My Story

Since it's National Infertility Week, and since I've never wrote out our whole story in one concise blog post, I thought I'd share that all with you today, even though most of you have followed along with our journey. After our miscarriage, I really hoped that our story could somehow be used to help and encourage others because, if not, then what else could've been the purpose of us going through that? So here it is.
 

Adam and I decided in 2007 that we would start our family in 2008. We planned it down to the month. I kept my wedding photography schedule pretty open for spring 2009 so that when our baby was born, I'd be able to take some time off. Adam was going to be on summer break soon after the baby would be born. It was going to be perfect.

May 2008. Our first month off birth control. Oh, the nerves and excitement. At that point, I didn't know much about cycles or any of that, so we just kinda guessed.

June came. I was late.

July came. Still no sign of the "monthly gift."

The pregnancy tests were all negative.

I went on vacation with my parents to Colorado without Adam. They didn't know we were trying. We wanted it to be a giant surprise.

Soon after we got back, there she was. That stupid gift. Dang.

Okay, well, that was our first try. Let's keep at it. This is supposed to be the fun part, right?

August.

September.

October.

November.

December.

I finally went for my yearly checkup in December and talked to my doctor about what was going on. They decided to do some bloodwork. The day after Christmas I had some blood drawn and the tests came back showing low progesterone levels, meaning I didn't ovulate that month. They wanted to make sure it wasn't just a random occurence and that this was happening regularly. So they did nothing.

January.

Another blood test showed the same thing.

We finally told our parents what we were going through. I needed more support to get through this...I'd never been through anything so difficult. I was sad that it would no longer be a surprise, but at least we had their prayers.

For my February/March cycle, they finally put me on Clomid to try to get me to ovulate.

I did...and we got pregnant. April 1st, 2009, I finally got my positive pregnancy test. What a day that was.

I had a sonogram at the end of April and it showed that the baby was measuring very small. They also noticed an abnormality in the shape of my uterus, but didn't really address that issue, just mentioned it in passing.

May 25th, 2009...we lost our baby.

After several doctor's appointments that weren't helpful, we were finally referred to a specialist because of the uterus abnormality I mentioned earlier. After an MRI and several sonograms, it was determined that I would need surgery to correct the abnormality (which was a septum, making my uterus heart-shaped), or else I would most likely miscarry again.

June.

July.

My surgery was July 18, 2009, and it went well. Afterwards, I had a sonogram to check the healing and outcome of the surgery. It wasn't as good as expected - they hadn't completely removed the septum. But the specialist was positive and said that he thought our chances of carrying a full-term baby were high. He wanted to wait for a regular cycle to happen on it's own.

August.

September.

I finally had a regular cycle at the end of September and was put back on a fertility drug similar to Clomid to make me ovulate again.

October 2009 was a good, good month. We got our second positive pregnancy test.

I'm now 31 weeks pregnant with a strong, healthy little boy, and we are anxiously awaiting his arrival. Our planning and timing definitely didn't work out as we hoped, but I'm sure that after he's here, we won't be able to imagine life without this particular little boy. I'm also thankful for the time we had without kids, just Adam and I. We've had 4 years of wedded bliss and I wouldn't trade that.

Two years after we first began trying, we will finally have our baby. I'm so grateful for this blessing and I think the road we traveled to get to this point has made me so much more in awe of the miracle of life.