama D on.

 

It wouldn't be a cottage vacation without a bonfire and s'mores!

Anyways we finally are moving a long.  Our donor had her initial blood work drawn to ensure that hormonally she is a good candidate.  Everything was in the clear with the exception of a slightly elevated thyroid level.  For fertility treatments they need hers to be slightly lower so she started on some thyroid medication.  Yesterday she flew to Chicago to haver her evaluation with Dr. Miller and per our Agency everything went well.  We now just have to wait for the genetic testing to ensure that everything genetically is fine and we should be all set to start in the middle of August!