Update on things to come

Wow! Let me just say I am blown away by the response I got from the last post. So much encouragement and prayer and women who are going through or have experienced what I am going through now. I was overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and support from friends and family and all I can say is thank you.

It has been a couple months since my last blog simply because not much has happened, but lots of people have been asking me how things are going so I thought I would give a quick update. Since September I have already tried a couple of things. First, I decided to go off the birth control. One of the reasons I went off of it 3 years ago was of course to start trying to conceive, but also I hated the way it made me feel. I just wasn't myself. So I decided to go off that which is when I was informed about a medication called Metformin. This medicine is mainly used for people with diabetes, but strangely enough it also is supposed to help with women who have PCOS. When a woman has PCOS she starts getting more insulin then needed which is where the Metformin comes in. It helps with people who have diabetes to regulate their insulin, as it does with women who have PCOS. Studies have found that it also helps women ovulate, get pregnant, and not have a miscarriage so I tried it. Unfortunately it made me lose my appetite and have diarrhea for 2 weeks straight. After consulting with my dr about it, she thought it was best if I went off that for the time being and went forward with hormone shots and progesterone suppositories (sorry tmi). I had to give myself 2 hormone shots in October to help my hormone level become more normal, and then take progesterone to give me a more normal cycle. It was very strange giving myself a shot. I felt anxious and concerned that I wasn't going to do it right. But once I did it, I felt relieved and proud of myself that I actually could do it. This is going to be a 4 month cycle. So for the next 3 months I will be giving myself 2 shots a month, progesterone suppositories, and my dr will perform artificial insemenation. That means she will put Dane's sperm into one of my eggs that has hopefully formed and will allow me to conceive. We are praying it works because with each step the success rate becomes higher of getting pregnant, but the price raises as well.

Something I meant to share earlier was during the first month of the shots, I hadn't gotten my period. The dr had said if I didn't get my period by the 32nd day of my cycle to take a pregnancy test. Well my period hadn't come and so of course Dane and I were thinking I was pregnant. I'm never late with my period, usually early so all the signs pointed to "PREGNANT"!! So that Saturday I took a test early in the morning because I was just so excited, and it came back negative. I was crushed. That weekend was just really hard for me. I cried like a baby to the girls in my bible study group and they just came around me and prayed for me which was so comforting. I'm doing better now, but unfortunately I am becoming more skeptical with every month that I am not pregnant. It is very hard to share this, but I know that those who are reading this will pray for me or maybe have experienced this as well. Knowing there are women like me who are going through this also brings more peace to the whole journey. Just to know I am not alone in it.

Well that's about all there is to share at this point. I'll be going in to see my dr in December to start the treatments again, and hopefully I will be up to making another update. Until then, thank you for reading and for caring and for praying. If I can help you in any way with prayer and encouragement, please don't hesitate to talk to me :) God bless you, and happy Thanksgiving!!

Let's Start At The Very Beginning, A Very Good Place To Start

some of you may or may not know that dane and i have had difficulties getting pregnant. for quite some time i was just keeping it between us and our family and close friends or people i knew that had or were sharing in the same journey as us. but i'm slowly meeting more people that are struggling in this so i thought it was time for me to share my story and hopefully encourage and comfort other couples going through the same thing. in october of 2011 my husband and i stopped using any type of birth prevention. we weren't trying to have a baby, but we weren't preventing it either. in march of 2012 we decided to consciously try to have a baby. after 6 months had gone by i started getting concerned. lots of people were telling me it took 6 months to a year for birth control to leave the system, which i was on for 2 years. i still figured it had been 6 months and i wanted to make sure there were no issues, so i made an appointment with a doctor. after meeting with him he said he couldn't give me any answers until it had been a year. so, i had to wait 6 more months before i got any answers. at the year mark of course i went back to the dr. i had a new dr at this point. she took some blood tests and did an ultrasound on my ovaries. at that point she did notice some small cysts but she said it was normal. all of my blood work came back okay because i never heard anything otherwise. so dane and i just kept trying to get pregnant. flash forward to a year later. we are still not pregnant. i had gotten what this joke of an insurance company called help (which included two visits to an obgyn with one month of clomid and the same blood work i perviously had done)for as long as they could until the dr finally told me there was nothing they could do for me anymore. i would have to find a fertility dr through my insurance and it was pretty much see ya later, you are becoming a nuisance. that's how i felt. well, i did what they suggested. but the whole appointment fell through and we were back at square one. at this point i was done with our insurance so i asked dane if we could switch to kaiser. we had to wait til the 1st of the year but were able to switch. in march of this year, 2014, we were able to meet with a fertility dr through kaiser and just in that one meeting we got the main question answered. what is keeping us from getting pregnant? turns out i have polycystic ovarian disease or PCOD. my ovaries produce a lot of cysts which prevent eggs from forming and keeps me from ovulating. from the initial ultrasound with my previous dr they had found cysts but PCOD was never brought up. the dr put me on a medicine called clmiid. this medicine helps me to ovulate and the success rate of getting pregnant off this is very high. i would be on the medication for 6 months and if i still wasn't pregnant by then, we would start the next step. well, after 5 months of clomid i was ovulating which was an answered prayer, but not getting pregnant. somehow an hsg test came up in conversation with someone who had been through the same thing as me and i told her i didn't know what that was or what it did. she explained it was a dye test which went through the fallopian tubes to make sure there is no blockage in them. another friend confirmed she had done the same test in the beginning of the whole process so i became concerned. i made an appointment right away and thankfully there were no issues with my tubes. my fertility dr was the one who performed the test and she suggested that i move on from climid alone and go to hormone shots combined with clomid. in order to do that, i needed to do another ultrasound of my ovaries to make sure there were no cysts. sure enough after 2 ultrasounds they both showed a significant cyst growing on one of my ovaries. in order to shrink this, i needed to get back on birth control and that medicine would either shrink or get rid of it completely. now i don't know about you, but have you ever had a cyst burst on your ovary? i have, twice, and it is EXTREMELY painful. but that is where this journey has led me. i am now on birth control waiting for this cyst to "go away" so that i can start the hormone shots and clomid again. it has been a stressful, confusing journey thus far. the way it's going now i don't see it getting any easier which is frustrating. this has been a huge trial for me to trust God more and constantly be in prayer over my body and just my dependence on Him. He has us going through this all for a reason. honestly i can say there have been times that i have yelled at God, told Him i am angry with Him, and just sobbed not understanding why He is allowing us to be put through all this. i know one day dane and i will have answers to all of it and we will look back and see God's hand in it and understand why He did what He did. but right now in the present we don't see it and we don't understand it. it is taking all of me to continue to trust in God but i am doing it by His grace. this is long, it's really long and if you had the patience to read to the end, i thank you sincerely for taking an interest in this journey. i ask you now to come beside me and my husband in prayer that above all else, God would be glorified through it and and that we wouldn't question this plan but find comfort in Him and continue to trust Him. i also ask though that you pray i get pregnant. God knows the desires of His children's hearts and i believe He has the power to do this because He is God and He knows this has been my desire for pretty much my whole life. if you are going through this, please share how i can pray for you and where you are in your journey. i would love to hear from you. thank you again and God bless you.