A Rather Long Update

I guess it's time to finally update this thing called a blog...








We're expecting! I'm 24 weeks, and I am in complete awe over this pregnancy. This pregnancy, from human estimation, wasn't supposed to happen. I'll explain that in a bit. We're pretty sure that we're having a boy, and we're thrilled and so thankful that he appears to be healthy! I wish there was a better word for thankful because what I feel is so much stronger than "thankful." When I think about that fact that we actually got pregnant, I'm amazed. When I think about that fact that I've made it this far, that I'm already over half way to full term, it takes my breath away. For a very long time, I doubted that I'd ever be this pregnant. And when I feel this sweet, little miracle move inside of me, my heart feels like it's going to explode with love and gratefulness. I already love this baby more than I can put into words, more than I can even comprehend. I marvel everyday over the miracle that we're experiencing. Because no matter how you look at it, this baby is a miracle. Not to downplay the miracle that any child is, but this baby is a special kind of miracle. Like I said before, this baby wasn't supposed to happen, at least humanly speaking. We were told a little over a year ago by our fertility doctor that we had a 1-2% chance of ever getting pregnant on our own. Let me see if I can put that into perspective...Statistically speaking, most young, healthy couples have a 85-90% chance of getting pregnant within a year of trying. That's one year...85-90%. Those are really good odds, and the majority of couples achieve pregnancy within 3-6 months of trying. We were told that we had a 1-2% chance of ever getting pregnant. Not in a year, but ever. We decided to give fertility treatments a try, which according to the doctor might bump our chances of conceiving to 4-10%. Better, but still not great. We did 7 months of fertility treatments, and at some point during the 7th month we talked about stopping and giving ourselves a break. At that point, we were getting ready to move, and our "new" house needed (and still needs) a good amount of work. Fertility treatments play with your hormones. That's how that do what they do. They do crazy, mean things to your hormones and send them all out of whack. Out-of-whack hormones do crazy, mean things to your emotions, which in turn play with your mind. It's a roller coaster. So after 7 months, we decided to get off that roller coaster for a while, give ourselves a break from trying to get pregnant, and focus on the house. We started praying that God would clearly direct us towards our next step. Our fertility doctor was pushing IVF and told us that it would be our best, and possibly only, chance of conceiving. We weren't quite at peace with going that direction, so we prayed that whatever door we were supposed to walk through would be clearly and obviously open and that we would have total peace when we walked through that door. I got pregnant the next month. Talk about clear and obvious! Getting pregnant was the first hurdle. Staying pregnant was the next. Because of my past miscarriages, I am at a much higher risk of miscarrying again, so my doctor started me on progesterone supplementation right away. Progesterone is the hormone that sustains a pregnancy, and if a woman's body doesn't make enough of it, she can't carry the pregnancy. So, my doctor wanted me to take the progesterone until I was through the first trimester. Thankfully, my body responded really well to it, and here we are! 24 weeks. 16 weeks to go, give or take a couple weeks. Crazy! I love being pregnant. I love my cute baby bump...which, by the way, took forever to show up. I was beginning to think I'd never get one! I love feeling this baby move, and I love the look on Craig's face when he is able to feel him move. To date, it's the most amazing thing I've ever experienced. I can't wait until he's here, and I pray every day that he arrives safely and is healthy. I also pray that we will love and teach him well. I can't wait to be a mom, and I'm so thankful for this truly amazing, truly miraculous gift. I feel so blessed. So beyond blessed.

Real

***I struggled for quite a while with whether or not I should post this. It's not the most positive of posts, nor is it uplifting or inspiring. I wrote it on the spur of the moment, so it's not even well written or well thought out. It's a small glimpse of a bad day and what I was feeling and thinking in the moment. I almost decided to keep it private. I almost deleted it. I mean, what if I post this and people think less of me? What if they read this and think I'm acting ungrateful or selfish or being a jerk? But then I thought of the fact that so much of the blogger world is full of people keeping up perfect appearances. So many blogs that I come across are all sunshine and rainbows. There's no reality. So I decided to be real, to share this raw part of myself. It's unedited. It's real. If you don't want to read it, that's okay.***


I'm tired of this infertility thing. Really tired. Exhausted even. I don't even know if I can accurately put into words how tired I am of all this. I'm tired of seeing pregnant women. I ache every time I see one. I'm tired of finding out that someone else is pregnant. I'm tired of seeing happy couples with teeny, tiny newborns. I ache at their happiness. Would I wish for that happiness to be taken away from them? Definitely not. But I yearn for that happiness for us. My heart hurts every time I see a dad and a daughter. I hurt for Craig because I know that's what he wants. He wants a baby girl, and he would be so good at being a dad to a girl. He'd be an awesome dad to any child. I'm tired of thinking about getting pregnant. I'm tired of charting, tired of wondering and hoping, tired of being disappointed month after month. I'm really tired of the disappointment. I feel like we're working so hard for this, harder than a lot of people have to work to have a child, and every month we both get hopeful. You would think after all this time we wouldn't, but we do. I've asked myself so many times lately, "Why us? Why do we have to be that couple, the couple who can't have a baby?" "Why them? Why is it that they are able to so easily conceive, without really trying it seems?" None of it makes sense. I'm trying to trust, trying to give this desire to God, trying to let Him use this to transform me and make me more usable for Him. Some days the waiting is almost more than I can handle. Some days my patience wears thin. Maybe that's part of what God is teaching me through all of this, to wait for Him and His timing even when it's really difficult. Right now, though, I'm tired of putting on a happy face. I'm tired of trying to be happy for someone when I find out she's pregnant, when what I really feel is sadness, ache, and even jealousy. I'm tired of people telling me to "not think about it." That's the worst advice ever for someone in my shoes. Period. It's stupid, too. There's no way to stop thinking about this. I've tried. I've tried everything I know to not think about it. Nothing works. It's a part of me. I'm tired of people saying, "Your time will come." It's not helpful. What if it doesn't? What if we're going through all of this just to find out that we can't have a baby, that we'll never be parents? I feel like we might have a lot of decisions to make in the next few months. Hard decisions. Decisions like how long do we continue fertility treatments? When do we consider IUI? If that doesn't work, do we consider IVF? Are those routes even biblical? What about adoption? How do we know when to hang it all up and just be us? My brain hurts from thinking about it all. My heart hurts, too.

A Request

First off, I'd just like to acknowledge the fact that I'm horrible at this blogging thing. When I started blogging, I had really good intentions of posting regularly, and I honestly thought that I'd be good at it. Like, Pioneer Woman good. However, I don't live on a ranch, and I don't know how to herd cattle. I don't have millions of dollars at my disposal, and I can't give away mixers or cameras or gift cards. And I certainly don't take a bazillion pictures when I cook. I just cook, slap the food on a plate, and eat. My life actually looks a lot like this blog. Boring. Uneventful at the moment. Simple. And I'm fine with that. Thankful, even. If anything, blogging has just confirmed what I already knew about myself: I am a private person. It feels awkward for me to post things about myself and our lives in a forum that is so public and easily accessible. Maybe it's too vulnerable for me. I set out to make this blog a sort of journal of our infertility journey. But that journey has been entirely too raw, too difficult at times, too scary, and too private to post the details.

All of that to say, we would love prayer from people out in blogger land. Lots of prayer. We just began a round of fertility treatments. We're on day 3, and we have a long way to go. I'm feeling a whole range of emotions. Scared. Impatient. Excited. You name it. We're starting with this option because it's one of the less aggressive options, as well as a more affordable option (fertility treatments are insanely expensive). Plus, at our age it makes the most sense for us to begin here. We'll go this route for the next few months, and if it doesn't work ("work"= me pregnant), we'll go to the next option. Would you please pray with us and for us that this will work? That these treatments will be successful. That we will conceive a healthy baby and that I will be able to carry to term. That we will be able to afford all of this. That we won't have to even consider "plan B." And, most importantly, that we (mainly I) would give this entire thing to God and trust that His plan is the absolute best. Also, pray for minimal side effects. We would appreciate it more than you know.

Celebrate

Today I get to celebrate the strongest, bravest, most selfless, most amazing person I know. I'm incredibly thankful to be able to celebrate. I'm also thankful to call someone like her my mom, and I'm looking forward to making her day special.

I love this picture of my sister and me with our mom. This was taken at a cousin's wedding this past August. My mom was smack in the middle of chemo and feeling completely horrible, but you never would have known it. She smiled and laughed and tried to enjoy the day as much as she could. She's so much like her mom in that regard. Plus, look how adorable she is! Have you ever seen someone look that great while on chemo?! That's my mom!

Happy Mother's Day, Momma! I love you.

These...

...are AMAZING!!! No more Reese's Cups for me...these are so much better! These tiny little bites of heaven came from Trader Joe's, which is my new favorite place. I'm not sure how I ever lived without it.

Snowed In!

We woke on Monday morning to snow, lots of snow. Well, "lots" by our standards since we get snow once, maybe twice, a year (sometimes none at all), and when it does snow, we're lucky if we get an inch. Monday afternoon a "wintery mix" moved in, and it started to sleet and rain. The temperature was still really low, and that 7 inches of snow became encased in a layer of ice. That meant that everything around here pretty much shut down. Luckily, I had bought a bunch of fabric at Hobby Lobby over the weekend, so I didn't mind one bit that we were snowed in. Here are a couple projects that I've been able to complete:



I bake a lot, and I was tired of my dish towels falling of the handle of the oven every time I opened the oven door. So, I fixed the problem. I came up with this idea. It's not a new idea (it's a variation of those crocheted ones that were popular back in maybe the 70's or 80's), but I love the look of the fabric ties in place of the crocheted ones.


I didn't take pictures while I was sewing these because I didn't know how they would turn out. But basically what I did was made a sash and attached it to the dish towel. It was really easy. If you can sew in a semi-straight line, you can do this.


I've had the idea for this pillow for several months but never completed it. I figured it was time to finish it.


It all started with this pillow that came from Hobby Lobby. I really don't know what possessed me to look at pillows, especially ones with the letter "Y" embroidered on them. Our last name doesn't start with "Y," nor does it contain that letter at all, but for some reason I picked it up anyway. I don't know if you can see that little yellow price tag, but it says $2.50! This pillow was originally $30 (am I the only one that thinks that's an absolutely insane price to pay for a pillow?), and the "Y's" were the only ones marked down. All the others were still $30. I knew I could do something to cover up that "Y" and make a really cute pillow, so I threw it in the cart. Okay, so I threw 2 in the cart. I'm just being honest. I had a few ideas in mind, so I headed for the fabric section. After looking (and looking and looking and oooing and aaaahing and drooling a little) at all the fabric, I decided that I would make some flowers like these to attach to the pillow.


I picked up this fabric. To make the flowers, you need some type of thin, satiny fabric. I chose a poly-satin, and I bought 1/8 yard in each color, a chocolate brown and a buttery yellow.


When I got home, I cut a bunch of different-sized circles (as many as I could get out of the fabric). They don't have to be perfect. They actually look better if they start out a little bit irregular (not too irregular; they should still resemble a circle).



Then I used the flame of a candle (you could also use a lighter) to burn all the way around each circle. The flame will basically begin to melt the fabric and cause it to sort of scrunch up a bit (Just don't hold one spot over the flame for too long, or it will start to melt like crazy and drip liquid poly-satin everywhere. Don't ask me how I know this.), and you'll have something like this...


I began to stack the pieces, starting with a large circle and gradually stacking smaller ones. You can make these as large or small as you want. I decided to use alternating colors for this project, but I also love the look of using only one color. Then I sewed the pieces together with just a few small stitches. The stitches don't have to be perfect. They'll be covered up.



I then sewed different-sized black beads to the center of each flower and tacked each flower onto the pillow. I love the way the pillow looks on our guest bed. It matches perfectly, although I didn't originally intend for it to. It just sort of worked out that way. I love it when that happens!

Miscarriage Awareness Month

Unless you live under a rock, you're probably aware that it's Breast Cancer Awareness month. Those little pink ribbons are everywhere, so I'm not sure how anyone could miss it. My mom is currently undergoing treatments for breast cancer, so I am immensely thankful for all the awareness and support that is going on right now. A few weekends ago my family (including my mom) and I participated in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. It was a truly awesome experience, one I'll never, ever forget. We all said that we hoped to participate again next year. I hope that it turns into an annual tradition for us. All that being said, I read today that October is also Miscarriage Awareness Month, and October 15 is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. I never knew there was such a thing. Miscarriage isn't something that's openly discussed, at least not in my experience. For many women, there's a lot of shame regarding miscarriage. It's also a very painful subject. And it's a subject that only a limited number of people understand. I was so glad to find out that there's a group of women trying to raise awareness for miscarriage and infant loss, no matter how small that amount of awareness is right now. Breast Cancer Awareness is huge now, but at its inception it was small and relatively unknown. I hope that one day Miscarriage Awareness will be just as widely known. I'm not at all comparing miscarriage and breast cancer. They are both traumatic and terrible in their own ways, but they're different. I would never compare my miscarriages to what my mom is going through with breast cancer. Never. But every woman who has experienced or will one day experience a miscarriage (or multiple miscarriages) needs other people to be aware of how often miscarriage occurs, that it's an excruciatingly painful experience, that it needs to be dealt with as sensitively and lovingly as any other loss, and that she is a mom, too. For more information visit The Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day website, and spread the word.