Ready for another baby

I said I would explain this in another post and here it is. During the seven years it took me to have my daughter, I always thought that if I ever did get pregnant, I would be thrilled if I got pregnant again quickly after my first. Many people say that once you have one the rest can come easier. As we know this is neither truth nor fact. It is something that can happen but doesn't mean that it will.

With my daughter, I had a fairly easy pregnancy. No complication to speak of and it all went really well up until about a week and a half before she was born. At one of my doctor appointments I had my membranes stripped because I was ready to have my daughter and to be a mom. I had been told that it can help speed up the process. What I didn't know was that it put me into false labor. I lost count of how many times I thought that I might be going into labor but every time after about 4 hours of contractions, my contractions would stop. After about a week of this the contraction pulled a muscle in my back causing the contractions to be almost unbearable. I knew I couldn't wait for my next appointment to figure out what was going on. So on my daughters due date, I called the doctors office to see if they could check me and see if I was even close to being ready to go into labor.

Once the Midwife checked me, she told me I would probably be having my baby that day especially if she stripped the membranes again. At that point I was ready to try anything to go into labor. 4 hours later I was checked into the hospital. It was all progressing wonderfully until I got stuck at being 7 cm dilated for 5 plus hours. This started my experience of the worst pain of my entire existence. This pain was unfathomable. A few years before I got pregnant I had experienced the pain of a massive cysts rupturing and I remember thinking, if I can handle this, I can handle labor, no problem. Little did I know at that time how extremely wrong I was.

The pain is one thing, but its the psychological side that adds a whole different dimension to labor that isn't talked about as much as the pain. While my pain was beyond description, the fact that my baby's life hung in the balance of what was happening to me, this precious life that I had prayed so fervently for, added another level of pain to the situation. Relief from this pain finally came once the midwife told me I needed to get an epidural or have a C-section. I opted for epidural.

After my daughter was born, she was beautiful, prefect and everything I could have hoped for. They say that your child is your heart walking around on the outside of your body and the day that she was born, I felt like I had given birth to my heart as well. 

I was so in love with my daughter and it felt that love grew more and more every day until one day it was all different. I remember a couple weeks after all the family had left and it was just me and her at home, I was sitting on the couch listening to her cooing and making little noises, and I burst into tears of sadness and guilt. I couldn't stop crying. I didn't understand why I was feeling the way I was feeling. I shouldn't be sad, instead I should be extremely grateful for the opportunity to be this child's mother. I had prayed many years for this exact moment. Why was I crying? Why was I sad? I kept thinking of all the women I knew that would love to be in my situation and wouldn't be sad at all. I felt so guilty for feeling sad. I had heard of the baby blues and never thought it could happened to me.

Soon after I started feeling this way, I started feeling sick and it felt like all the energy I once had, had been completely drained from my body. I was having a hard time even getting off of the couch! I felt like a failure. I had prayed to be a mother, I had prayed for this opportunity and now I was having a hard time taking care of my self let alone my three month old baby. The guilt at times was almost crushing. I finally decided it was time to see the doctor about what was going on. I wish I was strong enough to have admitted my feeling about being sad but I was too proud and felt like I could blame the way I was feeling on my other health issues. The doctor was very kind and helped me figure out what was going on. I was in the middle of a hormonal imbalance. I was producing too much thyroid hormone and it was the root of my health problems. This issue was actually due to giving birth and it is something that I will have to watch out for again if I do get pregnant.

Once I started to feel better physically I knew I needed to work on my emotions. Through talking with some amazing friends, I knew I wasn't alone in the way I was feeling. I started to process all the raw emotions that had surfaced. I first realized that I felt guilty because I had used an epidural during labor. I had felt that I hadn't done enough for my baby and that I must have done something wrong to have had to use an epidural. I was secretly glad when I heard of other mothers who had used an epidural because I felt that I wasn't the only failure and then I would feel guilty for feeling that way. I have since coped with these feelings and understand where I erred. There is absolutely NO SHAME in needing and epidural. It would be nice if all of our bodies felt pain the same and if labor was just like a bad period, but that is not how it goes and I am grateful for the modern technology that is provided for us to find relief and in case like mine, bring that relief at the right time to help mother and in turn it does help the baby.

I understand that each pregnancy story is different and you can have a woman that has had 8 children and each labor could be drastically different as well. If I'm able to get pregnant again I understand that my second pregnancy and labor could and probably will be completely different then the first and I'm ok with that. I would still like to try it without an epidural but the next time around there wont be any shame involved if I choose to use an epidural. I will know I did my best and that is all that can be expected out of me.

Next I needed to deal with the guilt of feeling sad. Through lots of prayer and study, I came to peace with the fact that it was ok for me to feel a bit blue after my daughter was born. Just because I had prayed for this blessing and it was one of the deepest desires of my heart, didn't mean I had to be exempt from feeling the way that any mother could feel after having a baby. The desires of my heart had nothing to do with the chemical imbalance going on in my head. This one was a little harder for me to deal with and I couldn't do it alone. I had to reach out for help from my husband, my friends and my savor. Although the days of feeling sad are gone, I do have to remind myself from time to time that it doesn't matter how this child came into my family, I am a mother and I can have the same moments of frustration, happiness, tired and joy that any other mother is entitled to. I am not exempt because of my infertility.

Today I am sitting her writing this because although, my husband and I haven't used contraceptives of any kind, once my cycle started again, I was secretly afraid of getting pregnant again. Every doctor kept telling me that I could get pregnant again and when my period started 7 months after giving birth, I wasn't emotionally ready. Then came the guilt again. I knew I wanted to get pregnant again at some point but not yet. Before the birth of my daughter I had always said that we wouldn't use birth control because it took us 7 years to get her and I didn't want to wait another 7 years for the next one. I felt selfish for feeling like I wasn't ready to be pregnant when 2 years earlier I would have killed to be in the position I was currently in. As I worked through this new emotion it dawned on me, I knew how to handle being infertile and I didn't know how to be fertile. I knew I had to put it in the lords hands and that what ever happens we would grateful.

My daughter is now a year old and the desire to give her a sibling is starting to burn with in my heart again. The emotions of the past year have strengthened me, helped me to grow and have made me a better wife, mother, and woman. Am I fertile or infertile? That is a good question because I don't know where I fit and only time will tell. But what I know now is that come what may, I'm ready.  

Coming back

It dawned on me the other night that it has almost been 3 years since I started this blog,  almost 2 years since my last post and over a year since I have even checked this blog. I feel like I have abandoned something that was such a part of me for a year and really abandoned a topic that so impacted/impacts my life.

Let me begin with where I have been. The February after I completed my one year challenge of blogging, I found out on Valentines day that I was pregnant. I never thought that it could happen and you would think I would have been ecstatic but to be honest I was in shock. I told my husband and he couldn't believe it either. He wanted me to take 10 more pregnancy test right then but I had to get to work. 

All day I wanted to believe that this was truly real but a huge part of me felt that it was too good to be true. There was no way I was pregnant! It would have explained why I was feeling the way I was but at the same time, it didn't seam possible. We were hoping to adopt. I had mourned over the loss of not being able to get pregnant. I had accepted the fact that I wouldn't have my own biological children and that our children would come to us through adoption. To find out I was pregnant, almost felt like a foreign concept to me. Like a dream that had almost been forgotten brought back to life.   

That night I took one more test and it came back invalided. It was a digital test so I decided invalid wasn't good enough so I tore it apart to find the test strip inside. Sure enough there were two lines. The next mornings test confirmed again that I was in fact pregnant. Throughout our years of infertility I had never seen those two little lines, so to have more then one test come out positive, I knew it must be. The next morning I set up a doctors appointment to have every thing checked out. The two months prior to finding out I was pregnant my periods were really crazy. I had 3 cycles in that time so it wasn't a shock to me that it was off again that month. I had been spotting and just thought I was going to have a bad period but it never came.

At our Doctors visit it was confirmed that we did have a little bug growing inside of me. We even got an early ultrasound and found out that we were about 8 weeks along. Longer then I had originally thought. By that time, reality had sunk in that I was in fact pregnant but it hadn't really for my husband. After the ultrasound he asked me if I still needed to get blood work done to make sure I was pregnant. I told him there wasn't a need because we were for sure pregnant and saw our baby on the screen.

While we both struggled with the reality of this pregnancy I know it was hardest on Robert. I would go to bed at night and be afraid that I would wake up the next morning and find out that I wasn't really pregnant, that I never had been and that it was a dream my mind had conjured up. Each morning though, I was still pregnant. Even once we moved across the country and I quit my job, I would still sometimes wake up not sure of my surroundings and think that I needed to get to work, but for me I felt our little girl inside of me. I felt her spirit and couldn't deny the life that was developing in me. Robert saw me get sick, saw the changes that were happening to me, but the moment for him that he was going to be a father, didn't really hit till he was holding our little girl in his arms. Little Jacky was born in October of 2012 and at that moment I saw the realization in his eyes and love in his heart for this precious little human. He was finally a father and I a mother to our own little child.

Fast forward a year and I find my self with a one year old and facing many of the same fertility problems that I did before I got pregnant the first time. I have finally talked myself into the fact that its ok if we get pregnant again (that is a story I will post about later), but I don't know what to expect. It is like we are starting the journey to fertility all over again but doing it the second time brings a whole different set of challenges and issues.

I'm hoping to use this blog to express these feeling, challenges and talk about this new chapter in my journey.

PS. This may also be used to post random thoughts not related to fertility. It will just depend on my mood. :)



 

Garlic

So I found out something very interesting this week. Garlic is great for getting rid of a yeast infection! Who would have guessed but it really does work!

It's always nice to find an healthy alternative to the chemical products sold over the counter, especially for issues involving pesky feminine problems.

Here is a link if you would like to learn more:
http://www.ehow.com/how_5121978_use-garlic-cure-yeast-infection.html

It is suggested to do this at night so you don't have to walk around smelling like garlic. :)

Thank you for the Year

Wow it is hard to believe that this project is coming to a close and that a year ago today I started posting for my goal of posting 365 days this year. I'm proud to say that I accomplished this goal but it wasn't done without the wonderful support of my husband Robert.

Thank you all for reading and sharing this year with me. I have learned a lot and grown so much during the course of this project. I plan of taking a bit of a break before posting on here again and when I do post it will be in very informal, no structure kind of way.

Again thank you for all your support and my this next year be filled with happiness, joy and the accomplishment of many things!

Love
Kaleen

Infertility does not define me

Something I have been thinking a lot about lately is about what defines me. What defines a person? Is it there ability to sing beautifully, is it there ability to cook, are they defined by they type of car they have, or is it by how many children they are able to bear?

There are many times as I have been pondering my inability to have children that I have viewed myself as broken or less of a person because I cannot bear children. I have told my husband that I can't believe he still loves me even though I can't give him children. I have felt like my purpose in life or all of my goals growing up revolved around getting married, getting pregnant, and having around 10 kids.

Since this is what I have told myself for years is the most important thing, it is easy to see where I have let my infertility define me. Over this journey I have come to the realization that I am not my disease! My infertility is a part of me but it is not me. I have learned and grown from infertility and it has helped shape my life but does not define who I am!

I am in charge of who I am and what I become, it is my destiny, and I know I will be a mother. Being a mother may not come the traditional way I had dreamt about but it will come and I cannot allow my infertility to stand in the way. Dwelling on what we don't have is extremely easy when it is all we want. Getting over our loss and moving towards our goal we will be able to find more joy, be more happy, and personally define our own lives how we see fit.  

Center Your Life in Jesus Christ

"True, enduring happiness, with the accompanying strength, courage, and capacity to overcome the greatest difficulties, will come as you center your life in Jesus Christ. Obedience to His teachings provides a secure ascent in the journey of life. That takes effort. While there is no guarantee of overnight results, there is the assurance that, in the Lord's time, solutions will come, peace will prevail, and happiness will be yours."Richard G. Scott, "The Atonement Can Secure Your Peace and Happiness," Ensign, Nov. 2006, 41 

As this is the last spiritual thought for this year, I found this quote that talks about a fact that is completely essential in our lives. If we want to find pure joy we must center our lives around Christ. Christ is our savior, our brother and our friend. He will always be there for us even in our darkest hours. He knows what it is like to be completely alone and forsaken and because of that amazing sacrifice, we never have to feel alone as long as we reach out to him and allow him to take us up in his comforting arms. 

I know that our Father in Heaven and our brother Jesus Christ love us more intensity then we can ever imagine. I also know that they are our first and most staunch supporters of our agency to choose and, as such, they honor that by allowing us to choose to embrace their teachings and come to them or to turn the other way. I know that true happiness can be found in the gospel of Jesus Christ and that through him and his sacrifice families can be together forever.

I will be eternally grateful for the tender mercies that the Lord has shown me through out my trials. I know that he loves me because I have felt his love and I have felt it even at time when I didn't think I deserved it. I am so grateful for such a supportive husband who loves me and has lifted me up and who makes me a better person. Together we make each other stronger and with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we are building a relationship that will continue to grow even past this time we spend together here on earth.

(If are not a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and would like to learn more about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and what I believe please check out http://mormon.org/)

Words from others...

Today I wanted to share a few great blogs that I have enjoyed following this past year and have learned a lot from. Certain of these sites are hosted by some of the most amazing people ever. I hope you enjoy!

Val:

Val is the amazing mother of 8 children! She is truly one of my heroes and is someone to look towards for advice about mothering, adoption and the influence of infertility.

You can access Val’s blog at: http://fromthetrenchesofadoption.blogspot.com/

Dr. Licciardi:

This is a great blog to learn more about the technical side if infertility and the different treatments.

You can access Dr. Licciardi’s blog at: http://infertilityblog.blogspot.com/

Ashley:

Ashley has been so gracious to share her story as well as others stories on her blog about infertility and parenting.

You can Access Ashley’s blog at: http://www.feigningfertility.com/

A site to more sites:

This is a good resource to find more blogs about infertility: http://www.invesp.com/blog-rank/Infertility

The best man in the world

I Know I have written a lot about Robert in the past but I have to say that I am the luckiest woman in the world to be married to a man who understands me and loves me. He truly is the man of my dreams. Of course we have our times where we don’t see eye to eye, or where we get upset about things but I’m very grateful that we have a common goal.

Infertility can put a huge stress on a couple’s relationship and having common goals is a huge factor is a strong relationship. While we strive to have children, our main goal is to return to live with our Father in Heaven. This goal is by far our strongest goal and out weights some of our other more temporal goals.

I am truly grateful for this commonality and for how much my husband cares about me and our family.

I encourage you to give your husband an extra big hug tonight and tell them you love him because without them you wouldn’t be on this journey to have a baby.

A Merry Christmas

Luke 2:11 “For unto you is ^aborn this day in the city of David a ^bSaviour, which is Christ the ^cLord.”

I simply want to wish you all a very merry Christmas and to share with you the fact that I know we are so very blessed because Jesus was willing to come to this earth and go through something more terrible than we can imagine so we can be forgiven of our sins.

Merry Christmas and have a wonderful time with family because that is time of the year is a great time to enjoy and strengthen family ties.

 

A New Star

It is Christmas eve and all around us there are holiday festivities, family and the wonderful spirit of Christmas is in the air. As we celebrate the season and prepare for Christmas day it is important to remember the story of Christs birth. Tonight it is important to remember the star.

The new star was created as a sign of Christ coming and birth. This new star was something that people all over the world were looking out for in great anticipation because the star represented the coming of the savior. The world up to this point was in need of a savior to be able to be rescued from our sins and to be able to return to our Heavenly Father.

As we enjoy this holiday season, let us look for the stars in our own lives that bring us closer to Christ and his saving grace. Let us look up, for the lord truly does care about each and every one of us, we need to look towards him in all that we do so that we can truly reap the benefits from the sacrifice Christ made when he walked this earth as a man.

Tamara's Story Part 2

In my culture in Utah --where I was primarily raised-- most women had a few little ones by 30, so it was so pleasant to hear at our first consultation just how young I was.  The doctor probably said 5 times...'well, we have plenty of time since you're so young' and 'since you're so young...'.  It was great!  They also were saying things like 60% chance of a baby, and 50% chance of twins.  These were odds I was willing to pay $10,000 dollars for.  And we did--we'll we would have. There are 7 or so states in the nation that have a mandatory policy that insurance must cover at least 50% of IVF (and in MD it was more).  We were so lucky (or guided?) to live in Maryland and ended up spending only $500 dollars to get pregnant.  Our first try with IVF was a success so we felt very lucky.

We had what they refer to as-- unexplained infertility.  Which just meant to me that they hadn't been able to figure out what was going wrong yet.  I always thought to myself 'give it 5 years and the technology will exist to find out what's wrong'-- and in 5 years it did.  We are now embarking on our second IVF journey and have discovered a few things.  First, we know that my husband has a low motility rate.  Plenty of swimmers...they just don't travel.  You'd think the six IUI attempts we've done trying to get our second baby would have solved that problem, but no, it didn't.  

So we're back...contemplating a second round of IVF. Second, we've learned the hard way, that my body doesn't respond to the major IVF drugs as quickly as hoped initially for someone as young (love that:) as me, and that we only produced 6 viable eggs and only 1 embryo that fertilized (which is our daughter Miranda--3 years old in February).  The third thing we've learned in our IVF trials is that once you do get pregnant you are just as susceptible to problems as any other pregnant women.  I went into labor at 28 weeks and Miranda was born weighing only 2.5 pounds.  She was in the hospital due to prematurity for 2 months.  She is now a bouncy almost 3 year old and can talk in full sentences, run, jump and be sassy to her parents, so I think we (again) got lucky there.

It was a sobering lesson that all pregnant women--whether it took them 3 years to get pregnant or 3 days--can have problems and it's one we hope not to repeat.  We've also learned that you don't always have to follow the rules.  In our first IVF cycle (and so far only) we opted not to have the progesterone shot that needed to be administered in the buttocks every night and felt like peanut butter.  We decided to try the progesterone vaginal cream, and since we have baby #1 we think it worked well not to have to have those horrible shots.  It was sort of experimental at the time, but is hopefully (for all those sore buttock out there) more mainstream now.  I hope to be able to convince our Utah doctors of a new idea I've been brewing up (probably not the first they've heard of this, but definitely the first I've heard of it).  My idea is to put me on a high dose of Clomid and create the eggs that way instead of the nasty shots and blood draws that are 3/4 of the IVF pain, and THEN extract the eggs for fertilization.  Since we've learned that my eggs are not the problem, I think this an obvious solution.  We have a looming consultation in the next few months were I will be bringing this up for discussion, so that future is not yet decided. But we are actively moving forward to add more children into our family.

He Gave His Son

As Christmas time approaches us, this quote is a great reminder of what we should be thinking about this season. We need to make sure that we are grateful for the mercy that our Father in Heaven shows to us and has shown by giving of his son so that we all might live.

"The spirit of giving gifts has been present in the mind of each Christian as he or she commemorates the Christmas season. Our Heavenly Father gave to us His Son, Jesus Christ. That precious Son gave to us His life, the Atonement, and victory over the grave.

"What will you and I give for Christmas this year? Let us in our lives give to our Lord and Savior the gift of gratitude by living His teachings and following in His footsteps. It was said of Him that He 'went about doing good.' As we do likewise, the Christmas spirit will be ours." ~Thomas S. Monson, "What Is Christmas?" Ensign, Dec. 1998, 5

Tamara's Story Part 1

We were married for 7 years before we felt ready to start having children, but it would take us another three years before we'd succeed.  We've always been planners, so getting pregnant was no exception.  We went off the pill three months before we started officially trying, we toured hospitals, we even had a crib and some baby things.  Life, doesn't always work as planned however and about 6 months in to 'trying' with no baby we started to track my cycles and take ovulation tests etc.  We had some friends who had recently been through InVitro Fertilization, so we'd been through their struggles step-by-step (they are very open and generous with their info).  It was nice to have seen someone go through all the shots, the blood draws and then come out with a baby (actually bab-ies, twin boys).  It helped my husband Tyson and I come to terms, way before it was even necessary, with some of the more philosophical questions about IVF, such as:  Was it too scary?  Were we trying to play God?  Would it work?  What if we had multiples?

 One day, my friend doing IVF related a story about a man on an island who was praying to God and asking for deliverance.  A big boat stopped by the island and they asked him if he wanted a ride and he said "no thanks, I'm waiting for God to deliver me".  Well, maybe we are that man and IVF is God's deliverance.  Hasn't everything we know and have learned a gift from God to help us in our struggles?  I like to think YES!  If we have the means and know-how, we should use it.

So...with that in mind, we embarked on our journey.  

As most who are reading this blog either know firsthand or have probably intensively looked into the fact that IVF is very pricey and painful.  So, we weren't eager to start there.  We opted for trying things like Clomid, and then Clomid and Estrogen (just pills), and then we worked our way up to Artificial Insemination (IUI).  After trying three rounds of IUI, we decided to meet with the big fertility specialists in town--Shady Grove Fertility in Rockville Maryland.  They were very helpful and almost conveyor belt-esque with their efficiency and optimism.  I remember well, thinking how many of my friends had several children by my age and thinking I was fairly old to just be starting a family (I was 30).

In my culture in Utah --where I was primarily raised-- most women had a few little ones by 30, so it was so pleasant to hear at our first consultation just how young I was.  The doctor probably said 5 times...'well, we have plenty of time since you're so young' and 'since you're so young...'.  It was great!  They also were saying things like 60% chance of a baby, and 50% chance of twins.  These were odds I was willing to pay $10,000 dollars for.  And we did--we'll we would have. There are 7 or so states in the nation that have a mandatory policy that insurance must cover at least 50% of IVF (and in MD it was more).  We were so lucky (or guided?) to live in Maryland and ended up spending only $500 dollars to get pregnant.  Our first try with IVF was a success so we felt very lucky.

Feeling the love

Today I want you to know that you are loved! Don't ever forget that you are loved so much and that even when times seem tough that there are those out there that love you and think that you do an amazing job!

Keep your head held high and know you are a very loved indvidual!

A word from Allysa...

Our infertility story began in 2007. My husband and I were just finishing college, loving the married life and thinking about starting our family. We started trying to have a baby December of 2007. We finally found out we were pregnant in February of 2008. We were so excited, especially because it didn't take long. Two months later the most devastating thing, which has happened to our family, happened, I started bleeding. I called my doctor and was rushed in for an emergency ultrasound.

My baby had no heartbeat, and my body wasn't miscarrying on its own. I then had to go in for an emergency d&c surgery. I remember waking up from the surgery just bawling, thinking I had lost something and I couldn't control it whatsoever. Those next few months were devastating. No one could understand my pain, my husband couldn't understand why I was so lost, but it was because when I miscarried it was almost as if I lost a huge part of myself as well.

After the pain started to subside, we started trying again. After a few months I couldn't understand why I wasn't getting pregnant when it was so easy the first time. We started going back to my doctor. He felt that maybe my ovulation cycle was off. Sure enough, it was. He then started me on chlomid. I was on and off of that for a year and a half. In November they finally scheduled an HSG test to see of my tubes were clear. They found out that they were in fact clear. I felt horrible at that point that nothing was wrong. Not with me, not with my husband, it just wasn't happening.

That month I was so sad I didn't even bother taking my chlomid, it really messed with my emotions anyway. The beginning of December I finally got a big fat positive on a pregnancy test. In the middle of December I started bleeding again. I was so worried, all I could think was, it's happening again. I quickly went into the doctor for an ultrasound, where he broke the news that we hadn't lost a baby, but in fact we had gained one. We were pregnant with twins. In July 2011 they were born perfectly healthy. I couldn't be more grateful for my fertility journey. Although there was much heartache and many tears, it helped me understand how badly I wanted a child, and I believe helps me now appreciating that role in general because it is a special gift.

~ Allysa

Random thought

The other evening I was sitting snuggled on the couch with my hubby, the lights from the Christmas tree giving off a soft glow and with White Christmas playing on the TV, I couldn’t help but think about how blessed I am for all that I have. Even though we don’t have children yet, I know they will come and I cherish the moments like these because I know that when the kids come, we may not get moments like that as often.

Usually the holiday are a hard time for me, especially Christmas. I start getting everyone’s family Christmas cards in the mail and I get to see their cute perfect little families. I see parents with their children doing fun family actives and building traditions that will impact their children’s whole life. A lot of the Christmas movies are geared around families and many of them show the parents getting so much joy out of seeing their children get so excited about Christmas and opening their presents.  I think another thing that is hard is the fact that my birthday is around this time and every year I keep getting older and with every birthday it is another reminder that I am getting older and that another year without being able to become a mother.   

Although all of those things are difficult for me, it is times like that night that are a tender mercy for me. I know that the lord is aware of us and our needs as well as he is giving us the time to build our relationship and make it stronger. At this time of year it can be easy to focus on the things I don’t have instead of the things that I do have. I have a little family, granted we don’t have children, but that doesn’t make my family anything less. I have to remind myself that together we can enjoy the Christmas season and our time will come when we will get to celebrate Christmas with our children, we just have to trust in the plan that our father in heaven has for us.

Together

As we travel through this journey of infertility and through life in general the key is to remember that you are not alone. You have your hubby and you have your support network.

When the time comes and you find yourself at a cross road, always remember as you make your choice as to which path to follow, that if you make it while counseling with the lord and your spouse, the path you choose will be the best one for you and your family.  

Please don’t lose focus on what is important in life. Although having children is important, have a strong marital relationship is vital. As a couple you are in the battle of infertility, not one is alone and together you will make it through.

Roberts thoughts on adoption

The decision to begin with the adoption process wasn’t a simple one.  For me, it wasn’t probably as tough for me as it was for my wife; however, it still gave me the feeling that there may be a possibility that we won’t have our own biological child or children.  It’s not that it couldn’t happen, and it very well could, but my wife and I both felt that we should begin to look into adoption as an option over continuing with possible treatments and surgeries that would cost more than we could afford for now. 

Unfortunately, even ways of having children come down to a financial issue.  I think that we will eventually do other treatments to try to have a biological child, but I also always had it in my mind that we would probably adopt a kid or more throughout our lifetime.  Although we are still in the adoption process of waiting, I am excited to think that there are special children out there just waiting to become a part of our family. 

I know, all this is a little sappy which isn’t really my personality…but what the heck!  We’re talking about our family here so all is fair.

Now Is the Time

This quote is perfect as we prep for the coming of Christmas; it is time to take a look inside and really see our own capacity to love, serve and cherish others.

"Now, my brethren and sisters, the time has come for us to stand a little taller, to lift our eyes and stretch our minds to a greater comprehension and understanding of the grand millennial mission of this The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This is a season to be strong. It is a time to move forward without hesitation, knowing well the meaning, the breadth, and the importance of our mission. It is a time to do what is right regardless of the consequences that might follow. It is a time to be found keeping the commandments. It is a season to reach out with kindness and love to those in distress and to those who are wandering in darkness and pain. It is a time to be considerate and good, decent and courteous toward one another in all of our relationships. In other words, to become more Christlike."

Gordon B. Hinckley, "This Is the Work of the Master," Ensign, May 1995, 71

My Side of the Story

            We have gone through different trials during our marriage, especially regarding trying to have children.  One of the really hard times was when my wife was told by the doctor that she would need to have laparoscopic surgery. 
           When we found out that my wife had to have surgery, I was very protective of the fact that I didn’t want her to have the surgery because I didn’t want her hurt in any way.  For some reason, I was also preoccupied that this surgery would go awry and affect her in the more negative aspect, causing further fertility issues.  I think that most of my apprehensions came down to the fact that I don’t have much experience with surgery and the severity (or lack thereof) of it.  I also have always felt that my wife deserves whatever she wants, and for whatever reason I felt this surgery was a large risk that could hinder all our hard work in trying to have our own children.
               I was of course nervous during the surgery, but everything turned out great.  She had to have one of her tubes removed because it was three times the size of the other.  We knew this would lessen the chances of my wife getting pregnant, but I was relieved that she was feeling fine and that she would recover without any issues.  Although, maybe, the outcome was not what we had exactly hoped, it definitely is part of a grander scheme that I do not yet fully understand.