I debated on how much I wanted to share about the last few months but I made a deal with myself and with anyone who reads this that I would be an open book (a statement I will backpedal on in the future). So, what has happened since my last post and why did I stop writing for a few months? After starting this blog and diving into everything that has happened as I rehashed our infertility journey I realized how hard this would be on me emotionally. When I first started this I thought the whole process would be cathartic and help me heal while also sharing our story and reaching out to those in a similar situation; however, my emotions got the best of me briefly and I found myself really struggling with handling the rush of emotions a second time. It was an eye opening experience that showed me the grief of loss and struggle of infertility aren't things that will ever really go away, I can only hope to learn to handle them better. So, I decided to see a therapist and it was a wonderful experience! One I will be continuing. Our doctors and friends and family have told me to see someone to help me cope and understand what I'm feeling but it wasn't until I realized how much this sadness was impacting my life that I actually made an appointment. I won't go into all the details of the session here but I will say it involved a lot of tears and a release of emotions and fears I had been hiding, partially even from myself.
If you find yourself in a situation where your emotions are getting the best of you and talking to family and friends isn't helping you get to a place where you feel like yourself, please reach out to someone professional for extra support.
It was one of the best choices I've ever made. Other than meeting with my new therapist not too many exciting things have happened lately. Life has gone on (as it does) and Clayton and I have been focusing on preparing ourselves for the gift of children that we know will come.
Present:
Part of preparing for children is preparing your home. Clayton and I are spending time going through everything in the house and gutting it. We are donating clothing and things we don't need. We are throwing things out that were saved "in case we need it someday". Clayton has completely redone his man-cave (he even vacuumed!) and I am slowly but surely working on going through all of my nail polish collection to get it organized and hung on the walls. That is a lengthy process that I've only just begun but I can't wait to see the finished product! We've also been preparing ourselves for children. We are focusing on improving our health by eating better and losing weight. I know that once we are pregnant I will gain weight but I want to be a healthy weight before we get there so we can have a healthy pregnancy and since we are waiting to do IVF, we have some time to focus on our health right now. We've been doing this the last month and it's really become a habit. We are working hard to get down to our goal weights so we can be physically ready. With my ankle finally healing we are starting to work out and for the time being the guest room is being converted to a little in home gym. This gym is only temporary because one day that room will be a nursery. These may seem like funny things to focus on when infertility has been our sole focus for the last 5 years but I truly believe if you ask God for a gift you have to be ready to receive it, and right now I'm not sure we are ready. So we are making the necessary adjustments to get ready. I'm not saying we aren't ready to be parents, I'm saying if you want to receive something like children you need to be ready to accept them at any time in any way in every aspect of your life. While our hearts have been open to children for a long time, maybe our home didn't feel as prepared. It's an easy fix though and so we are making these changes to show ourselves, the universe and God we are ready.
Future:
Our future is jam-packed with exciting and wonderful things! Thanks to all of the donations we have received and one very large donation by folks who wish to remain anonymous we have hit our IVF goal and dates have been set to get the process started. We can’t thank each and every one of you enough for all of the donations and prayers. Truly, from the bottom of our hearts, thank you. Here is where the backpedaling will start. If you've been paying attention from the first paragraph, I warned you. While our journey from start to finish will be an open book one day and we will share every single up and down along the way, at this point we have decided not to share the actual date we will be doing IVF or even the month we are starting the process. We have a couple reasons for this. 1) We don't want anyone asking us if it worked or not before we are ready to share that news. Dealing with people over the years dropping questions like "when are you having kids?" has been hard on us and I can only imagine someone asking "did IVF work?" before we are ready to share that information, would be very hard. 2) No matter the outcome of this process we will need time ourselves to come to terms with the news and plan/celebrate. If it isn't the news we'd like we will need time to grieve and if it's the news we are dreaming of we will need time to tell family, celebrate and plan. 3) Even if we did share the date we are doing IVF and it worked we wouldn't be sharing the positive news until after the 3 month mark at the earliest. We lost our twins at nearly 11 weeks. Just a few weeks shy of the first trimester being over. While we realize there is no truly safe time to announce we are pregnant until the birth we will share that news with everyone when we are ready and after 13 weeks. So for now, if you are following our journey, know we have reached our goal and made our plans and we can't wait to share this section of our journey with you all eventually, no matter the outcome. But for now please respect our wishes and don't ask when we will be doing IVF or if we are pregnant yet. Just wait patiently and pray for (hopefully) a very exciting and positive announcement in the next ... well. Just pray. You don't need a timeline for that. :)
Also coming up in our future is a vacation. After spending the past 5 years pouring every ounce of ourselves and savings into infertility we decided to be a little selfish (selfish is the wrong word) and plan a vacation together. Think of it as a babymoon before the pregnancy. We know once we start IVF we will be back into this infertility journey full time both physically and emotionally. We wanted to take a week to relax and have some fun before we lose ourselves again so we have planned a cruise with some of our family this October (we have missed every cruise with our family the last 5 years or so). While it hasn't been easy we have cut down our spending even more so we could afford to do this vacation without touching a single penny of our IVF money. I know some will have an opinion about whether or not we should be going on a vacation or spending any additional money that we could put into savings. All I can say is until you are in the situation we are in, every day, every hour, every minute for over 5 years you won't know how we are feeling or how important this break is. All of our IVF funds are sitting in savings collecting dust and interest, patiently waiting for the day we write the biggest check of our lives so far. A check we can't wait to write! This vacation doesn't postpone or alter our IVF plans in any way. The dates for IVF were set over 2 months ago before the idea of a cruise even came to be and those dates aren't changing.
I hope to get back to writing this blog regularly over the next few months. It doesn't mean a post will be up every week or two weeks but posts will go up as we have them. Perhaps my next one will be an introduction to who we are aside from infertility because we are pretty cool people with pretty fun interests outside of reproduction. I hope you will all continue to pray for us, pray for strength and that we are ready and able to receive whatever God has in store for us. We know our family is coming in one way or another and we hold onto that hope daily.
Whatever is good and perfect is a gift coming down to us from God our Father, who created all the lights in the heavens.
James 1:17 NLT
~Ashley~
James 1:17 NLT
~Ashley~
