BFP: Why is it so hard?

I used to fantasize about having a surprise pregnancy. You know, just feeling off, or something. Not trying. Testing "just in case." I thought, maybe after we transfer all the embryos, that we could just let things be. Maybe we'd get surprised. I'd imagine the elation, the joy, imagine getting to come up with some creative way to tell Sam since he would have no idea it was coming.

The key to that statement was "after."  Then it happened before. The cycle I was waiting on to end so I could start back with the Reproductive Endocrinologist.... it didn't end. I had been careless for once in using our family planning, presumed upon on our history of infertility as justification, and rather than realize I was late with excitement, I put off testing with a sense of dread.

I would never have imagined that I didn't want to be pregnant. There I was, though, standing over a pregnancy test early in the morning 7 weeks after my last cycle, willing the blank space to stay blank. We all know it didn't. There was no denying this one.

So what did I do? I crawled back into bed with Sam, woke him up, told him we'd made a baby, and cried. I cried. The miracle of life, even more amazing to us than to 85% of the population at large, with the added blessing of it being a surprise, and I was inconsolable. I wanted Hannah's sibling to be there instead. I felt like I had abandoned the embryos. It was like that second line brought with it an enormous wave of guilt and I was drowning in it.

 So my husband took my hand, dried my tears, drew me out of bed and onto my knees, and began to thank God for the baby. He prayed for its health. He prayed for our fitness as parents. Most importantly to me at the time, he prayed for the safety of the remaining embryos as they would have to wait a while for their turn. And my heart began to change. I was able to thank God too, and start to value and love this baby who God had wanted to create. It was a very bittersweet moment, very bitter, and very sweet.

My heart still feels the blow. It was difficult to get people to understand that no, we didn't want to just send the other embryos back now that we could apparently "do it on our own." It was difficult to explain that we had emotions other than "thrilled," and that those emotions included shame and guilt. There are times I look at Hannah that I want desperately to have her full sibling in our arms, when it doesn't seem fair to her that her sister has such different features, that I don't have to tell the doctors about Ellie's "biological parents" like I do for Hannah. 

Maybe though, it's better this way, assuming that we will be able to bring home the other embryos in the future. Maybe it's better that a genetic child of ours isn't the last "special miracle baby" of our family, but simply one in the middle of a group.

I am reminded of Psalm 127, where it says that unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain, and unless the Lord guards the town, the watchman keeps awake for nothing. God is constructing our family- He gets the final say. He wanted Ellie here with us, and her presence has made me more open handed as I approach the throne of grace with our blueprints as we prepare to hope for another embryo sibling to come out of the freezer and home with us.

P.S. I thought if I scheduled it, it would publish when I scheduled it for, but it didn't, so I'm sorry this post didn't show up until Friday 5/23. I need to learn a lot of things about this blogging business. :-(

Musings on my Most out of Place Wedding Gift

I was going through old keepsake boxes the other day, and came across this card from my best friend and bridesmaid:

Yeah, it was funny at the time. As was the fact that somebody I didn't know had accidentally been invited to my out-of-state bridal shower, AND had accidentally gotten confused about what kind of shower it was, AND had missed the shower anyway, but sent the gift with my friend to my wedding, knowing full well by then that it had been a bridal shower. It was, of course, a baby quilt, with a matching pillow, hand-made, and the words "Children are a gift from the Lord, may your quiver be full of them" embroidered across the front. You know, one of those things a pushy Grandma-want-to-be-Great Grandma gives you for your wedding, only not by accident.

2 years, 1 miscarriage, and an infertility lifetime later, it wasn't so funny anymore. The card was thankfully forgotten in the bottom of a stack of memorabilia, but the blanket was in my closet, taunting me like a sick cosmic joke. I couldn't decide if it was something of a promise that we would eventually have children, a representation of an idolatrous desire of mine that I needed to get rid of, or simply a benign coincidence that just happened to strike the wrong bride. Whatever it was, I couldn't get rid of it, even when the thought of it sitting there collecting dust reminded me that I hadn't cried enough yet that month. I'm not one to look for signs, but I couldn't help thinking that God's hand was in this one, if only I had enough optimism to truly believe that receiving that painful gift was really meant to bring the comfort of believing that we would surely have a baby to sleep in its warm embrace someday. 

The truth is though that I never really believed that the blanket was a sign. I wanted to believe it, but I always knew that God could choose otherwise, blanket or no blanket. I mean, come on... God's not bound to arrange our lives according our interpretation of accidental gifts. Except that nothing is an accident to Him... which lead me back to wondering if it was supposed to mean something... and that endless cycle reminded me of a man... with power...

Carey Grant clip for the uninitiated:

Of course, eventually, I got pregnant with Hannah. The first time I felt her kick, I thought of the blanket, and the anonymous not-a-friend who had given it to me. I wanted to thank her, to tell her that her gift was finally going to be used, and that while I was angry at it for a long time, it had also given me hope, and now it was bringing me joy. It was the first thing I got out and put in the unfinished nursery. I planned the colors I wanted around the colors of that blanket (green and white). I still cried when I read the Psalm passage on the front, but this time they were happy tears. 

I tried to get the full name and address, but the friend who had thought that we knew each other and brought me the gift was no longer in contact with her. I wrote out a long thank-you note that never got mailed. I think, just maybe, that God wants all the credit for this one, and I hope that He gives my anonymous quilter a great big reward in Heaven. I am so grateful, and her gift has meant more to me through the years than I could ever tell her, even if I had an address to mail that thank-you card to.

Weekend fun with fireworks and Grandpa

We have had fun, fun, and more fun this week!

Wednesday, Hannah wore her outfit white-side-out (I made it reversible) for the 4th of July dinner:

Friday, she wore it blue-side-out for fireworks!

Sam an I decided we like the blue side the best, but they are both quite cute.

Grandpa came to visit, and helped with the fireworks and baby. Hannah is starting to get a little bit of stranger/ separation anxiety, and wasn't quite sure what to think of Grandpa, but she warmed up as the weekend went on!

Saturday was Mr. Myth's and my 5th anniversary! We drove to the "big city" where Grandpa drove around and watched the baby for an hour or so while we ate all by ourselves to celebrate. Hannah has never taken a bottle, and I haven't made any kind of effort to store extra milk for her, so this arrangement worked out perfectly. We found a local fine dining restaurant quite by accident, and then got a family picture before heading home. Haha, Hannah is so tired in this shot. She slept awesome that night! 

Sun, sand, and summer fun

Sam had his work holiday today instead of on the 4th, so we did all the fun summer things.

First, we broke the cardinal rule of parenting, and actually woke the baby up. I have a picture of her sleeping to prove it, and, incidentally... she is no longer swaddled for sleeping at all anymore!

Then, we schlepped her off to the beach, because she hasn't yet had the chance to wear her cool beach hat.

At first she wasn't sure what to think, or what was worth getting up early for.

Then, we got to the beach, with the sand, and the sun, and the breeze, and the cool pier to camp out under, and she loved it!

I LOVE the beach! Thank you for bringing me to the beach!

----------->









Then we got in the water. The following aptly summarize most of the water experience.

Not fun, not fun, not fun. >:(

I HATE the beach! Get me out of here!

Daddy, of course, being the magician with the camera that he is, caught her one moment of happiness on camera.









Then some nice tourists from Brazil/ Georgia (the state, not the country) offered to take a family shot (Yeah! I love family shots!):

At this point, we were in naptime territory, so we bailed and let her sleep in the car for the hour it took to get home. Except we didn't go home, we stopped at the park so that we could eat the picnic lunch we'd packed for the beach.

This was, incidentally, also Hannah's first time at the park, so we tried out the swings! That went muuuuuch better than the ocean. She loved her some swing time while Daddy set up the picnic. Notice the yellow watermelon that nicely matches her outfit. Totally unplanned, but it cuts down on stains! 

Yellow watermelon is delicious, by the way.










And, now she's asleep again. Tomorrow morning, I am NOT waking her up early! Fun things to look forward to in the next week: Grandpa (my dad) is coming to visit for the weekend! I finished a fun dress for the 4th, and it's reversible, so we'll get some good mileage out of it over the course of the actual 4th, the fireworks on the 6th, and church on Sunday.

This Saturday, Sam and I will have been married 5 years, and Grandpa is going to babysit for a couple of hours while we eat dinner together. I'm so excited!

The draw of EA

When Sam and I first sat down and bold-faced our looming infertility, we did what we usually do when making decisions together: we made a list. This list included all possible paths we could think of that we could go down, and it looked something like this:

Non-medical interventions to try to conceive:

• More vitamins, herbs, & diet changes.
• More charting
• Ummm..... cross our fingers, don't think about it, stand on my head, and/ or quit our jobs and start an illegal drug habit?

Medical things to try to conceive:

• Clomid
• IUI
• IVF
• I can't think of anything sarcastic to add to this list, but I'm sure there's something. Somebody give me some ideas!

Non-conception options:

• Foster-to-adopt
• Domestic infant adoption
• International adoption
• Embryo adoption
• Forget about kids and I can go back to school to become a nurse practitioner, which may in fact result in pregnancy if I manage to get us heavily into debt to do so.

Given all of those options, after I got done reading the list, Sam said he wanted to try EA first. I asked him why. I mean, I secretly agreed with him, but I wanted to know his reasons before I told him that. He said that he wanted me to have the chance to breast-feed, because he knew that was important to me, but that he really wanted to adopt too. The funny thing? He was right! 

There are a myriad of other reasons we wanted to do it, not the least of which being the sheer moral weight of the knowledge that we could be part of a solution to a problem few people knew about. I felt pulled, obligated to the little frozen babies as soon as I learned there were some that needed homes, and that I had arms that longed to be filled. We also knew that while older and medically needy children were waiting for placement too, we had no experience parenting yet, and didn't feel equipped yet (maybe in the future!) to address the needs of children who had had different caregivers before they came home with us. 

But I am not kidding, we picked EA so that I could have every opportunity to nurse the baby. Everyone has a reason for what they choose that goes beyond the standard "I saw a need that I wanted to fill." Mine was both the most self-centered and the most giving thing I can think of, but it still blows my mind a little that my husband knew what it was before I even voiced it myself. The rest of the list was never even touched- we found what we wanted and didn't ever have a reason to look back, for which I have absolutely no regrets.

Once Upon a Time

Sam and I met in high school, and were dating by our senior year. As proof, here is our senior prom picture: 

Haha, yeah..... awkward, but fun. I'm glad for high school for many reasons, not the least of which is because I met my husband. However, in reality, I have no idea how I even ended up with a boyfriend, much less a spouse (who was, unsurprisingly, my only boyfriend). Like it was for a lot of other people, high school was a very strange in-between time for me, and I'm glad I don't have to relive that phase of my life. And I definitely made that dress.



*Ahem* Moving on.

We dated through college, which for us was 700 miles and 4 states apart. It was a good time of growth and excitement, both for us individually and as a couple. It's amazing what nightly phone calls and no physical contact does for your communication skills! I studied nursing, Sam studied math education. We talked about everything, but mostly about the future. We wanted to get married right after college. We wanted to wait a year or so before having kids, but not wait too long! We wanted "several" children, the exact number indeterminate, but somewhere greater than 3. We wanted to take these theoretical children and move them to a foreign country as missionaries. We had great plans.

So, like a good girl, I waited for Sam to propose. And I waited. And I waited. Then I graduated, and I got a job, this time only 2 hours away from my hometown, where Sam was living and looking for a job. And then I started crying and asking questions.... turns out my dad had told Sam we couldn't get married until at least a year after college, when he was "settled," had a house, and roughly 40K in the bank as savings. He also told Sam not to tell me that they had talked.

Whose dad DOES that? (*Hint: Mine)

Apparently he never got the message that the whole dragon-guarding-the-maiden-in-the-tower-dad thing is supposed to be something of a myth. But that's ok, because I talked some sense into him, and made him grudgingly admit that since we could, in fact, get married if we darn well wanted to, it being the 21st century and all, that he would go ahead and give us permission. And for the record, both my dad and Sam were great about it from that point on.

And then Sam proposed!

This is my favorite engagement photo. It's also the only one I have where you can kind of see my ring. Amazingly enough, we managed to pay for our wedding and Italian honeymoon by ourselves, debt-free, without either of us owning a house or having 40K in the bank. That being said, we did have a pretty good savings account since we had both been blessed to get through 4 years of school debt-free, mostly via scholarships, and had each been working in our fields for a year by the time we got married. That was even after Sam bought me a very nice engagement ring.

I hope my dad is proud (and I know he is).



So, on July 7, 2007, on a Saturday clearly chosen for its numerical qualities by the Math Major in the relationship, we became Mr. & Mrs. Myth. It was, of course, a fairy-tale wedding, performed in our hometown, in the same stone church where Sam grew up, and where my parents were married. I remember being deliriously happy. Sam, of course, says the same thing, and I believe him, because I saw it all over his face.

I could share lots of pictures to demonstrate how happy we looked, but it would take a lot of space. Thankfully, my sister has already put together a slideshow of our wedding, which I will share instead. She did a very nice job, I think, plus the song's lyrics match the theme of this blog quite nicely.

The pictures did get grainy on the upload to YouTube though, so I will end with a nice still shot:

And we fully intended to live happily ever after, doing all the things we'd ever dreamed of!