New Blogsite

Hey all,

It is bad enough that I feel guilty for feelings I sometimes experience on this rocky infertility road, but it's even worse when people can pass judgement on you when they've never even been in that situation, and when they don't even talk to you or ask questions to try to understand those feelings you have. People talk to others about your feelings, judge you based on your innermost private feelings, and you don't even have a clue that they are doing so or have a chance to defend yourself. People who really know me know that I'm a pretty open book, pretty honest, sometimes to a fault. If you ask me a question about something I'm going through I'll tell you, just like if you have a problem with something I say on my blog or don't understand why I said something, talk to ME. I'll respect you more for it, and I'd appreciate some respect in return.

I know who some of my followers are, but I don't know who all of you are. I emailed those that I could contact via email and let them know that I began another blog, simply for more privacy where my feelings are concerned. I provided the address of the site to them, and I do not have it listed on my profile. If you want to continue to follow my blog where more private matters are concerned, please email me at sweetrn621@msn.com for the blog address. Please tell me how you found my blog or know me. I know many people started following my blog during our adoption process. Adoption is not off the table completely, but is currently on the back burner due to another opportunity for IVF to be mostly covered by our insurance (a huge financial difference when compared with the costs of adoption). If it fails, we will at some point proceed with adoption. This blogsite will continue to have random things posted, but not most of the deeply personal things we are going through.

Thanks for your understanding and I hope to see you on my other blog!

Looking to the New Year

I have had some time to think about this year and the new one quickly approaching. This past year had some great times, but it was also a hard year.

This year, we started out optimistic that we would get pregnant again when we did our second IVF cycle. As we all know, that didn't happen, and it was devastating at the time. We had new hope with the prospect of adoption, but trying to scrape together $20K by saving when you're already tight proved to be impossible. Fundraising wasn't easy, and while we probably would have kept trying to hold more, we really felt that saving money to have them, and then essentially gambling that money away hoping that a fundraiser would be successful was just not something we could afford to continue. That was really hard to deal with as well. My grandfather hasn't been well for a while now, and my grandmother on the other side of my family landed herself in a nursing home after a stroke. None of these have been easy things to deal with.

We have been lucky enough to be able to really enjoy our son this year. He makes everyday one that I look forward to, if for nothing more than his hugs and kisses, and to see what new phrase he'll have that day. Usually we have lots of laughs with him (unfortunately today was one of those days with a 3 year old where it was lots of frustration instead!!!). We've been able to go to his preschool parties for the different celebrations, go on field trips, see his class sing at church, and watch them put on their Christmas program. All of these things were very special moments for us, and we made a lot of great memories.

My cousin who lost her son last year, is pregnant with his little sister this year, and is due next year! Both she and the baby seem to be in great health, and we're so excited to meet the new little one. We also had a few friends who had new babies this year, and a friend who has had a hard time with losses is pregnant again, and thankfully everything seems to be going as it should at this point. We're hopeful that Eliana arrives in March healthy as can be, and that our friend who is pregnant again brings home a healthy child next year as well.

We are going on a cruise with my mom and sister in mid-January, and that may very well be our vacation of the year. Usually we go to the Outer Banks, NC in the summer, but with needing house repairs, and then money for either another IVF treatment or to put towards adoption, it is more likely that we will go camping in the summer or fall instead, unless some of our friends and their kids want to go in on a rental at the beach with us. Anyway, Jack is very excited about the "big cruise ship!!!" that we'll be going on, and we are all looking forward to making fun memories with him in the carribbean. After that none of us know what will happen.

I am a planner and I always feel like I need to have a plan. At the moment, the plan is to wait and see what our taxes look like, get our roof repaired, perhaps set some money aside for any other emergencies that may creep up (all of our appliances like our heat pump are as old as the house and we're on borrowed time!), and then see where that takes us. I will be doing my urine test for my urologist so we can discuss whether it would be safe for me to go off of my medication and try IVF again, and if so, I'll be making an appointment to see Dr. M. If not, we'll just keep living life as best we can, taking things as they come along.

My prayer for the new year is for my family and friends to be healthy, happy and loved. I could say that I pray for another child, but so does everyone else with IF. Sure, I want another child, but I also want to do what's best for my family as it is now. I want to not take my family for granted, and to make many fun memories for our son. I also pray for more of my sweet boy to show through than the devilish one that has taken over his little body for the last week or so!!! Ha, in all seriousness, I pray we figure out how to better manage the normal 3 year old moodiness.

God bless, and I wish you all a happy and safe new year!!!

December ICLW

Happy ICLW to others in the blog world who are stopping by. I did a nice little intro to us last month which you can see here.

Not much has gone on in this past month. No decisions have been made, although we did receive our paperwork (which we did not request-I feel bad for others who received it and all it did for sure served as a bitter reminder of IF) for the fertility clinic our fertility doc is now joining. We would have requested it eventually if my urologist decided it wouldn't be too risky for us to try it again, but I guess we were saved the trouble of calling to request it.

We celebrated Jack's 3rd birthday and I did some reflective posts about that time in my life 3 years ago while we were awaiting his arrival.

I have testing to do for my urologist and endocrinologist, and then perhaps I will have more to write about, and perhaps at that time we will have made a decision on doing one last IVF cycle vs. domestic adoption or as I've been considering lately, just living life with the one child we have, and thanking God for the best blessing.

Happy December ICLW!

Happy November ICLW!!!

Well, I'll post this a few hours early because I'm bored at work at the moment and have nothing else better to do...

Some of you may have come across my blog previously. You'll know that there have been some changes if you were here last month. For those of you not up on who I am, I'll tell you.

My husband is 33, and I am 29. We had our first son after our first IVF/ICSI cycle for MFI (male factor infertility), endometriosis, and one patent tube. We are very blessed. After an unsuccessful attempt earlier this year which went horribly wrong (see this backpost), we began to consider domestic adoption. We had a fundraiser in June, and another in September using the money raised in June's fundraiser. It was a disaster financially and we lost just about everything we'd invested (see this post). We are still up in the air about adoption vs. another IVF cycle. We did get some news which changes things somewhat financially (see these posts here and here). This means that another IVF cycle for us may be $15,000 cheaper than adoption at this point, and to be honest, if it didn't work, we'd be done. We'd agree to be blessed for what God has given us thus far, the beautiful child we have who is almost 3 years old, and more than we ever dreamed he would be. So it's still a huge decision, there are multiple physicians to consult, and then a big decision to make. We continue to struggle with this.

What we do know is that we are lucky to have a child at all, would be doubly blessed to have another, and neither of our options will be easy. I'd love to have more followers, and everytime I do ICLW, I find at least a few more blogs to follow. Please feel free to join us on our journey.

Happy ICLW!!!

Trying to Work It Out

First I want to say thank you for everyone's kind and supportive comments and emails. I am still a mess. I really can't see doing another bingo fundraiser. We'd have to do the overtime to get the money together to even have it, and it's just too much of a risk to possibly lose almost every last dime again. If yesterday's fundraiser had been successful, I might feel differently. Ok, I WOULD feel differently and already be planning the next one!

That said, I've done some thinking. If we were to just work and save up the $18,000 on our own, it would take us probably 2 years. Who knows how long after that it would take to get a placement. Needless to say, we won't be applying with Catholic Charities in January. Why apply if we won't be close to having the money needed yet. We don't want to be matched if we can't act on it. We also don't want to be adopting when Jack is 7 years old either. Which leads to my next flight of ideas...

As I was running around this morning, and trying to take a nap this afternoon, I seriously questioned what we were thinking when we made this decision. We were weighing whether or not to do another IVF cycle (which wasn't a guarantee we'd get pregnant again) and come up with the $10,000 needed to cover what our insurance would not, or come up with the $18,000 for an adoption which would eventually give us another child for sure. We wanted the sure thing. Well, let me tell you what we know for sure. God blessed us with a sweet and lovable little boy almost 3 years ago. We love him to pieces and can't imagine life without him. And then I started thinking...and realized thinking is where all of my problems start.

So I was doing some math in my head. If I had two days of overtime on every paycheck, then we would be able to raise $10K in about 8 months. IF I did one day of overtime each week, and never had a week where I just worked my normal shifts, that is how long it would take me, and that is IF I could get the shifts. It would take us probably a year if I didn't. You can figure out how long it would take for the $18K which by the time we came up with that, adoption will cost even more. As we're getting ready for dinner, I said to Archie, "So, just hypothetically speaking, what would you say if I asked you about going the less expensive route and saving up the $10K we would need to do another IVF cycle, and if it fails again, then we're done and we agree to find a place where we are ok with just having one child, and where we are ok with Jack being an only child and not having any siblings?" I asked this fully expecting to get this "are you kidding me?" type of look from him. The answer that I got was something like this, "I'm cool with that as long as Dr. M is willing to do the protocol we did when we had the successful cycle and not the one that we did this last time." I think I might have stood there dumbfounded for a minute. No argument about whether I needed my head checked? No questioning my thought process? That was easy.

So, am I saying that we're nixing the adoption idea and going back to the IVF one? Not at all. There is a lot more to consider than just what Dr. M has to say about it. I need to have a talk with my endocrinologist about my thyroid issues, and then with my urologist about my cystinuria and stopping the meds that I am on to manage it (they have a very high incidence of birth defects). None of that matters at this point because we don't have the money and our overtime at this point is replacing our roof. But it is something to discuss next year after we get back our taxes and think about making a plan again that does not include fundraising. I guess at that point we'll have to meet with my physicians and discuss if it is even advisable given some of my medical issues, and then what their recommendations would be. That may decide everything for us.

In the meantime while we are in a holding pattern, I'll continue to post here anything interesting that comes up, or thoughts I have about either of these topics. And I said I'd use this blog to post about our family as well, so I will continue to do that. I hope that my followers do continue to follow whether you're from IF-land or adoption world, as I plan to continue to follow you guys as well.

And thanks again for your support.

My Family Update

Ok, so I have to say that yes, our adoption is a huge thing for us right now, and this blog is obviously titled to reflect that. However, people who do not know us personally don't know much about us as a family, and my family is pretty darn important to me. So, in addition to blogging about our fundraising, status with our open adoption and trials and tribulations associated with that, I want to write about what is going on in our lives.

So, a brief update. If you want more of the back story with how in the world we got here, please read this post. Jack is doing great. He is now completely potty trained, we're only using pull-ups at night, and that is really just to use them up. My mom had said before we left for vacation that he was still occassionally having a wet pull up in the morning, but that hasn't happened for us in quite a while. This past week he started going to school 3 times a week instead of the normal 2. He likes school so much that sometimes on our way home from work in the morning, when I would pass the exit for his Gemma's house and his school, he would say, "Jack don't got to school today?" I would say, "No buddy, it's not your day." To which he would respond with tears and whining. I thought that hanging out with me all day was pretty cool, but evidently even at almost 3 friends are way cooler. Pity party for me! I guess I should be ecstatic that when I go to pick him up from school, he's all about seeing me and leaving right then to go home and play with me instead of his school friends. The fact that "Mommy, Daddy, Gemma, and Aunt Holly" are all his best friends is all pretty awesome. So I guess as much as it pains me to sit around wondering if he's having fun, paying attention and listening to his teachers, and missing him to bits, it really is healthy for him, and I'm just glad that he enjoys going there.

His school is a small Christian preschool, and he really looks forward to seeing his friends and teachers. He learns so much, and it never ceases to amaze me how much he knows and how smart he is. He's so social, intuitive, and caring, especially about whether people are happy or sad. Shoot, I get teary just sitting here thinking about how special our little miracle is. Archie and I just look at him doing something funny, cute or sweet, and we look at each other and immediately we know what the other is thinking..."Thank you God, we love this boy so much." We're not extremely religious which you will see if you look back at some previous posts, but we do believe in God, we do believe that He is the reason we have Jack, and we believe that He is the way to our next child. For some reason, which only He knows, it wasn't meant to be as easy for us to conceive as it is for others. We don't take any of it for granted. We love every moment that we have with Jack, and when we say our prayers at night with Jack, we pray that God helps us to stay healthy, and helps to lead us to the child meant to be placed with our family, and that whatever child comes to us will grow up to know love, their story, and their first family.