Life Matters

People who know me well know that I am politically minded, perhaps to excess. I am a news and political commentary junkie, and express my opinions on current issues openly in face-to-face conversations. 

I have dialed back some of the vigor with which I engage in debate, and I hardly ever enter the fray online, since I find the lack of accountability and overall vitriol associated with the "mask" of the internet counterproductive when trying to have a legitimate conversation about the things that really matter. 

But I won't hold back in my opinion on this particular topic. First, because it has been a moral absolute for me since I was a teenager. Second, because it is so closely tied to everything I am dealing with in my own life right now.

Life matters.

I've said this before, in a variety of contexts. In some circles, it is met with nods of agreement and understanding. In others, it leads to a discussion of exceptions and extremes. And sadly, it has also been met with anger, accusation and demeaning attacks.

Life matters.

We are a day away from what I honestly, in the deepest parts of my soul, believe to be the greatest tragedy perpetrated against mankind, by mankind-the day that marks the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision of Roe vs. Wade. 

I am not debating the merits of the case that has redefined personal politics for over 40 years. 

I am stating something that I know now, more than ever to be true.

Life matters.

Since October, I have said goodbye to life. I firmly believe my first lost pregnancy in October was a twin pregnancy. I have no medical proof of that. I do have intuition and spiritual knowledge that has helped me to know that. Those babies came and went in the blink of an eye, but left an indelible mark on my life. And they were, contrary to what many would say, babies. Small as a grain of sand, but they were babies. They were life. 

My more recent loss, a little over two weeks ago, was more tangible. Pictures on the ultrasound tangible. Felt like a miracle tangible. A baby. A life created by people with the help of a talented physician and some powerful medication. Small, only a centimeter. A miniature peanut on the screen. An absolute life. 

The political fracas over abortion makes my head spin. Makes me sick. It always has. Now, more than ever. Because if those babies who are aborted 6, 8, 12, even up to 24 weeks are not life, then what are my little angels? 

Are they not life too? Were the moments I felt my heart connect to them and communicate with them nothing? Does the grief I feel over their in-utero deaths not exist?

We have devalued life to the point that we don't even recognize the miracle that exists when a life is created. It is an absolute, undeniable miracle.

I have watched dear friends lose children at different points. Some, when they were teenagers, and a gaping hole like none other has been left in the wake of their magnificent, sparkling, joyous lives. Others have lost babies after only days, and sometimes, minutes, of their birth. The hole left behind is no less real. Those lives mattered. They were miracles.

After three and a half years of trying to create a life, I am now, more than ever, convinced of its' majesty. It is no accident. It is not something to be made into a political fight. It has nothing to do with privacy. To end it, at any point, is a tragedy and I daresay, a sin that I cannot comprehend. 

I don't say this to ruffle feathers or pick a fight. 

I do say this to plead and implore that we each reexamine the value we place on life. 

There are medical considerations related to this subject that are hard to fit into my moral framework. I have had to work through those. My recent miscarriage came with the option of a D&C. I chose no, with the understanding it may become medically necessary. These things happen. Thank the Lord above for amazing medical advancements and technology.

But ending life out of choice, to stave off inconvenience, to run from responsibility, and sadly, even to avoid painful situations that leave horrible emotional scars, is something I cannot understand and will never support.

Life begins with the miracle of conception. Every life has a purpose. Every life is beautiful. 

Today, and for many days to come, I will weep for my own sweet angels, whose lives DO matter, and will matter forever.

I will also weep, as I have for many years, for the more than 55 million lives of babies that have ended since 1973. Their lives mattered. They DO matter. They will matter in the hereafter. 

I pray for those who have lost children, at any age, including before birth. I pray without judgement and with endless compassion for those who have chosen abortion in their own lives, that they will find peace and healing. 

I pray for us as a collective humanity, that we will see the value in all life - no matter how small. 

I close with the words of the blessed Mother Teresa from her courageous address to the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in 1994, for she has said perfectly what I feel in my own heart. 

"But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave even His life to love us. So, the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans, or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts.

By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And, by abortion, that father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. The father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion...

But what does God say to us? He says: “Even if a mother could forget her child, I will not forget you. I have carved you in the palm of my hand.” We are carved in the palm of His hand; that unborn child has been carved in the hand of God from conception and is called by God to love and to be loved, not only now in this life, but forever. God can never forget us."

~Mother Teresa, February 5, 1994,
The National Catholic Prayer Breakfast

Life matters.

Loss

For eleven days, we lived a dream. 

For eleven days, we were parents.

Fourteen days after our third IUI, there were two pink lines. Something I had waited years to see. 

There were kisses and tears and excitement flowed between us. We tempered our excitement with realism, knowing we needed to have a blood test for confirmation. The blood test came back positive. But my HCG levels were low. Only a 24. Low, but ripe with promise and potential. 36 hours later, they were at 60 and on track for a steady rise. We scheduled a 6 week ultrasound. 

We let close family and a few friends know. We held each other close. I prayed every day, saying "strong baby, healthy baby," over and over. I named our little angel "nugget" and hoped that he or she would hold on and be ours forever. 

I bought pants that would stretch with me for a few months. I started thinking about paint colors for the guest room. I read everything I could about having a healthy first trimester.

My body changed. I was exhausted. Sore. In desperate need to upgrade my bra size. Moody. Hungry, Bloated. Slightly crampy. Nauseated. 

Then, nine days after the test, five a half weeks into my pregnancy, the pain started. Tuesday and Wednesday nights were awful. I didn't sleep. I couldn't go to work. I clutched my tummy and just prayed it was progesterone side effects. The pain stopped. I went to work on Thursday morning. I started bleeding lightly. I threw up in the bathroom and left work immediately.

I went home, called the doctor frantically. I went in for a scan, and the ultrasound didn't show anything. No yolk sac. No heartbeat. It was still early, and possible that nothing would show up. I was sent to get blood work done. We held out hope that things were okay. 

Friday morning, there was a gush of red, and we knew. Our angel was gone. Tears and sobs and desperate aching. My blood levels showed a miscarriage. "Spontaneous abortion" was the official diagnosis.

So now I wait. Wait for the bleeding and pain to stop. Wait for the nightmare to end and dawn to break. Wait to be able to choke out a sentence without feeling like I am going to vomit. 

Three years. Three IUIs. Countless shots. Thousands of dollars. A million wishes and prayers and hopes. Gone in a moment and in a rush of blood.

I am exhausted and weak and broken. I do not understand. 

I awoke this morning with a horrible thought. The thought that I flushed my baby down the toilet yesterday morning. 

There are those that will try to placate me and say, "it was so early." Or, "it wasn't a baby yet."

They don't understand. In that magical moment when divinely appointed conception occurs, it is a baby. It is a life. It is full of hope and promise and that baby, small as a poppy seed, contains all of the promise of life. 

I know that early miscarriages happen because things aren't right. Genetically. Developmentally. They are Heavenly Father's way of mercifully taking care of things as gently and naturally as possible. 

Mercy hurts like hell. 

So we wait. And we pray. And I bleed. And I yell and cry and hit the wall. And I love my little angel that I miss desperately already.

We're not ready to talk about things in depth, but as we have opened our life and struggle to so many, we share the new of this tragedy and our deep sorrow as well. 

We'll try again. And again. And again. We will have a family.

And someday, we will meet our angel baby and my tears of sadness will turn to tears of joy and understanding. 

Living With An Open Wound

I remember getting hurt as a child. Scraping my knees. Slicing my thumb on a saw in the backyard while trying to cut enough branches to make a fort. Road rash on my side when I fell out of a wagon, towed behind a bike while flying down a hill. Skin breaks. Blood seeps out. Tears flow. Eventually, with the aid of pressure, a band-aid, or the simple miracle of human physiology, the blood would clot. A scab formed. Skin healed. Scars remained, but faded in time. Maybe someday, this will be my experience with the emotional and psychological scars of infertility. I'm not sure. Right now, I live each day with an open, hemorrhaging wound.

Everyone in my life is incredibly compassionate about this struggle. There are even a handful of people I know that have walked this same road. I wish I could articulate the deep, never-ceasing, excruciating pain that I feel each day. I desperately want someone to know exactly what I experience. All I can compare it to is suffering a wound so deep and so serious that it drains every ounce of your strength, all of your reserves, and saps you of any hope that you can move forward. I cannot compare this to the struggle of a mortally wounded soldier, but it is my emotional equivalent of warfare. And in the midst of this horrific, tragic, gut-wrenching pain, I am expected by everyone (even those who are compassionate and loving and caring and the most incredible people I know) to continue living life and moving forward and having hope. There are days where I lose the battle when I have to do something as simple as brush my teeth, never mind having to walk out the door, interact with other people, go to work, smile and nod that yes, I am doing well. Behind the facade I am face down in the dirt, drowning in a pool of my own blood. Those who have walked this road will know the complete sincerity of this statement. Those who have not, I appreciate your compassion and your acceptance that you simply cannot know how this feels until you have lived it for nearly one thousand sunrises and sunsets. 

Simply leaving the house hurts. I go to the store and am surrounded by reminders of pregnancy, babies, toddlers, teenagers, grandparents-the ceaseless ebb and flow of divinely ordained life that I may never play a part in. I experience all of the emotional depth of that statement when I stand in the store behind someone buying a package of diapers. I clutch my nieces and nephews to me and breathe in their sweet smells and my heart bursts and I wonder if there is any way I can be saved. I seek to escape the pain of the day through sleep and am haunted by dreams of caressing my pregnant belly, of giving birth, of holding my daughter who already has a name and is fiercely loved, and wake up feeling like I was hurled out of a moving vehicle into oncoming traffic. And it never, ever ends. 

I hurt everywhere. All the time. I understand how infertility leads to destructive behavior, ends marriages, wrecks families. I know why people choose to be numb.

People never know what to say. Those closest to me know that things like, "It will happen," or "Just be positive" or "your babies will come when it's time," will likely earn them a punch in the face and a sincere apology for breaking their nose. I think I have an advantage in that I am incredibly open (likely to a fault) about everything I am dealing with, so I do not hesitate to talk about feeling this way and people generally know when I am so low that not even a Harry Potter marathon can pull me out of the depths of despair. I think the best thing I have had someone say to me is simply, "I love you." That does more than anything when you are so emotionally obliterated that you can't seem to take another breath. 

Living with infertility is a hell through which few will pass, when you consider the population of the world through all time. Yet it touches most of us in tangential ways. Six months of trying to shrink ovarian cysts and get my cycles under control was absolutely terrible, but it only required me to feel disappointment. Now, as we gear up for a cycle of treatment, I have to feel the worst thing I can imagine-hope. I believe in a mind-body connection. I need to have hope and faith that this will work. But taking drugs, injecting drugs, doing an insemination, taking more drugs, and then having your heart ripped out by a negative test is more than a heart can handle. And if you do back to back cycles, you begin the whole process over three days after your negative result. It is the highest and most hellish form of torture I have experienced. Hope and promise shatter and you get to stand in the broken glass, bleeding all over while people look at you and tell you to be hopeful all over again. 

I am  hopeful right now. I am responding well to my Femara treatment, started my Gonal-F injections today for the next three days, will be re-scanned on Friday, and will finish up with a few more shots this weekend before I trigger ovulation. The tentative IUI date is Sunday. But hope is most definitely tempered by experience and disappointment. My hope feels like the last gasp for air while I am drowning before I sink away into oblivion. But it is there, and it is mine. 

I read two things last night that stuck with me. The first was a re-reading of  a series of short essays by F. Scott Fitzgerald, a man who I believe lived his entire life in emotional pain and agony. In "The Crack-Up," he penned, "and in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day." And so it is three o'clock in the morning for me, day after day. 

The other was from the scriptures, more specifically, the Book of Mormon. If you do not believe this to be the revealed word of God, then perhaps accept this as a story that illustrates a larger point about resilience. The leader of a small group of people was named Jared, and as his people fled wickedness and crossed a great body of water in small ships, their small quarters were illuminated by stones that had been given light by the Lord. The wind blew furiously during their year-long journey, and though they were tossed about relentlessly and frightened and cried unto the Lord for stillness and peace, they were blown continually in the direction of their destination, and they had light. And the wind never stopped moving them in the right direction, and the people never stopped praising and thanking the Lord. And they had light continually, even in trial and tempest and through fear and anguish. And when they arrived on land again, they humbled themselves before the Lord, shed tears of joy, and recognized His tender mercies over them.

I am in a dark night of the soul. It is a night full of pain and fear. But I have a small light. And I have the love of my husband, and my family, and my friends, and my Father in Heaven. It doesn't change the fact that I hurt like hell and on good days, the best I can do is drag myself an inch closer to safety while I live with this open wound, but it does give the struggle a sense of meaning. This wound will never go away. It may change form and become an old wound, a scar, but it will mark my experiences forever. No pregnancy or adoption or perhaps a life without children will nullify what I have experienced. But I can own the pain and the experience and set myself up willingly for the punch in the gut that I might have to take in two and a half weeks, as long as I know that the pain and experience are mine to own and learn from. 

Please, if you are inclined, say a prayer for us and those others that live each day with an open wound in the deepest dark of the night, that we might see the pinprick of light that will lead us on, and someday, lead us home.

Pushing Through

A view of the waterfall in Bells Canyon

Two weeks ago, my husband and I went on a truly amazing hike. Well, it was amazing when we got to the top and were rewarded with the view of a hundred foot waterfall crashing into a mountain river, white spray misting through the air and sound thundering across the canyon. The whole way up to this waterfall, I was thinking, "why the crap did we do this?" I cursed in my mind (and OK, let's admit it, out loud) too many times to be proud of as I crawled up giant rocks, banging and scraping my knees and arms as I hoisted up and over the chunks of granite that peppered the forest floor. We climbed at a steep incline for the last mile and a half, and I felt my heart thudding in my chest in a steady rhythm as we kept ascending, stopping only briefly for to rest our aching knees and ankles. We hit several false summits, and I was almost in tears by the last one. 

When we finally reached the top of the trail and scrambled down to the waterfall, the sight was absolutely breathtaking. The way down was equally as difficult in terms of impact, but we reached the bottom with a sense of exuberance and accomplishment. I couldn't help but be struck by the symbolism of what we did. The hike was an exercise in pushing through the pain. Not pushing through by numbing out and shutting down, but by acutely feeling the pain and difficulty in every step, and still moving forward. I can't say I enjoyed the actual process of pushing through, but I do value what is on the other side of that-the knowledge and assurance that I can do really hard things and those things can make me mentally, emotionally and physically stronger. 

I think my life right now is defined by this idea of pushing through the pain. I shut down completely from January to June this year-work necessitated a level of focus, commitment, and composure that demanded I not turn into an emotional wreck that curled up on the classroom floor to join first-graders in their temper tantrums. When work ended, I slammed into a brick wall of all of the feelings that I hadn't been feeling. It was like being punched in the gut. But I am learning that walking through each day in emotional pain is preferable to walking through each day feeling nothing at all. I hate the way I feel sometimes. It is torture to be around children for me. I want to burst into tears at the sight of them. I can't handle being in the same room as a pregnant woman. I can't even watch the adorable videos the people I am closest to in my life post of their beautiful babies on Facebook because I know that they will send me into complete meltdowns. I am overcome so many days with absolute despair. It is really the most horrible, difficult thing I have ever experienced. But for the first time in months, I am actually experiencing it, and I am grateful for the companionship of my sweet, supportive husband and my Savior as He walks hand in hand beside me. Even when I am furious at Him for making me endure this hell. But I will take angry over indifferent, and I know He will too. 

We are only a tiny step closer to an end to project baby (whatever that end may be). After two months of very, very unpleasant hormone supplements to suppress a persistent cyst on my right ovary, I have the go-ahead to go off them. These pills made me feel like garbage-emotionally and physically. At the end of taking them, the cyst on my right ovary is resolved, but there is a small one on the left ovary now. Dr. Peterson has now seen enough of a pattern to classify them as alternating functional cysts (hormone producing) rather than endometriosis, which I guess is good news. I need three weeks to clear my system and return to a normal cycle, and then we start all of the fertility drugs again. We have waited 6 months for this, so we are anxious to try again. I am hopeful that the perfect storm will hit-I'll be pumped up on the drugs, husband will be in the last two months of his zinc/folic acid supplement trial, and I will be in a place where I am not only mentally but physically healthy, and the magic will happen. We get three chances at the magic. Then, the conversation will have to change.

Due to my low AMH levels (eggs in reserve), our doctor wants us to start talking about IVF if our current plan of action doesn't work. I have never wanted to pursue IVF, however, as our church has moved away from facilitating very affordable adoptions, a $15,000 IVF package has suddenly become the more affordable option. I don't know how I feel about it yet. I think that's a mountain that I will wait until the last possible minute to even consider climbing. 

The rest of the summer will provide plenty of chances for growth and fun and pushing through the pain. We have some great (hard!) hikes planned. I am working out like a crazy woman each day and it is definitely giving me an Elle Woods-esque rush of endorphines (because happy people just don't shoot their husbands). I am spending lots of time with my husband who I adore more and more each day. Isn't it amazing how you only fall deeper in love with someone as you struggle through the hard stuff together? We have a great vacation to Florida (yay for Disney and Harry Potter world!) planned for the end of July/beginning of August. I know I am going to keep hurting through all of this, and I don't think that will change. But I can see a way to appreciate the good things while I am hurting. 

I may be scraped up, bruised, prone to crying in the presence of small-children, and soon to be pumped full of more hormones, but I am still climbing, and anticipating whatever view awaits me at the top. 

Changes

I can't begin to grasp the amount of change that has occurred in my life over the past four years. The end of what I thought was a forever relationship. The beginning of what is my true forever marriage. Moving. Leaving my dream job. Experiencing my husband becoming my best friend. Financial hardship. Not being able to have a baby. A new job. And now, more changes are headed in our direction.

Last week, after waiting one month for a cyst on my ovary to clear up on its own, and spending another month taking a Progestin to shrink that stubborn cyst, I went in to see what was going on in the incubator. My cyst shrunk. A lot. Down by 60%, and the overall volume down even more. But I also found out it's probably not a cyst. It's probably an endometrioma. And for the first time, there is a fibroid camping out on my uterine wall. Which scares the living crap out of me. I have never had these before. I have had cysts that have come and gone. My uterus has been pretty normal. All of a sudden, my sloughed-off endometrial cells are making themselves at home in parts of my body where they shouldn't be. Scary. I didn't know much about Endometriosis until last week. I wish I had never even heard of this, because it adds another lovely wrench to this already hellish struggle. What I do know is that Endo is thought to be influenced greatly by stress, inflammation and weight gain. Well, I just hit the danged triple jackpot. 

I.am.so.tired.of.my.stupid.body.not.doing.what.it.is.designed.to.do. But this is likely of my own doing.

I looked back over 9 months of uterine scans and procedures. I have never had this happen before. The only thing that has changed in my life is, well, everything. I went back to work and I stopped eating well. I stopped sleeping well. I worked almost every weekend until 1 AM. I developed a persistent twitch in my left eye. I worked most weeknights nights until 9 or 10. I didn't exercise. I replaced water intake with Cherry Coke. I frequented more drive-thru lines than I could ever care to admit. Hell, I even ate more than one gas-station hot dog wrapped in a croissant drenched in nacho cheese. I ate roller food. From a gas station. The shame is more than I can bear. Those of you that know me and the extreme love for the gastronomic arts, this is a level to which I never imagined I could descend. For the past six months, ,my life became 100% about the 27 sweet, amazing, wonderful, squirrely, energetic and challenging kids that I teach. Doing what is best for them, every moment of each day. And I sacrificed doing anything for me. I wasn't the picture of health or fitness before going back to work full-time, but I certainly was not in the ultimate pits of having let everything that is important just fall to the side. 

I had to choose. The sweet, smiling faces. The moment that a kid truly grasps a concept. The sticky-finger hugs. The crazy ebb and flow of the day. I love it. But I love my future family more. 

The seed of change was planted in my mind about six weeks ago, but at 6:20 AM on Thursday, when my doctor looked at me and told me that next month, after another four weeks of Progestin, regardless of the size of the endometrioma, we would restart my fertility drugs and push through for an IUI, I knew what I had to do. His exact words were, "I need you to do whatever you can to get as healthy as possible in the next four weeks." It hit me like a ton of bricks. I felt like the wind was knocked out of me. I am doing ZERO healthy things in my life. I am dumping money and time and emotion into a pursuit of having a baby, and I am doing ZERO healthy things to support that effort. Reality is a bitter slap in the face. 

I won't be returning to full-time teaching in the fall. I may do some part-time specialized instruction that would be less stressful and demanding. I am not yet sure what the right choice is. I need to work in some capacity because it is good and healthy to have a focus and to be productive. I just can't do 75 hour weeks and extra classes for certification and little sleep and no room in my heart for anything but these wonderful 27 kids. My husband needs my heart. I need my heart. My future children need my heart. I thought about just scaling back. I am a person that puts excess into everything I do. My work process is frenetic. I can't give any less than everything. I need to give my everything to becoming a mom, in whatever way that comes to me.

I really don't know what the road ahead holds for me, but I do know that for the first time in months, I feel a measure of peace. Changes. Time to embrace the change that is coming, and commit to the changes that I need to make in my own life. Freaking gas station hot dogs... 

The Bitter Cup

I have drunk from my fair share of bitter cups in life. We all have. Plans are made. Expectations established. Hearts are set on hopes and dreams. And then the very dregs of bitterness must be swallowed as dreams shatter and hope explodes into a million tiny pieces. Broken friendships. Familial strife. Failed relationships. Financial stress. I have experienced all of these things before. But nothing compares to the bitterness I have swallowed in the past thirty six hours. We all have our cross to bear and our challis of sorrow to endure. Mine is yet another failed attempt at becoming a mother.

A little over two weeks ago, we had our first IUI procedure. It was quick, easy, and filled us with hope and a renewed sense of promise. After the IUI came daily hormone supplements which gave me every pregnancy-like side effect known to womankind. Nausea. Hot flashes. Wretched dizziness. Cramping. Sore breasts. Veins appearing in new and interesting places. Horrid constipation. Gas. Sore and bleeding gums. A cold. Absolutely everything. And then, early Sunday morning, after I was absolutely convinced I was pregnant, I peed on what must have been my 30th pregnancy test over two years, and it was negative. I sat on the bathroom floor crying, hating to wake my husband up to tell him the bad news. But when I crawled back into bed crying and shaking like a leaf, the cat was out of the bag. We cried together until we fell asleep and slept fitfully for several hours.

Sunday was a blur. We watched mind-numbing amounts of shows on DVD. BJ held my hand all day. I went through an entire roll of toilet paper as I cried and blew my nose. We stayed home from church, the thought of facing anyone we knew just too difficult to even bear. We even went to the movies just to escape from the house and the crushing sense of disappointment that sat on our chests all day. I accepted yesterday that I feel like absolute crap about the whole thing. I'd love to be all "there is a bigger plan," and "I'll just be patient." But I can't. Right now, I want to hurl my bitter cup off a cliff and scream every four-letter word in the book into the abyss. 

It is a special kind of hell to have your body and mind chemically convinced you are pregnant by hormone supplements, and then have it not be true. Biologically, everything for a pregnancy was in my system for at least twelve days after my procedure. Everything in me felt pregnant. But I'm not. And I can't do anything to change that. Every pill I swallowed, every time I was in pain, every moment I was hot-flashing, every minor twinge in my body, I became tied emotionally and physically more and more tightly to the idea of a pregnancy and a baby. And in the space of three minutes, all of that hope and promise was ripped away from me. Right now, I am furious about my cup being full of this bitter and horrifyingly painful trial.

We face an uphill battle. We can do more IUI rounds with fertility drugs. We plan to. Each one will cost at least $500. We can do up to four of these before the options become infinitely more expensive. We already have over $500 sunk into our first failed round. For two people on a single income, it's terrifying. I start work tomorrow as a long-term sub for at least 12 weeks, and that will help, but it won't solve every problem.

I have been thinking about Christ and his acceptance of the bitter cup. We know that He took it willingly, but not without difficulty, pain and pleading that it pass from Him if it be at all possible. I know that there will be something on the other side of this for us, and that our cup must be consumed if we are to move forward. I am pleading that there is another way. I know that there likely is not. But I am tired of being tested. I am tired of being disappointed. I don't know how many months of this I can possibly withstand. I am frustrated with my Father in Heaven because I lack the knowledge and capacity to comprehend this on a grander scale. I know that it's ok to feel that way, because we are meant to experience the full spectrum of emotion, and because eventually I will and He will help me. But right now, I am angry. I have thought often of Jacob of the Old Testament, and of the significance of his new name, Israel, meaning "one who wrestles with God." There is some solace in knowing that on the path to truth and understanding, there is turmoil, heartbreak and trouble, and that we are meant to experience it. We all wrestle at some point. We all learn the bitter cup cannot pass.

But how I wish it could.

I still believe in the idea of bread being disguised as stones, but I think it's going to take me a while to digest and accept this particular stone/piece of ridiculously hard bread that might as well be a stone.

We are starting all over again, bitter cup in hand, and we drink on, choking it down, banking on the moment when the sweet overwhelms the bitter and the cup has passed from before us. So I drink it down freely as I begin another month of mourning the loss of a baby that I never had.

I don't think I'll raise my glass to that one.

Two Week Wait

Fifteen minutes at an early morning doctor's appointment was all it took to change my world.

Early on Friday morning, we bundled up and walked in the dark to our internal ultrasound appointment, breath puffing out like smoke against the cold morning air. The ten days before the appointment were ones spent in relative panic, fueled by irrational Google searches about 29-year old women declared barren and free of eggs and whose uterine cavities had been consumed by endometriosis. Stupid internet. Stupid baby-hungry brain.

We walked into an empty clinic office and took a seat in the waiting area. Within three minutes, we had been called back and Dr. Peterson was waiting for us with a wide smile. He had me get settled into the ultrasound room, stepped out to let me get all arranged from the waist down in a sheet, and then we did the ultrasound.

To my shock, he said, "your uterus looks great, no endometriosis, and while we're in here, since it's day 11 of your cycle, we can go ahead and check your egg follicles." He shifted the ultrasound wand and a round black spot showed up on the screen. An 18 millimeter egg follicle on the right side. Dr. Peterson noted the size and said, "that looks great. Almost ready to release. Let's check the other side, but it's rare to have them on both ovaries. Well, except for you, apparently." I had another mature, dominant follicle on the left side, at 21 mm. He noted all of the sizes, and told me that we would do an Intrauterine Insemination on Sunday morning. He prescribed an HCG trigger shot  for me to give myself on Friday night to stimulate the release of the eggs on Sunday morning, and twelve days of progesterone to be taken after the IUI to prepare the lining of my uterus for implantation.

The next 36 hours were a blur. I gave myself the trigger shot in my lower abdomen on Friday. I felt a little nauseated, and since then have felt this weird seasick feeling in my lower body-my uterine area down through my legs. Saturday night and Sunday I had some twinging around both of my ovaries, which I assume were the follicles rupturing. Sunday morning I had a major temperature drop, which can be indicative of ovulation if followed by a sustained rise over the next few days, and so far the pattern is holding steady. We began a fast on Saturday night (along with many dear friends and family members) and prayed especially for this procedure to work if it was God's will. I slept well, and felt peaceful.

On Sunday morning, I woke up at 6:15, showered, got ready, and tried to quell the anxiety in the pit of my stomach. My HSG in August was so traumatic that the thought of a date with another speculum and catheter scared the daylights out of me. All day, I felt the comfort of Heavenly Father with me as we went through every moment of the procedure.

I spent most of the day amazed not only by how simple this procedure was, but also by how many couples IUI has blessed. After the andrology and IVF lab had all of the necessary materials for the procedure, BJ and I went to relax for an hour while they centrifuged and prepared the "sample" for the insemination. They basically spin all of the really good quality stuff to the top, eliminate the toxins and other materials that can inhibit conception, and then pump it up on a sugar substance like Red Bull to give it some extra pep in it's step. Pretty cool. Pretty amazing.

When we returned to the fertility center, we waited for about ten minutes with a few other couples. We all had the same look on our faces: hopeful anticipation, radiant joy, and an underlying quiver of fear and doubt. When you plunk down between $400 and $500 to do what nature intended for you to do on your own, it messes with your head. This was our first time, and I felt like there was a roller coaster in my stomach. Some of those couples may have been on their second, third, or fourth try. There was a strange sense of silent solidarity in that room. For a moment, I thought my heart would burst from the outpouring of love I felt for those other couples. When the nurse came to bring us back to the room, I had tears in my eyes.

The insemination was very fast. From speculum in to speculum out, it was a matter of about three minutes. I explained my HSG-related trauma to the procedure nurse, and she was very gentle and had no problems reaching my cervix or threading the catheter through. She had us check the labels on the insemination vial about 20 times (wouldn't that be a nightmare if it were the wrong vial!), and then connected it to the catheter, and boom, we were done. She wished us luck, and then I got to lay there for fifteen minutes with my legs up to give the little guys their best chance of saying hello to my egg. All I experienced from the actual procedure was some very mild cramping.

In two weeks, I can do a home pregnancy test, and if it is positive, I will do a blood test. If it is negative, then we move on to another cycle with some fertility drugs, and we do it all again.

I am nervous, hopeful and excited all at once. I am also crazy emotional and hopped up on hormones that make my cry at the drop of a hat. In the middle of the grocery store. About not being able to find the right kind of oranges that are on sale. Sigh.

We don't know what is going to happen, but we will soldier through whatever the result is. If our test is positive, we will tell family and close friends, and wait a few weeks until the ultrasound to establish a heartbeat before telling everyone else. If it is negative, we will need some time to process, regroup and reassess before talking about it. The whole purpose of this blog is to share and connect with others experiencing the same struggles, and I want to be open and vulnerable about everything that I am experiencing. Sometimes it just takes a little time to be able to be open.

Fifteen minutes changed the course of our lives. In two weeks, we will have a similar experience as we find out whether or not we were successful. Just a few moments in the grand expanse of time.

So we wait out those two weeks, and we pray, and we hope and we dream, for ourselves and for everyone else who is trying to have their own little angel.

Bread and Stones

For me, the past three months have been all about learning the difference between bread and stones, and realizing that sometimes what I think are stones actually turn out to be bread. Blessings and trials-one and the same. Oh, what a complicated path we all walk. 

Six weeks ago, I walked away from a full-time teaching position at a great school after my first day of training and orientation. I had spent nearly six months anticipating what this new position would bring to my life, feeling unsure and unsettled about the opportunity the entire time. Sometimes, you do what you feel is necessary to take care of your family, like accepting a job that you have very mixed feelings about. And sometimes Heavenly Father smacks you over the head with a two-by-four less than a week before students arrive and tells you to get the heck out of dodge. So I cried the whole way home from my first day of training, had a very long talk with my amazing and supportive husband, prayed and asked for guidance, and drove the hour commute the next morning at 6 AM to inform the director of the school that I was resigning. I felt as if I were begging for bread and kept receiving nothing but stones to satiate my hunger.

Here's the thing-this job would have precluded me from doing everything I need to do to make sure we have a family. There is nothing on this earth more important to me than my current and future family. And at 29, I don't have the luxury of time or flexibility to play the waiting game any longer. I need to aggressively pursue my options to make a baby a reality-whether that is through fertility treatments or adoption. A two to three hour daily commute, severely restrictive leave policies, an insanely demanding schedule for uncompensated work time, and a seriously bad feeling in the pit of my stomach meant that my only choice was to walk away. Leaving this position turned out to be bread after all. 

But walking away blew up ALL of our life plans in a matter of seconds. No dual income. No chance to save for adoption or fertility treatments. No life that we had dreamed of and anticipated. 

God has a way of guiding you through the stormiest of times and bringing you back into a safe harbor. In the midst of all of this turmoil, I felt His hand guiding us toward a new and better route. Even though the trip has been scary, and the hard times are likely far from over, we know that we are in His hands, and that He will never, ever leave us. And He will teach us the difference between bread and stones.

Within a week of leaving my full-time position, I was set up to regularly substitute teach at a local elementary charter school. In the next few weeks, I will begin back-to-back long-term subbing positions at this school, working full-time until at least February. The school is amazing, is less than 10 minutes from home, and is exactly what I needed in my life at this moment. My sweet husband was given the opportunity to work from home and was also was promoted and given a substantial raise. We have seen the Lord's hand in our life, handing us bread, the essence of life, making up for what we lost, and leading us to something better and more fulfilling. Things still are not easy, but they are definitely looking up. 

Which brings us to the most important goal of all-operation baby. Now that I am working close to home, I have the time and ability to attend my needed fertility appointments. In August, after my HSG procedure, I was referred to a Reproductive Endocrinologist at the Utah Center for Reproductive Medicine, part of the University of Utah medical services. My potentially arcuate uterus needs further study, and my wacky periods and ovulation need more evaluation. 

BJ and I left bright and early this morning for our appointment with Dr. Peterson. I was nervous and excited and really anxious. After spending fifteen minutes trying to find the office and arriving late, my blood pressure was through the roof and wouldn't even register on the machine. The nurse was very patient with us as I calmed down and returned to some semblance of normalcy. A million questions about our medical histories later, the doctor joined us and our short, sweet and productive meeting commenced.

Basically, Dr. Peterson laid out a short term plan to get us pregnant as quickly and naturally as possible. Today, I had a blood test to check my AMH levels to tell us how many viable eggs I have left. Next Friday, I have an internal ultrasound scheduled to evaluate ammenorrhea, or painful periods, to make sure I don't have endometriosis...which is also a convenient way to have an insurance-covered diagnostic ultrasound done to check my arcuate uterus and the development of my egg follicles this month (since we scheduled the ultrasound on cycle day 11). As long as things check out okay with my uterus and I don't have endometriosis (which is very unlikely), and I have a developing egg follicle, I will get a shot to stimulate ovulation. Several days later, they will mix my hubby's little swimmers with the equivalent of Red Bull to get them good and energized, and we will do an intra-uterine insemination procedure. This could potentially all happen by the 21st or 22nd of October, so it is moving very quickly. We will do one natural cycle of this approach, and if it does not work (or I do end up presenting with endometriosis), we will move to a maximum of three medicated cycles of Clomid, Red Bull for the little guys, and IUI procedures with follicle ultrasound monitoring. Right now, it feels like bread is raining down from heaven.

Phew-that is a lot of words. But it is a PLAN. A REAL PLAN. We are so grateful for it, and for a team of doctors that want us to get pregnant quickly and naturally. It may or may not be successful. But we are going to give it everything we have and work through these next four months (hopefully only one!) with faith and vigor. 

These last three months have been pretty hellish for us. Disappointment piles up and begins to choke you out of your own life. Walking away from that job was the first time I have felt sunshine in my life in a long time. Having new opportunities and blessings presented to us increased the light in my life. Today, our amazing doctor blew the rest of the clouds away and let the sunshine stream into our lives with his amazing gifts and talents. We are cautiously optimistic, but so hopeful at the end of the day, because we know the Master is in control, and can see so far past what we can ever imagine.

One of my favorite songs offers a window into how I feel on the days that I am both discouraged and uplifted. I never knew it was possible to have both of these feelings at once. But infertility opens windows and doors into emotions I never knew existed. My struggle is my own. Others may try for years for a baby and never arrive at that result. I may be one of those women. But the words in this song help me to hold on when I feel the need to despair (so what if walking through Deseret Book and hearing it playing makes me burst into tears in front of other customers). And as the last notes fade away, I feel nothing but hope that we will somehow, someday, be parents. In the song, "Better Promises," Hillary Weeks sings, 

"You gave me bread, 

but I thought it was a stone, 

and before You could tell me yes, 

You had to tell me no. 

If you had given me what I wanted, 

I would not have seen, 

that You had better promises for me."

I know that He has better promises for me. Promises greater than I can ever imagine. Perhaps BJ and I needed more preparation to become parents. Maybe we needed BJ's promotion and raise. Possibly, I needed to have an Abraham and Isaac moment with my faith and was tested with confusing job opportunities. We may be people that Dr. Peterson needs to bless with his incredible gifts and talents. We most definitely need to learn patience. And maybe there is a baby out there who may come to us through adoption. We don't know. But I know that He will calm us so we can ride out the storm, and if we reach out our hands, we can walk to Him on the rough waters of life. 

So internal ultrasound and (more likely than not) IUI, here we come. 

Step one on the journey of the rest of our lives.

Step one in realizing that what we believe to be stones may be bread after all. 

The Flyer Comet

When I was twelve, the scariest thing in the world to me was the roller coaster at our local, historic amusement park. The star attraction at Whalom Park was The Flyer Comet, a classic wooden coaster, perched on the shore of a lake in central Massachusetts, and by the time I was old enough to ride it's rickety tracks and dilapidated cart train, had been in operation for nearly 60 years. The Flyer Comet was a hallmark of New England culture, and the fact that the entire structure shook as you whooshed around the curves, and that the paint flaked off in sheets as metal wheels clacked over the worn track wasn't enough to deter thrill-seekers from riding the ancient attraction. The scariest part of riding the Flyer Comet was a section they called "the black hole," which was a covered portion of track built over a steep drop (often rumored to cover faulty portions of the structure). For a few seconds, the darkness enveloped you, your heart raced, stomach churned, and mind spiraled, before you shot out the other side into brilliant sunlight over deep blue water, arms raised to touch the sky with outstretched fingertips, heart full of exultant joy and body buzzing with adrenaline. 

I feel like I am stuck on the Flyer Comet, trapped in the "black hole," and I can't get off the ride. 

In the past ten days, I have walked away from a full-time teaching opportunity less than a week before school started, created a new plan for employment wholly dependent on substitute teaching jobs, and found out that our problems having a baby may be more serious than we initially thought. I am spiraling, sometimes it feels like without direction, but banking on that moment of shooting out of the "black hole," hands raised joyously toward the heavens, lungs bursting and heart soaring as light overcomes darkness and hope fills my soul. 

For the first time on my life, I am running on nothing but faith. There is something exhilarating and liberating about turning control over to God and opening yourself to His goodness and glory to satisfy every possible need. There is something awesome and humbling about knowing that after doing everything in your power to satisfy your temporal and eternal needs, it will never be enough without His grace. So while I am terrified and stuck on what seems like an endless trip through the "black hole," I know with a faith that burns hotter than any earthly flame, that if we live our faith daily, commit ourselves to Him, see the needed specialists to help us have a baby, and work our hardest to meet our financial needs, He will help us achieve our eternal and paramount goal of a family. There is no way to meet that goal running on our old plan of working 65-70 hours a week teaching and commuting. So we have a new plan. 

The new plan is this-give it our all. Keep our heads up. Be flexible. Be receptive to the Holy Spirit. Move forward with faith. Steel ourselves. And wait for the sun to come back.

We need to find out if I have a misshapen uterus that could challenge carrying a healthy baby to term. We need to find out if I am able to ovulate at all. We are at a point of moving beyond the help that my OBGYN can give us. We are upping the ante. We have our first reproductive endocrinologist appointment on October 8th.  We need to find a way to meet our financial obligations on a reduced income. But I know that he will help us to do all of those things, because more than anything else, He wants us to have a family and to know the full spectrum of experience that raising children will bring us. And He and BJ and I will do whatever we need to do and are inspired to do to make that happen. 

I have a feeling the Flyer Comet and I have a few more rounds to go, but the moment of transformation from inky darkness to brilliant light will make every second of the experience worthwhile. 

So we soar on through the darkness just before dawn. Heads up. Hearts full of love. Hands stretched to the sky. 

A Tale of Five Catheters

I don't know about you, but a speculum is my most favorite medical instrument in the entire world. I was so lucky, that I got to be speculumed twice in 10 minutes today. I also got to experience having no less than 5 catheters threaded up through my cervix. Aren't you just dripping with jealousy? Apologies in advance for the absolute "TMI" nature of this post.

It doesn't matter how many times you put on that flimsy little doctor's office nightgown, pop your feet into the stirrups, and display your lady parts in all their glory for a pap smear-it never gets any less awkward. Now, take yourself out of the comfort of your regular gyno's office, put yourself in cold and sterile hospital environment with people you have never met, and multiply the weirdness of a pap smear by 10, and you have yourself a delightful little procedure called a Hysterosalpingogram (HSG). 

I was terrified to have this done. I know several people who have a had a range of experiences with the HSG, and 98% of people who post about theirs online sum it up with a description like, "it was worse than childbirth," and "I wanted to die," and "I felt like my entire abdomen was on fire." So naturally, as a person with some fabulously convenient anxiety issues, I have spent the last 10 days freaking out about this procedure. I expected the worst pain of my life. I expected to kick the doctor in the face with my rubberized sock-clad foot, leap off the table, and tear down the hallway, knocking carts of medical supplies over as I made my great escape from the hospital wearing only a flimsy johnny. I am happy to report that this did not happen.

It was awkward as all get out. I would even venture to say that next to the bladder infection/UTI from hell last summer, it was my least favorite medical experience ever. But I did not want to die, or have a flaming uterus, although I did come close to kicking the doctor in the face. Thank heavens I didn't actually do it. But it was sort of a comedy of errors, bordering on, "you have got to be freaking kidding me!" 

BJ took the day off from work and came with me. Which was both for support, and necessary, since I was buzzed on 1000 mg Ibuprofen, 1000 mg of extra-strength Tylenol, and a 1 mg of Xanax. My OB realized how completely freaked I was about doing this and was very willing to help me be as medicated as possible. By the time we got to the radiology department at LDS hospital, I was enjoying not being able to feel my lips or tongue, and definitely grateful that every attempt by my stomach to do flips was quelled by the effect of benzodiazepines. Thank you, drug companies the world over for that little slice of heaven. As soon as I was called back into the changing area and instructed to put on the johnny, scrub pants and grippy, rubberized socks, I was keenly aware of everything that was going on. Instead of having a panic attack freak out, I just got super emotional and started streaming tears down my cheeks. The cute x-ray technician was very sweet, offered a lot of comfort and support, and fetched hubby from the waiting room to accompany me through the rest of the procedure.

My OB was supposed to perform the HSG, but was called out for a delivery, so a PA in the radiology department did it, assisted by the nice x-ray tech, Toni. They were incredibly gentle and sensitive and explained everything that was going to happen and were incredibly respectful of my modesty and obvious discomfort. But it doesn't matter how many times you have someone use a speculum on you-it never, ever becomes less awkward or unpleasant. And today was no exception.

After the first speculum insertion, they went ahead and inserted a long, thin catheter with a balloon on the end that is used to push the dye into the uterus. As the PA worked with the catheter, she said that "my cervix wasn't happy about this." Um, yup. Definitely not. Last time I checked, no cervix is too happy about getting snuggly with a catheter. Ugh. So the catheter goes in, causes a bunch of super-uncomfortable pressure and cramping, and then, the balloon on the end breaks. Oh yes. That's right. So out it comes, and in goes another. Everything is good, the dye goes in, speculum comes out, I am slid under the x-ray imager, there is a lot more cramping and discomfort as I feel the dye surge up and through my lady parts, and as I watch the screen above me, my uterus fills with the contrast dye and the left tube fills and spills beautifully. I can see my ovary and tube perfectly, and it's great. The PA adds more pressure to force dye into the right tube. I clench BJ's hand because it hurts and cramps like the dickens, and what happens? The catheter comes out. Just pops right out. The pressure chose the path of least resistance, and just popped the danged thing out of me.

The PA apologized multiple times, said the tube filled partially, but she would like to do it again to see if it can fill and spill completely. She asked if it is ok. I am laying on a table, gown hiked up, husband holding my hand, cramping like the worst period of my life times 10, and she wants to put that danged speculum back in and try again? GAHHHH. Of course, I said yes, because I was NOT coming back for another test unless hell froze over. So a bunch of pillows get stuck under my back to change the angle, the speculum goes back in, the catheter is reinserted, and it breaks AGAIN. Another catheter goes in. Breaks AGAIN. I flippin' kid you not. At this point, I am starting to cry, my uterus hates me, and all I want to do is kick the very nice PA in the face (and she was honestly so, so nice) and leave an imprint of the rubberized sock on her cute face. 

The PA asks for a different type of catheter that is smaller and has a c-shaped clamp on it to make is stay inside of my cervix. I felt that one going in like a razor blade. But it stayed. Out goes the speculum, in goes the dye, the cramps and pressure surge again, and my right tube spills. It wasn't as intense a flow as the dye through the left tube, but it was spilled and both tubes were declared open. The PA said there could have been a mucus plug or something blocking it, but it was flowing freely when we were done. Out came the catheter, and the cramps surged for several minutes while I lay on the table, totally exhausted. She explained that because of the clamp on the last catheter, I would have some significant bleeding. They covered me with a nice, warm blanket, swaddled my bottom area with a Gandhi-like towel diaper, and went over the images with me. 

My left tube looks great. The ovary was visible and nicely shaped. The right tube is also open, but took a lot more effort and pressure, and may have been cleared by the contrast material. The ovary doesn't look as well-developed, and that could be playing a role in my irregular ovulation. Both tube structures looked great. Your uterus should look like an upside down pear, and mine had a dip at the top. She said she needed to do an official measurement as she wrote her report for my OB, because that can be problematic, but that it was mild and more likely than not is nothing to be concerned about. If it is a concern, it would make my pregnancy a bit more risky and I would need closer monitoring and possibly a C-Section for delivery. It all depends on that official measurement. I will know more about that next week.

After resting on the table for a while, I sat up and let some of the dye work it's way out. Then it was off to the bathroom in my Gandhi-getup to deal with the blood and dye, and to get dressed and put on a lovely diaper-like pad, which I get to continue sporting for a good 24-48 hours. Awesome. 

Overall, it was less horrible than what I was prepared for, but it was no walk in the park. I am so thankful for my supportive husband and proactive doctor. I am beyond grateful for answers. I know my tubes are functional. I probably have one that works better than the other. We have information to move forward with a cycle of Clomid in September/October. I don't have any adhesions, growths, or anything majorly wrong. I can deal with having a twice-inserted speculum, five catheters, some bleeding nasty cramps, a diaper to soak up the leaking dye and Xanax haze if it helps us get closer to having a baby.

I received a number of blessings from my husband and a good friend to help heal and comfort me before the procedure. I totally loaded up on the drugs. I hate to think about what it would have been like without them. I am still feeling the effects of the Xanax and have been popping ibuprofen all day to help with the residual cramping. My best friend received the next best thing to a drunk dial from me after the procedure, and as she said so eloquently, I was clearly trying to outdo Lindsay Lohan with my pill consumption. I definitely felt like a loopy, drugged up person for the afternoon, and slept for several hours when I got home.

So, HSG. I fought you, and I definitely feel like I won in the final moments of the battle. But I NEVER, EVER want to do that again. Five catheters. Five stinkin' catheters. Blech. 

Tests, More Tests, and Avoiding Becoming the Next Octo-Mom

I realized something last Monday at my fertility consultation. Those charts, diagrams and explanations of bodily functions displayed on the wall of the OBGYN's office don't make you feel awkward until you spend 45 minutes in that room with your husband waiting to talk to the doctor. I think that by the end of the experience, BJ was more informed about the internal structure of the baby-making woman parts than he could have ever wanted to be. He was a total trooper though, especially because cute Dr. Laine spent 90% of the time really only talking to me while he sat in the chair next to the paper-covered exam and rubbed my knee while we talked strategy for Operation Baby. Oh, and the appointment was the day before our two-year anniversary...what a great way to celebrate!

This was my first time actually meeting my OB (I have worked with her Nurse Practitioner and Medical Assistant) . She is incredibly nice, down to earth, and best of all, pretty realistic and conservative in her approach to maximizing my fertility. Going on Clomid scares the crud out of me. My mom is a fraternal twin, and my risk of having twins is pretty high as it is without blitzing my follicles with Clomid. Dr. Laine said something to the effect of, "when you want a baby so badly, twins sound wonderful. The reality of a twin pregnancy and the first years of parenting twins is a really different story." I would prefer to achieve pregnancy as conservatively as possible, and it makes me feel a lot better to have a doctor that didn't just bust out the prescription pad for fertility drugs five minutes after meeting me. I feel good about sticking with Dr. Laine through these next few months as we figure out what is going on with me, and confident that she will refer me to any needed specialists when the time is appropriate.

So the long and short of our appointment was that my basal body temperature charting seems to be indicating irregular ovulation, and likely periods of anovulation. It looks like I am ovulating every other month, and irregularly at that, so there may be an issue with my Fallopian tubes. I had my progesterone tested two weeks in a row, and I am definitely not ovulating this month. We also broached that oh-so-lovely and tender conversation about weight again, but Dr. Laine was so gentle and kind. After sharing her own experiences with struggling with her weight, she said I was down 10 pounds from my last appointment, and over the next 8 weeks or so, would like to see that downward trend continue. No "you must reach this weight for me to help you" ultimatum, no criticism of the fact that two years of unemployment and emotional stress have helped me to pack on some very unwanted pounds. Just some simple suggestions to help me continue to be successful, and an absolute insistence on small, meaningful changes and not a ridiculous crash diet.

The next step, beyond continuing to chart each day and continue testing my progesterone through my next cycle, is to have a Hysterosalpingography at the start of my next cycle in August. Basically, they will insert a catheter into my uterus, flood the uterus with contrast dye, and x-ray me to see if the dye flows normally through my Fallopian tubes. If the dye does, then we know that there isn't a blockage. If it doesn't, then we need to resolve the blockage, or come up with another plan. The test isn't terribly pleasant, is danged expensive, and may end up being inconclusive, but it is the next logical step, so we will be scheduling that soon. The silver lining is that woman have an increased rate of conception the month after the test is performed, so here's hoping. After the test, we will reconvene in September to go over everything and reevaluate our approach. It is likely that I will go on Clomid in September, but will be tracked by an endocrinologist to study my egg follicle development to be sure I am not going to end up as the next Octo-Mom. Shudder.

Overall, it was a positive experience, but definitely emotional. It doesn't matter what happens with Operation Baby, I end up in tears. I feel like I have what I need in place to move forward now-a wonderful husband, an army of people that I know pray for us, a Heavenly Father who loves us and will bless us for our righteous desires, and a medical specialist that can use her gifts to help us have a baby. But it doesn't make things easier, and I am really at peace with admitting openly that I am not okay with the fact that my reproductive system is on the fritz. In a world full of covering up hurt and struggle for the sake of appearance, I am getting more and more comfortable with just being okay with not being okay. 

Over the past few months, I feel like I have also had a lot of time to reflect on the inevitable question that all couples dealing with infertility must face, "How far will we go to make this happen?" Everyone has their own answer to that question, and that answer is one that is only arrived at with a lot of serious consideration. I know that for BJ and me, we are only willing to go so far. I will do the testing. I will do some fixes for internal problems I may have. I will take Clomid or it's equivalent. I will pursue intrauterine insemination. That is it for me. I will not do fertility shots. I will not undergo major surgery. I do not want to do invitro. If we cannot get to pregnancy on our own within those parameters, we will take the money we would be spending on fertility treatments, and move forward with the adoption process. If we are not successful by June of next year, we will go ahead with a home study and begin looking into our options. For me, the $10,000 I would spend on invitro would be better spent working with LDS family services to bring a darling baby that desperately needs a home into a family full of love, desire and acceptance. 

In my heart, I think our journey may take us down the path of both pregnancy and adoption. I am not sure at all how this will work out, and I am not all fine and dandy with the way things are, but I am grateful to be on a path and walking toward positive and productive action. I can't do this all on my own, but I can do it one step at a time, one day at a time, and with a mustard seed of faith. 

Expectations and Extremity

In my heart, I always believed that my I would be pregnant at the same time as my best friend, Aly, and Meredith Grey. Yes, Meredith Grey from "Grey's Anatomy."

It sounds totally nutters, but I am completely serious. Best friend and I have this intense soul-mateish relationship, a lot like Cristina and Meredith on Grey's Anatomy. She is my person. When one of us is having a hard day, the other can kick our butt out of bed and get us motivated. Or we can just watch endless hours of Netflix on the couch and be completely satisfied by just being. It is a special bond that can never be replicated. So, naturally, in my mind, Aly, Meredith and I would all be having babies together.

Imagine my disappointment when stupid Meredith Grey got pregnant before I did. I wanted to hit the TV and tell her that she has too many unresolved emotional issues to be bringing a child into the world. For heaven's sake, the girl was almost blown up by a bomb in a body cavity, quasi-committed suicide and died and came back to life, and messed with a clinical drug trial that could have cured Alzheimer's. It is not fair that she gets an adopted baby, a biological baby, and Patrick Dempsey. Ugh. 

Then, back in March, on my birthday, best friend calls me to tell me she is pregnant, and expecting her little bundle of cafe con leche joy (the baby of lily-white best friend and caramel Mexican husband is sure to be beautiful) in November. I was genuinely, completely, and absolutely thrilled for her. In every possible way. She will be an incredible mother, and her husband will be a wonderful father. I had none of the Meredith Grey-induced rage when Aly told me she was pregnant. We talked for a good hour about how important it was for her to tell me, because it would have been far worse not to tell out of fear of hurting me. So naturally, when we hung up the phone, and I looked down at my 9 month old niece that I was babysitting, I burst into tears. It is incredible how something so joyful, beautiful and incredibly happy can reduce me to a blubbering, bawling mess of a woman. I am not jealous. I am not angry. But I am aching inside and beyond disappointed that I am not part of this great fantasy of a pregnancy triumvirate that I have dreamed about for so long. 

Best friend and I talked today about them finding out the gender of baby Jimenez next week. I am thrilled for them. And I spent the better part of tonight wiping away tears as I mourned what feels like an incredible loss to me. I don't know how it is possible to mourn the loss of something you never had. Perhaps I am mourning what feels like the loss of a dream. I may never know exactly what this feeling is, but I know that it is all tangled up with feelings of happiness and joy for the person I am closest to in this life besides my husband. There must be something absolutely exquisite and wonderful on the other side of this personal hell, because I cannot see any other reason behind having to experience this gut-wrenching back and forth of emotions. 

Several years ago, before I met my husband, I experienced what was absolutely the most horrendous break-up of my life. I felt like my soul had been ripped from my body and that I was wrecked beyond all repair. There are really no words that can adequately describe how horrible things were. I know that there was some serious divine intervention that lifted my burden of anguish and pain to help prepare me to meet my husband six weeks later. Some valuable counsel that I received at the time was this statement: "We come to know God in our extremity." I thought I understood what that meant at the time-in terms of love lost and earth-shattering disappointment, I suppose that I did. But extremity is a far deeper and more complex idea that I could have ever realized. 

Extremity is the maximum extent of joy, and in it's opposite, pain. It is the highest high and the deepest low. The brightest day and the darkest night. I believe we experience extremity relative to our current path in life. Three years ago, my extremity was having my heart broken by the person I believed I would spend forever with. Two years ago, it was the palpable elation of marrying the most kind, gentle and wonderful man in the world for time and all eternity. Today, it is feeling a consistent sense of loss and emptiness as I yearn for a child that will fit perfectly in our arms and be bound to our hearts for eternity. It is feeling the most exultant and pure joy for my best friend as she prepares to welcome a perfect, heaven-sent soul into her life. It is weeping over the room that sits empty in my house, waiting to welcome our baby home. 

I do not know God yet, but He is revealing himself to me slowly in my extremity. And maybe that is what this struggle is all about. But for right now, I still hate Meredith Grey.