we are adopting!!!

when i was little i knew i wanted to adopt. mainly because i was scared of the whole “having a baby” process but even as i grew older and even before all of the drama that i will explain below, me and tony had discussed adopting babies. we figured we would have a couple on our own and then adopt a few kids. well… things don’t always work out the way we planned… ain’t that the truth! anyways... here is our condensed baby journey...

after being married 9 months and moving into our condo i went off the pill and we started trying for kids, really just kinda seeing what would happen. after 8 months of trying i noticed that my cycles were way inconsistent. 28 days between cycles one month, then 24, then 31, then 26… you get the idea. since we were still young and hadn’t tried a full year yet my obgyn told us to come back after a year if we still weren’t pregnant. well a year came and although i had some tests scheduled i freaked out and we ended up trying on our own for another year. i was not ready to hear "you can't have kids". i read countless books, online articles, blogs, and started taking some other vitamins along with the prenatals to hopefully increase our chances… no luck. so finally after 2 years and no baby i made the appointments again and had some tests done. they found out that i did not ovulate which explains why my cycles were so off! i was put on clomid for about 6 months to help me ovulate… it was terrible! i had migraines, bloating, i was tired and ornery… i’m sure… no I know I was miserable to be around! haha

 tony's warning label... "may cause killer-ness"

but it was for babies so i trudged through… then after the 6 cycles of clomid and no baby my obgyn decided i needed to make sure my tubes were open through an HSG test.

wouldn’t you know… tubes open and we were good to go. 2 more clomid cycles and then the doc said to have tony checked out. tony’s men were good and healthy and ready to go. so a few more rounds of clomid but still no luck. my doc said I needed to redo some tests now… what?? i did not want to spend money on tests that we already know the results to… and no one could explain really why i needed them done again. so i left him and found the reproductive care center… holy cow i love them and recommend them to anyone who has infertility. freakin AMAZING office… i love them all there! anyways so after meeting with dr. blauer he wanted me to try femara (which is typically used for post menopausal breast cancer patients, interesting little fact!) which for me did the same thing as clomid only the symptoms were a lot less mild… most months… haha some months it still kicked my butt!

we also were told to use ovulation kits. this is my first ever positive test!! i was so excited!

so after 9 months of femara, a few new blood tests (which were all normal) and no baby he wanted to add an IUI with the femara. so July 2014 (after 3 years trying to conceive) we tried our first IUI
and wouldn’t you know… my period was late that month.

i spent a good 4 days believing i was pregnant and we started dreaming of our baby. but then "aunt flow" came... while we were in mesquite celebrating my birthday nonetheless. I was in disbelief and on my birthday called the doc and she told me i was just not pregnant and it was not some early pregnancy bleeding like i had hoped. we were devastated. we thought we had finally done it, finally gotten pregnant. so we tried our 2nd IUI in October… still no baby.

 i had had my blood drawn that month to test my FSH hormone and it came back high which meant i could be out of follicles (which produce eggs). so after doing a clomid challenge test (which meant going back to clomid… on a double dose…) my hormones came back normal which was good but the doc still wanted to talk to me. he was concerned about how long we had been trying with no success. he recommended that we get more aggressive and add FSH hormone shots. SCARY! anyone that knows me knows i hate needles… i had gotten more used to them seeing as i had now had my blood drawn dozens upon dozens of times for countless tests but these hormone shots would be given at home… by myself!

thankfully tony was an amazing hubby and did it for me. so after 2 FSH hormone shots i had an ultrasound where they found 4 follicles and i could then give myself the HSG or “trigger” shot which basically triggers ovulation and that freakin hurt! it left my arm sore for a couple days.

 40 hours later we scheduled the IUI and then it was the 2 week wait. i took a pregnancy test - which i had avoided a lot during the past few years - and there were the words i dreaded to see… “NOT PREGNANT”.

it should say "you know what... you are still beautiful" those two words are hurtful!!

i was devastated. thankfully tony had stayed home that day to watch king who was sick so i could curl up next to him and just cry. i saw this as a last chance effort. i thought if this did not work we should just focus on adoption instead. it was about a week before christmas and so we decided to focus on the holidays and in the new year decide what was next for us… more shots / IUI, possible IVF, or adoption and although i thought we were going to just adopt i got to thinkin… we had paid for 3 rounds of FSH hormone but had only needed to use 2… that was about $150 worth of hormones just sitting there. we can’t just let that money go to waste! so we tried the FSH shots with an IUI one more time. we prayed so hard for a baby that month. not that we didn’t before but this roller coaster was just getting tiresome. so we did the 2 rounds of FSH, had the ultrasound that found 2 follicles, did the trigger shot and then had our IUI on Jan 23rd and waited out those 2 weeks.

i was a day early which i guess was good so i didn’t have to read those hurtful words on the stick again but it still wasn’t easy to swallow. we were at a crossroads again. after the thousands of dollars, 4 and a half years, and countless tears and prayers we spent trying… all i wanted was a baby! the doctor recommended we do an ivf (invitro) but we also had adoption as an option. we knew both would be thousands of dollars and thanks to our family we knew we could get help with the money so it just came down to what we wanted. we spent a good month going over our 2 options but in the end we want a baby! yes either road could lead to a baby but adoption is definitely more of a guarantee. (and yes i know some adoptions fall through but still knowing our money is going towards something is comforting) that’s not to say that we aren’t going to try ivf in the future cuz we may but right now adoption is the right choice for us and we are so excited!