National Infertility Awareness Week 2017

Time heals all wounds, right?

Wrong.

Wounds might be easier to deal with. The pain slightly easier to bear.

But they are never truly healed.

Some days it just hits you and today was one of those days.

Our fertility struggle started more than 5 years ago. Our loss 1202 days ago. I’ve had two beautiful, healthy, happy children since then.

But that doesn’t change the loss and pain we endured to get here.

While the sadness and grief no longer consume me, there is a piece of my heart that still mourns that lost little love, each negative pregnancy test, each time I was told no or maybe next time.

Today was a normal day, as I loaded up the kids and left for our MOPs meeting (Moms of Preschoolers).

Today’s speaker spoke about her journey through infertility and loss. Her story was tragic and heartbreaking, something no one should have to go through. I sat there and cried with her.

After our speaker finished, we were provided discussion questions to use at our table.

Today, I heard several very brave women, share their stories of fertility struggles and losses. It humbled me to watch their bravery unfold. They shared their pain. Their battle.

When it was my turn to share, I was surprised when I had to stop and try (not very successfully) to regain some composure.

I’ve been quite open about what we’ve been through. It’s been awhile since I really talked about that blazing, joyous moment of finding out we were pregnant to that heart-wrenching, life altering moment when we weren’t.

I remember thinking to myself how weird it was that I was crying, I feel like I don’t usually cry when I talk about our journey anymore.

As I’ve shared our struggled throughout the last few years, I’ve spoken with quite a few people who struggled too, with infertility, secondary infertility or miscarriages. But being in a room with so many wonderful people, many of whom had this shared experience was empowering. Even through all of the accompanying sadness, it proved, again, I was not alone.

I’m not.

And you are not alone.

 

Listen up.

Don’t suffer in silence.

Check out Resolve to learn more about National Infertility Awareness Week and more available resources.

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My favorite moment from 2016

I had a lot of them.

All with L and W.

But my favorite moment by far was the moment I got to tell my husband I was pregnant.

We tried for years to have L and were under the impression we would never have children without medical intervention.

So after a couple weeks of feeling really crummy, days before my first half marathon (and Mother’s Day) I was prepared to give my doc a call to see what was up. I knew they’d ask about dates of things so I took a pregnancy test anyways – just because things were getting back on track from breastfeeding.

The shock of all shocks was that it was positive!

Never in my life did I think that would happen. I literally fell to the ground crying and my sweet little 11 month old at the time came waddling up to me for the best hug of my life.

Until my husband came home – and we got to tell him the news.​ So here is the video of my favorite moment of 2016. 

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Happy New Year everyone and may 2017 bring you much joy and happiness! 

Guest Blog!

Check out my guest blog for Uplifting Anchor on things you should and shouldn’t say, to a friend who has had issues with infertility.

Any ones I missed? Add them in the comments here!

Last Night Was a Good Night

There are some things that seem so distant, so unreachable, that you can never fully picture them.

You can’t visualize what something will be like because it seems so impossible.

But luckily for me, I had one of those magical, unreachable moments happen last night.

Every night when my husband is home, we put our sweet little guy to bed together.

Tonight I put him in jammies, we brushed his teeth and took him into his room. W read to him while I tried to snuggle him in his bed. Just like we do each night, but we swap, one reads while one stays.

But tonight L seemed like he wanted us both, so W laid down next to the bed so neither one of us had to leave him.

L wiggled and scooted around like he always does. But then…our Itty-Bitty started kicking. The strongest kicks I’ve felt with this pregnancy, high by my rib cage. I didn’t move for a moment, enjoying the happy baby.

I finally thought to get my husband’s attention, and he rested his hand there, and behold! A kick!  W hadn’t felt kicks like this yet. He’d been deployed almost my entire first pregnancy, coming home just days before the c-section. He’d felt movement then but not kicks like this.

This is never a position I thought I’d be in. Having my husband home is a novelty in itself it seems like. But cuddling with our sweet angel of a boy while he drifts off to sleep, while our second little miracle bounces around happily.

Thank goodness for these two little miracles we never thought we’d have.

And when you’re not looking…

So I’ve been sitting on this post for a few months now because I wasn’t sure I even believed what was happening.

After all the struggles we went through to have our sweet L, we knew we would start thinking about a sibling sooner rather than later.

So in March I called a fertility clinic out here, since obviously we’d have to switch since the move from Hawaii.

We had an appointment scheduled for mid-May. I wasn’t sure I was ready to go through that process again, to put L through it. I didn’t like how I felt on Follistim and I hated the person I became during cycles, counting days, timing things, watching the clock. It was exhausting and I couldn’t imagine doing that with a one year old around.

But we scheduled the appointment, wanted to see what our options would be here, and hoped that we’d be adding to our family by the end of the year.

Instead, we had a little miracle happen.

At the beginning of May, I’d been feeling awful. Short of breath, dizzy, exhausted. Just not myself. I was getting ready to call a PCM because I knew something wasn’t quite right and I was just days away from running my first half marathon.

I took a test to rule that out because I knew in my gut there was no way. Not even an option with our issues.

I was shaking and confused when I saw, very clearly, a positive.

I remember falling to my knees and sobbing. Sweet L, with no idea what was happening, came over and hugged me. As I sat there and hugged him back I said thank you over and over and over to him, for helping fix whatever was broken with me. He healed my broken heart and his existence made this possible. He changed everything for us.

Here are some photos we shared of our sweet guy, telling the world what an awesome big brother he will be!