Week in Review: August 25th-31st

I'm very excited to be starting my "Week In Review" posts.  I'm always saying that I want to be more intentional about taking photos and writing down memories of our everyday life, and I believe this is a good way to keep me accountable to those goals!

On Monday, Joseph and I met our friend Meredith, and her little boy, Isaac, for lunch at Rearn Thai.  We do this every few months and it is so much fun!  I totally meant to take pictures, but totally forgot.  Sweet Isaac is 10ish months old, and I had a ball holding the little guy.  He is precious!  Thanks, Meredith and Isaac, for making our Monday great!

On Tuesday morning, we had our friends Jessica and James over to our house for a play date.  James is 6ish weeks younger than Joseph and has always been one of Jojo's best buddies since they were teeny tiny babies.  These boys love to play together, and they just get funnier and funnier as they get older.  Jessica managed to capture a video of the hilarity.  We don't know what they found so funny about each other, but they were obviously having a good time!

Wednesday night, I gave myself my Ovidrel trigger shot to prepare my body for our 2nd IUI procedure on Friday.  I have no pictures of this, LOL, but I will say it is the easiest shot I can ever imagine.  I give it to myself each time in the stomach and I truly hardly even feel it.  So easy!

On Thursday, we started our homeschool preschool year with Joseph.  I am using a toddler curriculum and I think we are going to have a wonderful time!  In fact, I'm so excited about the next 16 years (or more, if we have more children) of homeschooling for our family...I know it will have it's challenges, but I also believe it will be an amazing journey!  The curriculum I'm using is very low-key, play-based, and can be done in about 30 minutes a day, which is really perfect for Joseph's 22 month old attention span...not too long, but not too short.  So far this week we have read some books, talked about some Scripture, built some towers with blocks, done some coloring, sang some songs, learned how to say "bear" in Spanish, and prayed together that God would give us guidance in our homeschool year.  We even talked about why God wants us to learn - for His glory!  I love how we have our homeschool area set up.  Since we are blessed with a large den, we've dedicated the entire back half to our homeschool room.  We converted the bar closet in that area to a homeschool closet where we can keep all of our supplies.  We have a desk, lots of toys, a bookcase, a whiteboard, and a bulletin board.  I'll try to remember to take a picture of the whole set-up next week.  Here are some pictures from our first day...

Here, we are building towers to learn which one is "tall" and which one is "taller."

Time for a little coloring, and Joseph is eager to get started!

Early Friday morning, we had our 2nd IUI procedure.  If this one fails, we have one more shot before we move on to exploring other options to further build our family.  We will know if I am pregnant within a few weeks.  I'm so thankful for a husband that takes off work for my IUIs in order to be with me and hold my hand as we go through our crazy infertility journey together.  I am very excited to see what God has in store!

Pre-IUI Selfie :-)

A little post-IUI rest before leaving the fertility clinic (this picture makes me laugh because it totally looks like I'm at the dentist office lol)

Sadly, David and Joseph both came down with cold Friday/Saturday.  This is only the 2nd time in his little life that Joseph has been sick, but he's handled it like a trooper.  I have no idea how I've avoided getting it from them.  Joseph looked like he felt so bad on Friday afternoon, and I was worn out after IUI, so I laid down with him for a little co-napping.  Joseph slept right up in my face, breathing on my constantly.  And of course, I've been smooching both of my sick guys.  But so far, so good for me.  Thank you, immune system (although I'd rather be sick than them).  Luckily, I think that today (Monday) they are both on the upswing as I am writing this (yesterday David was at his worst, but he is feeling a good bit better today).  I hope so.  We've really gotten into natural medicine over the past few years, and so for this cold we've used some natural remedies along with a few conventional ones.  The guys have been consuming coconut oil, using some peppermint essential oil to open their sinuses, David has been drinking homemade honey and lemon tea (with some ginger for immune support), and I rubbed Joseph down with a mix of coconut oil and peppermint oil to manage his slight fever on Friday.  Thankful for Western medicine, but also equally grateful for alternative medicine. :-)

Their illness didn't stop us from going to the Carolina-Liberty football game on Saturday, though!  Joseph took a morning nap and then we immediately headed to Chapel Hill.  The game wasn't until 6pm, but we wanted to get down there early to have most of the day in Chapel Hill.  Here is Joseph, sporting both Carolina AND Liberty attire, in order to remain neutral, right before we left home...

We got there and immediately ate a late lunch at Carolina Brewery.  One of our favorite places, so yummy, and a great place to go before a game...

After Carolina Brewery we went to University Mall to walk around A Southern Season, another one of our favorite traditions (it is a gourmet grocery and cooking store...sort of like a Fresh Market on steroids).  After that, we stopped by Walgreens to get some stuff.  While there, Joseph spotted a Carolina toy tractor-trailer truck that he was so excited about.  We couldn't help ourselves and bought it for him.  Here he is, outside of the Chapel Hill Walgreens, with his new prized possession.

We had a parking pass for this game in the School of Government parking deck.  I have to say, it surely beat parking on Rosemary Street and walking all the way across campus for the game like we usually do!

Joseph rode in David's camo Boba from the car to the stadium.  No strollers allowed in the stadium and so much easier than carrying him all that way in our arms.  Thanks, Boba!

We stopped at Tar Heel town before we went into the stadium.  I love Tar Heel town (although I admit I miss the days when I was at Carolina when it was on the quad - it was so much cooler and more shady there!  Still fun, though!).

The game itself was so much fun, but it was packed and it was, above all, HOT.  I'm pretty sure it was the hottest game I have EVER been to.  When Liberty was ahead in the 3rd quarter, we started to leave, and Joseph was past his bedtime and getting fussy.  So we watched the last two touchdown down in the mezzanine area of the stadium while Joseph walked around.  Here are some pics from the game itself...

If we look REALLY hot and sweaty in these selfies, it's because we were.

So there you have it, our week in review!  Looking forward to seeing what adventures this week brings!

August 2014 Highlands Trip

"How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!" -John Muir

We had a great time visiting David's family in Highlands this past Wednesday through Sunday!  School started back for David this past Monday, so this trip was a great way to wrap up our summer.  We had a ball!  We ate tons of good food (suggestion to anyone going to Highlands soon: I totally recommend the General Tso's Chicken at Asia House...it is delicious!!!) and got a ton of good visiting in!  :-) 

On Friday, we all went out on David's parents boat, which is kept at Lake Glenville (just slightly down the mountain from Highlands).  Joseph LOVED it!  His facial expression alternated between a huge smile and calmly mellow/relaxed the whole time.  It was a great way to spend an afternoon on a sunny mountain day at almost 4000 feet elevation!

Helping Poppy drive!

Backwards view with Mimi!

Coming up to the front to check things out.

On our way back up the mountain after the boat ride...someone was worn out from the fun!

Joseph had a great time playing with his cousins, Ryder, Ace, and Bennett.  The boys played so well together, and his older cousins (Ryder and Ace) were so sweet to bring Joseph toys and help him play!  They also let him take home a small school bus toy of theirs that Joseph had fallen in love with.  Sweet boys!  Here, we captured some precious moments of them eating cereal together one night after dinner (because who doesn't need a post-dinner cereal snack, right?)

Since Joseph's youngest cousin, Bennett, did not partake in the cereal snacking, I had to get a separate picture of him.  Preciousness!

Another thing that Joseph enjoyed in the mountains was sneaking into the master bathroom to play with the handles on the tub.  So funny!

We had such a wonderful time and are so grateful for a fabulous visit and relaxing vacation to wrap up the summer!  Now it's time to bring on fall!  One of my goals right now is to be more intentional with photo-taking, so starting next week I plan to do a "week in review" blog post each week with things our family has done that week.  I'm hoping this will keep me snapping photos more often!

Thanks for reading about these fun mountain memories at Mimi and Poppy's!!!

Honesty and Transparency: Going Public With Our Struggle

"There is a unique pain that comes from preparing a place in your heart for a child that never comes." -David Platt

I'm going to begin by saying that I got David's permission before writing this post.  In fact, he was all for it.  I didn't want anyone to think I'm that crazy wife who spills the couple's deep dark secrets without asking their partner.  Until now, this struggle of ours for the past 16 months has been something we have only shared with good friends and family.  But it's been on my heart more and more recently to share publicly, and I believe there is a twofold purpose behind that.  For one, we obviously covet the prayers of those in our life.  And for another, I cannot help but think there are those who are walking a similar journey to us but feel alone in it, like no one understands.  I want those people to know that there is someone that "gets" what they are going through.  So, here it goes...

We are infertile.  Again.

Some of you may remember that we struggled with primary infertility with Joseph due to my endometriosis.  I wrote about it when I was pregnant with him, after an 18 month quest to have him, in this post: http://onefleshonelove.blogspot.com/2012/06/our-journey-to-parenthood.html .  What we didn't know at that time was that, while endometriosis put a damper on our fertility while trying for our first child, it would all but destroy it when trying for more.

Because a) we knew my endometriosis WOULD regrow and b) that we ideally wanted a couple more children, if possible, we began trying to get pregnant with baby #2 when Joseph was 7 months old.  I truly didn't think my endo would be much of an issue this time around.  Joseph had been exclusively breastfed, and breastfeeding tends to slow the growth of endo in a woman.  And with only 7 months of growth opportunity post-pregnancy (my pregnancy with Joseph would have stalled the growth of the endo during those 9 months), I didn't see how we could have much of a problem this time.

What I didn't know then was that endometriosis has pretty much all but ruined our fertility.  I had no idea, as a teenager, that the same "little condition" that caused me to have pain each month would actually end up being a terrible disease that would make growing our family biologically very, very, very difficult.  Truthfully, I used to think that endo was a condition that some women just had to put up with, and other than some pretty significant physical discomfort and maybe a few extra months needed to get pregnant, it wasn't really a big deal.  I saw women who had struggled with it longer than I had talk about what a "terrible" and "life changing" disease it is.  Now, I agree.  It is a monster that can thoroughly alter your life either physically or emotionally.  And sadly, I'll have it forever.  There is no cure.  One day, when we are done having children, I can have a hysterectomy, but I've read of women having endometrial growth at other places inside their abdominal cavity EVEN after that.  It certainly won't ever affect my lifespan or anything crazy like that, but it will always be there.

So, we started trying to get pregnant with #2 in May of 2013.  Months went by, countless pregnancy tests with in the trash with a big fat "negative" on them.  In January, I was starting to get frustrated.  We had been trying 9 months and were only 3 months away from meeting the definition of "secondary infertility," meaning a couple was able to conceive the first time (of course, with us, we conceived Joseph 6 months AFTER being diagnosed with "primary infertility") but is seemingly unable to conceive subsequent children.  So in January, I made an appointment with my OB/GYN for another HSG, the same procedure I had when trying for Joseph.  The HSG showed my fallopian tubes were clear, but my doctor said he still believed the endo may be playing a major role in our trouble conceiving, as the inflammation it creates in the uterus is not a good environment for conception.  Because a) I really wanted us to get pregnant as soon as possible and b) I was having some symptoms that signified that my endo has regrown, David and I decided to have my doctor do another laparoscopy to remove any endo growth.  I blogged about that here.  http://onefleshonelove.blogspot.com/2014/02/laparoscopy-2014.html .  I was sure this would be the answer to our fertility struggles.  The next time I was able to take a pregnancy test I took one with almost assurance that it would be positive.  It wasn't.

Finally, a few months ago, I explained to my OB that, being 33 and ideally wanting at least a couple more children, we were ready to get aggressive about getting pregnant (I will add here as well that both during primary and secondary infertility David has been tested for anything that could be wrong on his end, and both times has come back totally normal).  He agreed with me and referred us to Premier Fertility Center in High Point.  Dr. Deaton, who runs the center, is a leading fertility expert in the area who performs all types of fertility interventions including IUI and IVF.

Upon my first meeting with Dr. Deaton, he reviewed my files and ordered some additional testing.  One was a blood test to check my AMH, which measures how many eggs a woman has left (not an actual number, more of a rough idea of whether or not her quantity is high or low).  I wasn't worried about this test.  I had the same test done by a different fertility specialist after we'd been trying for a year to have Joseph.  It came back totally normal at that time and I was told then I had many, many eggs remaining.  So again, I wasn't worried, because things couldn't change that quickly, right?

Wrong.  A few days later a nurse at the center called me with my test results.  The AMH results were not good.  Normal AMH in a fertile woman is between 1.5-4.0.  Mine was 0.66.  I had the egg reserve of a woman in her late 40s.  It is equal to a 48 year old woman trying to get pregnant.  How could this happen?  No one in my family had this problem.  I was shocked and devastated.  It wasn't until I started doing my own research AND talking further to the staff at the fertility clinic that I realized what happened.  No WONDER we weren't getting pregnant, as a reserve this low doesn't lend itself to fertility.  At all.

JUST before getting pregnant with Joseph (thus just before my first laparoscopy), the endometriosis in my body had caused me to get bilateral endometriomas.  An endometrioma is an endometrial tumor located on your ovary.  Bilateral means that you have an endometrioma on both ovaries.  What I never knew, until recently, is that endometriomas are a terrible, terrible, terrible thing for your ovarian/egg reserve.  The tumors themselves, if left where they are, continue to grow and destroy egg-containing tissue in your ovaries.  If removed (which is what happened during my surgery), the removal destroys egg-containing tissue.  Either way, you lose.  Basically, to make a long story short, the endometriomas literally ate my ovaries, or at least the parts of them that contain a lot of eggs.  I didn't even know that was possible, but literature points to a correlation between "bilateral endometriosis" and a "profound" negative affect on egg reserve and fertility.  And this reserve will only get worse with time.

Thanks endo.

Knowing this, it is a SHEER miracle that we got pregnant with Joseph.  I would never be one to say that Joseph is more of a miracle than any other child, because God's gift of life is an equal miracle for all who receive it.  But I do believe that, given the circumstances of Joseph's conception, and given the fact that we were literally within minutes of losing him during his delivery, his PRESENCE on this earth is an exceptional miracle.  I'm so grateful for him every single day.  I have always wanted a big family, and I do believe God may have more children in store for us, however that happens.  But at the same time, if that never happens, we have been given MORE than enough through our sweet boy.

I won't go into the emotional affects of this news about my AMH (not because I don't want to...I'm definitely an open book here, but because it would extend this post by 20 paragraphs - so maybe another time?), but I will tell you there is something profoundly disheartening about feeling like your body has failed.  Even with a super-supportive husband.  Even when you know that this disease is not your fault.  Even when you know you had no active role in it.  I cannot think of a more eloquent way to say it other than "It stinks." 

So, where are we now?  On Friday of this week, we will attempt our first IUI procedure.  If you would like to know more about what IUI is like, there are so many resources on the internet.  Basically, it is a way to bypass the inflammation from my endometriosis and hopefully get an egg fertilized.  This procedure doesn't have an entirely huge rate of success in any couple, but even less so in my case because we are working with a lot less eggs than the average woman.  But we know God can do anything!  We were supposed to do it for the first time last month, but my body, tricky as it is, grew an ovarian cyst which threw things off (not an endometrioma though, thank goodness).  I was on medicine for a month to get rid of it but thankfully it shrunk and I narrowly avoided surgery to have it removed.  I've been under ultrasound monitoring at the fertility clinic and yesterday we were given the go-ahead to proceed at the end of this week.  I know there is a small chance it will work, but I literally think I could jump out of my skin with excitement because there is A CHANCE (no matter how small) that I could be pregnant by the end of the week (of course we wouldn't know for a few weeks yet).  I don't have my hopes up, but knowing that we are being proactive and taking a step forward makes me so uplifted!

Tonight, I give myself a shot of a drug called Ovidrel in the stomach, which will force my body to release an egg in the next 36 hours (I have never ever been so excited to give myself a shot, because I know this could be a huge step in the right direction!), and then Friday morning David and I will go for the actual procedure.

At this point we know that a) it will be an amazing miracle if we conceive again (because the odds surely are stacked against us) and b) that our chances of ever having a third or fourth biological child are virtually nonexistent.  We have talked as a couple about other family building options, but we are still praying about those and I'm not certain we are quite ready to share our thoughts on those yet in a public forum.  IUI is not cheap and our insurance offers no assistance when it comes to infertility treatment.  So everything we are having done is coming out of our own pocket.  We can afford to do IUI for a few cycles, but not indefinitely.  We aren't sure that IVF would ever be for us for a number of reasons (a huge one being that my poor ovarian reserve doesn't lend itself to IVF success, AND the procedure averages $20-$30K).  Adoption is always an option as well.  We can't wait to see what the Lord has in store!

Pray for us as we go through this process, will you?  Pray that we will have hope and peace, and that God's will will be done, for we know that His plans are far better than our wildest dreams.  Thank you to all of those people in our life who are willing to walk beside us on this journey!