Impatiently Waiting for our Miracle(s)

We all know someone… you know, that person that struggled with infertility for years and then they stopped trying. And then boom – they got pregnant. Yep, everyone has one of those stories about someone they “know”. Can you do me a favor, though? Quit sharing them with people while they’re in the throws of infertility. I know you mean well. I know you think it provides hope. But here’s what it really does (at least for me)… it tells me that you’re not truly listening to our story and understanding where we are. It suggests that the tens of thousands of dollars we’re spending on fertility treatments, tests, hormones, vitamins, acupuncture and doctors, are a waste. That we should just “stop trying”, and “quit stressing”. Then all of a sudden we’ll be pregnant. It doesn’t work that way for most. I love a good “miracle” story just as much as the next person, but these particular stories burn. And being open about your infertility journey means you hear these stories… all. the. time. ...

Just before 1 a.m. yesterday morning, I had a Facebook messenger call from a friend in Huntsville. Reid and I both woke up, but I assumed it was an accidental dial, silenced it, and went back to bed. Something in me (and my dream) told me to wake up and check to see if that was in fact an intentional call. I checked my messenger app to discover several messages from Jennifer (the person that had called), saying she knew of a family who was keeping their grandson on life support so they could find recipients for each of his organs. And she wondered whether Reid could potentially use his liver. My heart jumped and I sat straight up in bed. I immediately called her, and gave her the information that she needed to pass along. The family was going to do a direct donation to Reid. A Directed Organ Donation is something that we hadn’t heard much about. But Jennifer shared that the family spoke with their doctor, and the doctor said that as long as the recipients were on the list, no matter h...

This weekend Reid and I hosted our annual Super Bowl party. We love to host it every year, but of course that does come with some stress preparing the house and getting everything ready. I woke up early on Sunday, and was picking up around the house when I realized the upstairs toilet was still broken. I had let Reid know about it months ago (and every couple of weeks since then), but he is a professional procrastinator. And honestly we very rarely use that bathroom, so it was kind of “out of sight, out of mind”. But I was pissed. Here we were, preparing to have 25 adults and 6 kids over, and one of our toilets wasn’t working. I stormed into the bedroom and inquired as to when he was going to fix it, seeing as we needed it TODAY. We had so many other things to do that day, and now he has to take a toilet apart. I started explaining to him that now I see that being a 3 hour job (yes, I like to over-dramatize the situation from time to time) and then what if he can’t fix it and now we d...

We don’t have anything earth-shattering to report, but we have had a lot of doctor’s appointments over the last two months, and I have a lot of people ask how Reid is doing… so I thought an update may be good. Quick recap: Reid was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis (UC) and Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis (PSC) 4 years ago this May. His PSC has progressed significantly over the last two years, and after two hospital stays in March and April of 2017, it was highly recommended that we start the liver transplant process. He was added to the transplant list in Houston on June 8 th , and the Indianapolis list at the beginning of August. We’ve applied for exception points (usually necessary for PSC patients – the disease makes the bile ducts of the liver very blocked, but the liver itself is not as bad. So PSC patients tend to have a lower MELD score) 3 times and have been denied. As I mentioned, we’ve had a lot of doctor’s appointments lately. But that’s becoming a new normal. To...

I shared months ago about the lessons that I’ve learned over the course of our struggles. If you missed that, you can read here . But over the last week I had a very harsh reminder of the most valuable lesson I’ve learned – I can’t do this alone. If you’ve been following along, you know that we learned just after Christmas that our 2 nd round of IVF failed. Around that time, I also learned of a couple of people with PSC, the liver disease that Reid has, being diagnosed with terminal cancer. I was so ridden with anxiety and sadness. But I pretended to be okay. I didn’t talk much about any of it, but when others asked how I was doing I would just say “I’m okay, I mean what other choice do I have?” But that’s the thing, we do have another choice. Sometimes you have to let yourself breakdown and feel those feelings. But I didn’t… I just silently sat with a pit in my stomach for days, and didn’t talk about it. Maybe I thought it would go away? I honestly don’t think I was even doing i...

21 days of androgen (testosterone) gel, 21 days of birth control, 21 days of estrace (estrogen), 47 injections over 10 days. 10,800 IU of Menopur, 10,800 IU of Gonal-f, 380 units of Lupron, 2 mL of Omnitrope, and 1 mL of Ovidrel. One egg retrieval, 7 eggs – all of which fertilized, 2 embryos became blasts, and zero were normal. IVF Round 2 was another big fat fail. We went into it with so much hope, as our doctor changed our protocol to an aggressive one. But in the end, we had the exact same result as last time. We’re disappointed, and feel pretty defeated. We have now had 6 abnormal embryos (2 through pregnancy losses, 4 through IVF) and each one has been a different chromosomal abnormality. Our first pregnancy loss was ectopic, so we have no way of knowing whether that was a normal embryo, our second was a male triploidy (it had 3 of each chromosome), the third was a male trisomy 11. With the IVF embryos, they’ve been: male trisomy 4, female monosomy 13, and the last ...

Warning: this post contains spoilers! I’ve held this back to give everyone time to watch last week’s episode of This is Us. Wow – was it powerful. As a 3-time loss mom, I feel compelled to share my thoughts on the episode. The week before, in the last minute of the “Number One” episode, they told us that Kate lost the baby. And I immediately started crying. And I was thankful. Thankful because she was a character in a TV show, not a person in real life. But so extremely thankful that they were going to highlight the topic of miscarriage, and I was anxious to see how they did it. I could not wait for the next episode. And they did not disappoint. I think the episode, “Number Two”, was powerful, enlightening and much needed. I so appreciate the writers of This is Us highlighting what miscarriage does to a couple, and how it makes you feel. Is everyone’s experience the same? No. I didn’t have a spontaneous physical loss like Kate did. I have never been on my bathroom floor cr...