Name: Julie
Due Date: July 27, 2008
Expecting: A Girl!
After two miscarriages, months of seeing a fertility doctor, taking fertility drugs and undergoing many different procedures, here we are expecting a baby girl on July 27th. We could not be more thrilled at this miracle in my tummy.
I pray every day for those couples struggling with fertility to be blessed with the opportunity to have children, because I know how painful it is to lose pregnancies and have your body stop working. Even as I write this I cry because I know there are so many couples who are heartbroken because their attempts to start their family have not been met with success.
It was a real struggle for me. We wanted to start our family so desperately. I just felt defective. Not only did I miscarry twice, but then I stopped ovulating altogether. It was hard not to wonder if I had done something wrong and this was punishment. There were so many nights that I cried myself to sleep as my husband just held me.
We began seeing a fertility specialist. When my husband Dave and I decided to do insemination, it was a hard thing for me to accept. I wanted our baby to be born out of love and I wanted it to happen for us naturally. When I shared my feelings with my husband, he put his arm around me and told me that the baby we would have, whether it be by insemination, in vitro, or adoption would be brought into the world with more love than most because of the struggles and sacrifices that we have had to make to bring her here.
The last year and a half has been a time of great self-discovery for me, and I like to think that maybe I will be a better mother because of it - not a better mother than anyone else, but a better mother now than I would have been if I had not had to walk this hard road. Maybe I will be a little kinder, a little more gentle; maybe I will be more patient. I know that I will cherish my babies, where I may have taken motherhood for granted if it was something that had come quickly and easily for me.
Life is sure a school of hard knocks, but the wisdom that is acquired is invaluable. One of the things I have learned is that you never really know what someone else is struggling with. It has been a great lesson for me to learn, and I try to remember that every day.
Here I give some excerpts from my journey to become pregnant.
Monday, May 7, 2007
Today marks five months since I had my ultrasound, and Dave and I found out that our baby had died in utero. I have felt so many different emotions from this loss…sorrow, anger, betrayal, frustration, abandonment, loneliness, envy, fear, and many more.
A friend sent me an email last week and mentioned how sometimes she missed her life and went on to express her feelings of being happy at one time, but not knowing it. I immediately thought of a quote from the movie “She’s Having a Baby.” Kevin Bacon is about to get married, and he has cold feet. He asks his best man, Alec Baldwin, if he will be happy with his wife and the life he is about to start with her and Alec’s reply is, “Yeah, you’ll be happy. you just won’t know it, that’s all”
When people now ask me how I am, there are many different ways to answer(see above to the list of my recent emotions), but there are so many reasons for me to answer in a positive way. I am happy that I have such a great husband, who would forgo his lunch breaks for the rest of the week so he could come home early to be with me because I had a hard day.
I am happy to have such a beautiful, comfortable home to live in that provides us refuge from the storms of life. I am happy to have this time with Dave that we can pick up and leave for the weekend at a moment’s notice for a weekend getaway when we want some time alone together.
I am happy that I have the time to take long baths and reflective walks on the trail by our house when I need some time to myself.
I look ahead to the future and I can hear the little pitter-patter of tiny feet in our home. I know we will have children someday. I can only imagine looking back on this time and I wonder how I will describe it in retrospect. I am trying to realize the happiness in each moment, because, at the very least, it will put the pain in perspective. Our lives are like a novel and we are the authors. We can be the hero or the victim. We are the ones who tell the story to ourselves, and I want mine to be a good one, the kind you can’t put down–you know, a real page-turner.
May 22, 2007
And again I find myself awake when I should be far off in dreamland. Tomorrow Dave and I are meeting with a reproductive endocrinologist and I am a ball of nerves anticipating the appointment I don’t really know why I am feeling so apprehensive, probably just fear of the unknown. I remember when I first started feeling pain in my abdomen and I knew that something was amiss, and then came my surgery and they found endometriosis and ovarian cysts. I can’t help feeling fear about what we may discover tomorrow, and then another part of me is concerned that they won’t be able to give us any information and it is back to the drawing board.
Dave is patient with my fears and knows how to calm me and give me hope with his steady nature and his faith that everything will work out. I am trying to muster all my courage, even though I am afraid of what the outcome may be.
After all, courage is doing what you are afraid to do. Without fear, there could be no courage.
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear. -Mark Twain
June 5, 2007
So here we are one year later getting ready to celebrate our love and marriage and in the same breath sadness for loss and heartbreak of things that might have been. It is hard for me to think that had we not had our miscarriage we would be welcoming a new addition to our family right about now with all the joy and excitement that comes with a new baby. A very tender time for me and as I think back on my life, some of my most painful moments have been paired with some of my greatest joys and accomplishments.
I know that it is through adversity that we become strong, and that our past experiences and the way we personally choose to deal with them are key elements in shaping who we are and who we will become. It is the things we experience, good and bad, weaving tightly together that form the tapestry of our lives. I like the image of a tapestry, because it is the contrast of colors that make it beautiful. You would never notice how vibrant the yellows or pinks are if they did not have a contrasting dark color to make them pop.
November 22, 2007
Something to be Thankful For
It has finally happened. We feel so blessed and overjoyed. We found out I was pregnant yesterday. I was at Enchanted with my mom and four of my five sisters and my niece and nephew and I got a call from my doctor who had very good news for me.
I stepped out of the theater and heard her say, “You are pregnant” and I just couldn’t believe my ears. I went back in the theater to finish watching the movie, but I kept my news secret until I could see Dave.
We spent the evening putting together these soda bottle labels and it was so fun to be able to announce it to our families on Thanksgiving day. It was truly a Thanksgiving miracle. We had contemplated waiting to tell our families because of the losses we have experienced in the last twelve months, but decided that we wanted to share the news when everyone was together and in town. it was so fun to see my sister Laura pull out one of the bottles to see what flavor it was and her realization of what the label said… I loved her yelling, “Are you serious??” and smiling and hollering until everyone came over and realized what was being announced. I it was by far the best Thanksgiving I have ever had.
On what winning the Baby Shower gift package would mean to her…
It would be neat because you always want to do nice things and spoil the people you love, and we have never felt the kind of love that we already feel for our baby girl. It would be fun to spoil her and it would be nice to have some help so that we could spoil her and work on paying off what we owe the doctor who helped us conceive. Since it was not covered by insurance, all of our appointments, medication and procedures were out of pocket.
