I've struggled with wanting to insulate our family and friends from the emotional roller-coaster that my fertility challenges have provoked.
As a result, I've not really shared the details of our ups & downs, our hopefullness at each procedure and our sadness and the losses to date. Hopefully, this blog will help engage those who care to read it in what's happening in our efforts, give you strength and inspiration to continue your prayers for us and hopefully, just hopefully, end in us having a baby to love!
Both of our families' trees have deep roots and a plethora of branches. My husband's family tree branches out across the country and around the world. My family tree has roots at Plymouth Rock. But for the last five years we have struggled to get our own branch to grow!
We thought we did everything right:
Boy meets girl - Girl knocks boy's socks off and they fall madly in love - establish both careers - buy house - get married and start a family. Right?
Not so fast, as it turns out!
Perhaps we waited too long to get started. I'm 38 and he's 41. But we act like we're 12 so often that hopefully that counts for something.
When we married in 2005, we shared our first dance to , "I Love You" by Barenaked Ladies, which features as a refrain in the lyrics "Let's Make a Family Tree."
We had agreed months earlier that we would surprise eachother on our wedding day with engravings in the wedding bands we exchanged and, as fate would have it, we both referenced the lyrics. For those who know the song or those who listen to it in the above link, you'll hear BNL sing about some of the things the singer loves. Like him, among my husband's favorite things in life - aside from me- are soup, ice cream sandwiches, and fish sticks. So accordingly, he had my wedding band engraved with "More than Anything" so I always remember where I rank. Unaware of his message to me, I had his ring engraved with "Let's Make a Family Tree."
I know - we're adorable.
Anyway, that was six years ago next month. Since then, we've been very blessed and very happy but our attempts to have a child have been dashed by miscarriages, four years of fertility treatments, 3 failed IUI attempts, and 1 failed IVF treatment. We agreed that we would try IVF twice and that we'd begin pursuing adoption as soon as we began winding down fertility treatments. And we have done just that.
We have an adoption agency retained, we've completed our background investigations, have met with our assigned social worker and await the finalization of our homestudy. In the meantime, we are entering the home stretch of our final IVF treatment.
Tomorrow's the day when we go in for the egg retrieval surgery and the doctor retrieves what I hope are 6-8 beautifully perfect oocytes (eggs) that will each fertilize magnificiently and grow into 6-8 Grade A, top-notch embryos.
I'm supposed to be on bedrest tomorrow following the procedure so I'll have plenty of time to update you on how the retrieval went. And I'll post frequently to keep readers up to date on our adoption journey.
Remaining positive. My One-Millionth Prayer Said. Fingers Crossed. Let's Do This.
