Each month I charted, I woke up, careful not to move or open my mouth too wide, before sticking a basal body thermometer in my mouth to check my morning temps. I stood on my head (okay, maybe once). I took the right vitamins, Jason took the right vitamins, I changed my diet, I prayed, I cried, often sobbed. I wrote in a journal, I begged, no pleaded with God to please send us a child.
I guess this post could easily be about how I came to be saved. I had always been a Christian. I believed in Christ. I knew there was a God and I was happy with that. But, it was the infertility that BROUGHT me TO Him. A rebirth, if you will. And one day, my eyes just OPENED. I asked for Christ to come into my heart and SAVE me. And save me, He did. From that day on, my life has absolutely brightened. It didn't matter if I became pregnant. It didn't matter how much I longed for the things that seemed so unobtainable. Because the change in me was SO great, I was at peace. I then began to see the blessings. We had a child, we had a home, we had a blessed lifestyle. I had never suffered a miscarriage, as I knew so many women who had and had repeatedly. There are even cases of something referred to as a blighted ovum, when you simply conceive an empty sac. Or, a tubal pregnancy. There is a world of infertility that many do not even know about and SO VERY MANY suffer. It was hard in my human nature, but I eventually surrendered and left it all up to Him. I was grateful.
After a few months of praying, I felt an urge to see a reproductive specialist. I dragged Jason reluctantly to do a lot of blood work. My poor husband who is 110% ALL man, almost fainted on the table when they took his blood. I will never forget that. Now, when I say blood work, I mean BLOOD work. They took my blood every single day. I was monitored very closely.
When you're going through treatment, the nurses usually are the ones who give you the call to let you know whether or not you were pregnant, after initial blood work. And it's so hard for me not to call everything by it's name in my mind, because as many of my friends who have gone through this understand, we have special names, or abbreviations for words. For example: TTC stands for Trying To Conceive. BW stands for blood work. We certainly developed our own language. I'm sure if any of you, and you know who you are, are reading this, you are probably laughing right now. I know I am. Okay. So the nurses call you, but seeing as after 2 1/2 years of getting BFN's (Big Fat Negatives), or negative pregnancy tests, I just couldn't stand to wait. I tested from 9 DPO (Days Past Ovulation) and on. On 9 DPO (I am still cracking up), I could have sworn I saw a faint pink line, something that is easily mistakable for a gray line, which means a false positive result. I could honestly be a fertility specialist by now. I even administered my own meds via syringes. That part actually wasn't as bad as I thought. Until of course, the HUGE, progesterone oil syringe came along. Once you were pregnant, you had to have 10 days worth of those, right on the bottom. YEP. Good times! I had to leave that part up to Jason to do. I felt like his cattle, when he administered their antibiotics!
I'm totally going off topic here. ANYWAY! So when I got the call around 12 DPO, it was to let me know that we were indeed PREGNANT. And, from studying online on just about everything to do with treatments, I learned about NUMBERS and how high they should be. When the nurse gave me my numbers, we both kinda laughed that mine were doubling a little high per day. Of course, this is a usual indication that you are expecting MULTIPLES. There was no way of knowing until the initial U/S (ultrasound), which was still a couple weeks away. You can imagine how freaked we were.
When the time came for the U/S (are you having fun yet learning my linguo??) we went in just like any pregnant woman would. I was still under my repro's care. I warned him before we had even begun that I would probably have twins. He said, NAH. So when he began and there were TWO black spots hanging out in my uterus, the room grew silent. I blurted out, "That's TWO!" I wish I had a picture of Jason's face. I thought he would faint. I don't believe he said a word after that.
After your initial U/S, you return in another couple weeks for another. Our repro explained that sometimes one of the embryos wouldn't survive and would ultimately disappear, so not to be surprised should this happen. I was worried. That little embryo, or Baby B as we called him, would be Landon. I can't imagine life without Landon now! So when we returned, we heard two strong heartbeats.
And there you have The Miracle of Infertility Treatments in our lives.
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