Happy Sunday everyone!
Today marks a week since I decided to start blogging. It seems like a good day for a story. Remember...this is a story with a happy ending: how Eliseo came to be.
Glenn and I got engaged on 7/8/2007 after 3 years of on again, off again, and ultimately on again dating. As we talked about what our life together would look like, we decided that we wanted to start trying for a baby right away. I was 32 soon to be 33, and Glenn was 28, so we felt like our party days were behind us; we were ready for a baby. We began planning our wedding; a small affair in Las Vegas, in a garden about 15 minutes off the strip. This was my second wedding, and Glenn is a no glitz, no glamor type guy so we just wanted something small and intimate. I found the venue and put down a deposit about 2 weeks after his proposal (which was really cute--he dropped the ring LOL). Well, the following Monday Glenn called me with some not so happy news: his unit was deploying to Iraq and they needed him to go, contrary to their original plan to have him stay back to get his MOSQ (to go to MP school). Even not so happier news: he was to leave in 5 days. This was pretty much a complete shock to us, and we had to make some decisions about our wedding. I was so upset, I didn't see what the point would be to get married before he left. We talked it over and decided that we did want to be married, it just made sense as we weighed the pros and cons. So, on Wednesday, 7/25 he received his orders at 11am and we went and got our marriage license. 6 hours later, we were at the Justice of the Peace with a small group of friends and family. 5 minutes later, we were married. 3 days later, Glenn was boarding a plane for New Jersey to his mobilization site. Not much time for baby making. 30 days later, I was allowed 6 days with him on his pass, again we hoped the timing was right for a baby, but it wasn't. He got back on another plane and within 2 days, he was headed overseas.
May 20, 2008, Glenn returned to the states. He was home, and I was elated. It is quite a feeling, after almost a year of complete agony, to have my husband back home in my arms; no urgency, no timelines, just back together again. Finally we could give ourselves a chance to have our baby. So we started to try. Now, when you are trying for a baby, people give you all kinds of advice. They tell you, once you stop trying, it will happen. Well I promise you, those people have never gone through the struggle of unfruitfully trying to have a baby. You really never just stop trying, that's an impossibility. They tell you all kinds of stories about what happened to their friend, their sister, someone they hardly even know and their success stories. But this means nothing to you, because other people's successes are never a guarantee that it will happen to you. It's between you and God. So month after month, we tried unsuccesfully. I charted temperatures, cervix positions, the consistency of fluids: it's not pretty, people. Meanwhile, every single one of my best friends, family members, even people I had just friended got pregnant, and a lot of them were first time moms. Every month it was someone new. I was genuinely happy for those people, but I began to wonder why not me? Why was God angry with me? Why was I being punished? I know this is not the truth, but when going through the struggle, there is no one else to blame. I would literally make a friend, and the next month they were pregnant! Don't get me wrong, I was not bitter, but I took everyone's news very hard. I wondered why it was fair that people could get pregnant right away, without even trying. One day they would tell me they were going to start trying. The next month, they were pregnant. Meanwhile, over a year had past and Glenn and I were still at square one. Then, we suffered another blow. Glenn had transferred units and his new unit received deployment orders. He hadn't even been home for a year before we learned that he would be going back to Iraq for another year. We were preparing to start fertility treatments, but I was so down and out that I didn't want to even start treatments with only a few months until Glenn left again.
And then, it happened. 14 months of disappointments, and finally I took a pregnancy test one day, and there was that beautiful, unbelievable plus sign. I couldn't believe it! I started making due date calculations, realizing that Glenn would still have 6 months left on his deployment when our baby would be born. That's ok, I thought, I'm a strong woman with a supportive family and I can raise our baby alone for 6 months. Not an ideal situation, but I could do it. We started sharing our news, first with our family and then with our friends. For your first pregnancy, especially after over a year of trying, it never crosses your mind that you may lose it. This is what happened to us. I was crushed, a little over a week after finding out the best news of my life, I had to deliver the worst news of my life to everyone that we told: we had lost our baby. When I went in for the D&C, my doctor told me we could start trying again in a couple of months, and I told him through tears, we won't be able to do that because Glenn was leaving to start his orders in a month and a half. It took a few weeks to recover from that, to the point that I wasn't mourning every single day. It started getting a little easier after that, to wake up each morning and not think about what we almost had. Then, Glenn was gone again. So there I was, again with absolutely zero chance of having a baby, and at that point I was 35 years old. I was running out of time.
Fast forward to October 4, 2010, again, that feeling that only a military wife could understand: having Glenn back in my arms. No urgency, no timelines, just him and I together again. We decided that as we continued to try to have a baby, we wanted to start looking into adoption. We didn't want to wait any longer, we wanted to be parents. Glenn and I truly believe that we have been called to adopt a child, regardless of whether we were able to have biological children or not. The adoption process is lengthy and expensive, so we started getting it underway within a month after he was home. We decided to go with Bethany Christian Services and a mediator and began filling out their paperwork and going to their classes. Meanwhile, we went to our doctor to look into starting fertility treatments. We spoke to him about taking Clomid (fertility medication), which we were going to start after my next cycle. Well, only 2 short months after Glenn returned home and before my next cycle, I found out I was pregnant again. With the memory of the last miscarriage in our minds, we proceded a little more cautiously this time, only telling our family and of course, those closest to us knew: if I wasn't drinking wine there must be a baby on board. We found out on Christmas day, 2010. We felt this this time, it was our time. But, we were wrong. Again, about a week later, we lost our second baby. This time, a little easier to take, but still devastating. Now I was really starting to wonder why God was punishing me. We went to talk to my OB/GYN again, and he said we could still go ahead with our plan to start Clomid. This was a beacon on hope on the horizon.
In January 2011, we went through our first round of Clomid. The research shows that many times, Clomid is successful on the first round. We were very hopeful, but it didn't work for us. Neither did the second, third, or fourth months of Clomid. There were some side effects from the Clomid that made an impossible situation for us (that happens to 7% of women), I'll spare you the details, but it is called "Angry Mucous." Well, I was definitely angry at my mucous. After the 4th round, my doctor left it up to us to decide if we wanted to go for round 5, cautioning us that he would only allow 6 rounds because the success rate after 4 months declined drastically. We decided to stop the Clomid. My doctor recommended we see a Fertility specialist to look into other options, i.e. IUI or IVF. We said we would think it over. We started diving again into our adoption process that we stopped in December when we were pregnant.
The very next cycle, before we made any decisions, we got another positive pregnancy test. At this point, again we were happy, but we were not allowing ourselves to build up hope. We only told a few people, probably a mistake. Once people knew, it made me anxious. I didn't want people to know. I just wanted to go through every day for 9 months, seeing my pregnancy progress. I hated those beginning days. They were very stressful. But...we made it past our usual week, with no signs of losing it like we had in the past. Could it be? Would this be the one? I started to have hope. And then...sorry to sound like a broken record, but I woke up bleeding one morning. I immediately when to my doctor, who again ordered bloodwork. My baseline numbers were OK, HCG was at 15, which is a moderately low number. The second set of tests showed that my HCG went up to 37, which he was happy with as your HCG should at least double after 2 days. After I started bleeding, he ordered a third blood test: HCG came back at 42. He called me and said he was "cautiously optimistic" since the number had gone up, but clearly it hadn't doubled. A fourth blood test showed that my numbers had begun to decline, meaning the pregnancy wasn't progressing, and that I would miscarry. But I didn't need the doctor to tell me that result. I already knew it because I had passed the baby over the weekend. Devastation once again. My doctor again recommended we go to the fertility specialist to find out why we were losing our babies. He had no idea why based on the testing that he could do.
So, we had a decision to make: do we go to the specialist and try again? Did we want to keep putting ourselves through this emotional roller coaster? Could we handle losing any more babies? We made the difficult decision: we would try only 1 more time (or so we told ourselves) if the specialist could tell us why we were losing them. It took a month to just get a consulting meeting with the specialist. But on August 20, 2011 I found myself on the phone with Dr. Ahlering, explaining the exhausting story to him. He said he wouldn't be able to tell me why I had lost the babies we had in the past without having genetic material from those gestational sacs. He could order tests to rule out typical reasons why women lost babies, but unless he had genetic material from one of our babies, there was no way to know. So, I went in to see him and do an ultrasound to look at my ovaries. He said everything looked normal, I had a few follicles that looked promising and then ordered the longest list of tests that you've ever seen. That was a fun trip to the lab. As the phlebatomist looked at the order, she started gathering vial after vial after vial. Over 20 of them. She was so nice, it was obvious to her why I was there. She wished me luck and said a little prayer right then and there for me. Then she started poking my arms. 20 some vials later, I asked her if I got cookies and juice with that. A week later, we had another appointment at Dr. Ahlering's office. To test my natural killers, to make sure my body wasn't killing off the baby thinking it wasn't supposed to be there, and to get Glenn analyzed. None of these tests were covered by our insurance. We forked out close to $2000. Glenn was not the problem. My natural killers were not the problem. We started getting frustrated. I set up another consulting meeting, to go over everything and do our "fertility workup" to decide our next steps.
Well, on Sunday, September 11, 2011, I was having some major neck pains. I decided I was going to go to my chiropracter on Monday to have an X-ray and see what was going on with my neck. I was due to get my period on Wednesday, and he was going to ask me if I was pregnant before he x-rayed me. Rather than just give my usual answer when I was asked if I could be pregnant (the answer was always with a laugh, saying probably not), I had a home pregnancy test, so I took it. And within no time, I had a clear, DARK second line. I looked again...once, twice, I dropped to my knees and I prayed: "God, Jesus, Lord, please,please, PLEASE let this be our time!". I told Glenn about my positive test. He didn't get excited. The next day I called the specialists office, they ordered the bloodwork to test my HCG and progesterone. I knew the drill. I went to the lab, and the same phlebotamist that drew my 20 vials called me back. She knew what this meant. Again, she prayed with me: "Please Lord, make these numbers double!" I went back on Wednesday for my second set of tests. More praying. Then, I recieved the greatest email I've ever gotten. It said my HCG on Monday was 27, and the number on Wednesday was 79. 79!!!! It tripled!!!! My progesterone was at 30.8!!! I had to reread that email, oh, probably at least 100 times. These were MY numbers. This email was about ME. I was in complete disbelief.
We still hadn't told anyone. We didn't want to jinx it. We didn't want to get anyone's hopes up. Especially ours. Dr. Ahlering said, this was only a win. If we lost the baby, he could get the sac and tell us why. Better yet, if we didn't lose the baby, WE WOULD HAVE A BABY!! So, this began the waiting game. Every day, I woke up waiting for the bleeding to start. And everyday, there was never any bleeding. We went in for our first ultrasound at six weeks. Unlike the last ultrasound that was barron, there was the gestational sac with the tiniest of specks in it: our baby. It was too early to see a heartbeat though. We refused to get attached to the idea of being pregnant until we saw a heartbeat. He printed out the pictures of our speck and sent us on our way. He wanted to see us again in a week.
A week later, we were in his office again, and our speck had an undeniable movement in it: the heartbeat. He high fived us. I love Dr. Ahlering. He said "congratulations, I have nothing else to do for you! Go back to your regular OB!".
I'd continue with the details, but let's leave it to say, it took us a while to tell everyone. It was at least 8 weeks before we even told our families, 12 weeks to tell our friends. Every day was like walking on eggshells, but my belly kept growing and growing. Even though I was in my second trimester, I still wouldn't let myself think we would make it to the end. On January 9, we found out we were having a boy! What a joyous, joyous, unbelievably joyous day!
Yes, of course we made it to the end of the pregnancy (or at least through 37 weeks), and the evidence of that is sitting right here, on the couch next to me, very impatient that I've been typing for the last hour! Wrap it up, Mom! Feed the baby! It's not about YOU anymore, its about ME ME ME!!!! And I love every single bit of it. Yes, Eliseo, I will wrap it up and give you my undivided attention and love. Maybe next Sunday will be the story of my pregnancy and birth. We shall see!!
I hope that this story provides inspiriation and hope to those women out there still in the struggle. I can't say how your story will go, I can only hope and pray that it turns out as beautiful as mine.
