The Barren Woman

When you hear the word "barren" what comes to mind? The dictionary defines barren as unfruitful,  unproductive, incapable of producing offspring, and sterile. The Bible speaks of many barren women such as Sarah, Rebekah, Hannah, Rachel, and Elizabeth. These woman prayed and petitioned God for a child and He opened up their womb and blessed them. When I think of the word "barren," it makes me think of an old woman with long gray hair with a old broken uterus. I don't picture a 29 almost 30 year old blonde haired woman when I hear that word, but that in fact is what I am. I am a barren woman.

I lay here sleepless at 1230 am thinking about what might have been if my only pregnancy would have stuck, that child would be 14 months old now probably running around and into everything and instead of being sleepless because I had coffee at 9pm, I would be sleepless because he or she would be needing me to wrap my arms around them after waking up at 11pm and being fussy. I often wonder and ask God why did He allow me to get pregnant once and then take it away from me? As if it was a cruel joke of some kind... But it wasn't a cruel joke, it was all apart of His plan. I may never understand or know why I still lay here childless almost 2 years later but God knows why. He knows every hair on my head and every thought I think. He knows why our little sweet pea never got to meet us and why this infertility journey has been so long and so costly. If you think about it, we have 5 babies waiting to meet us one day when we walk through those pearly gates. One of which was our sweet pea and the other 4 were those beautiful little embryos that were placed inside me but never made it. I know my dad is up there right now enjoying those 5 babies and getting to be a grandfather up in Heaven. I may be "barren" right now on this earth, but I'm a mom alright, a mom to 5 heavenly babies.

 All I have right now on this earth is a promise, a promise from God that one day I will get to be an earthly mom and I will continue to pray and petition God for that promise to come forth and for my womb to open up and be barren no more! So if you read this tonight because you are sleepless due to a fussy or sick child, hold them just a little tighter tonight because you are holding treasure, treasure that God entrusted you with, and while I understand you may be tired because he or she causes you many sleepless nights, I am tired, too. Tired of having to continue to wait and be patient for my turn.... Hopelessly praying that my turn is sooner rather than later. So for now I remain a barren woman, but my faith will not be shaken, for one day Gods timing will come and He will bless me. All the money, the years, the tears, the anger, the grief, and the anxiety will all be worth it when those eyes look into mine and my heart will smile because I will no longer be the barren woman.

I've been scratched

Today I was scheduled for the endometrial scratch procedure. I got there at 11:15 with a full bladder and 2 Aleve on board to help with the pain as instructed to do so. I was called back at 11:30 and taken to a room. The last time I had this done it was painful but tolerable as I have a pretty high pain tolerance. This time, it literally felt like a knife carving out my insides. I don't cry much and when I do I really don't like crying in front of other people but the tears were just flowing down and I just lost it. It hurt so bad! The nurse said I turned white as a ghost and they made me stay lying down on the table for a while. After the pain finally subsided I was fine, having some cramping now but that is normal. Geez Louise.... I don't want to ever do that again! Sheesh! So now we just wait for Aunt Flow to show up which should be sometime around March 1. Once she shows I will start taking estrogen pills on day 2 of my cycle and the FET cycle will be underway. We are hopeful that this part of the journey will end soon and we can focus on the pregnancy journey next! Gods plan exceeds our plans and we continue to trust in His plan but praying this is His plan for us! Psalm 113:9 "He settles the barren woman in her home as a happy mother of children. Praise The Lord."

Hope is still Alive!

So today was the big appointment with Dr. Honea where we ask, "Why the heck didn't this work, again?" To be honest, last Thursday I didn't have much hope left. I felt like this just would never happen for us. But a lot can happen in 1 day and in 1 week. The healing process is in full swing, and I can't say I am completely healed by any means but I definitely am feeling much better. Dr. Honea really opened our eyes today and kept hope alive! We spoke with her in her office for an hour, followed by another hour with nursing and lab work. When we walked in she asked me how I was, I responded with "very frustrated".  She replied that she felt frustrated as well cause this was such a great cycle. First off, we found out that our remaining 6 embryos can be transferred via a Frozen Embryo Transfer (FET) for free since we are in the shared risk program. That is huge! We thought we could only do 1 FET and then we would have to pay to use the others. So that's a nice blessing in itself! She feels like there could be 3 different things that could have prevented pregnancy. Firstly, she thinks there could be a genetic issue with the embryos we have transferred so far. She said 50% of all embryos for someone my age are abnormal and would cause you to not be pregnant. Which is why it can take a normal fertile couple several months to achieve pregnancy on their own. She thinks we have just had an unlucky combination of genetically bad embryos if that makes sense...  She drew a picture of 8 embryos and 4 of them are bad and 4 are good. We have used 4 embryos so far and could have just used the 4 bad ones. Secondly, could be an implantation issue. We will do the scratch procedure again to help with that. There is a test they can do for an implantation issue but is expensive and not completely accurate so she said if next round doesn't work we will do the test. Lastly, she said some people just don't get pregnant on fresh IVF cycles for unknown reasons, but can be due to the estrogen/progesterone balance from a fresh cycle and the stress the egg retrieval can put on your body and some people just get pregnant with frozen cycles instead of fresh. She also mentioned possibly doing another fresh IVF cycle and doing PGD (genetics) on the embryos if this next FET doesn't work and we will know if there is something wrong with the embryos. Even though our embryos look perfect as far as the grade goes, that still doesn't mean they are good genetically. Another fresh cycle would also be included in the shared risk program so that would also be a nice blessing. They also checked my blood for some auto immune disorders and my thyroid levels to make sure there isn't something weird going on! So what's next?? We will do a frozen embryo transfer when my next period comes which should be in about 3 weeks or so. The frozen cycle is very short compared to a fresh cycle. I will take estrogen pills for about 9 days then progesterone shots for 6 days then do the transfer. We will use the best 2 frozen embryos we have and hopefully they will survive the thawing process and the others will remain frozen. Dr. Honea said we do not need to panic by any means and are no where near talking about other alternatives such as adoption or surrogacy. So we left with our heads lifted and some hope that maybe our dream will still happen! Thanks for all the encouraging words last week, we read every one of them and we are so blessed and thankful to have so many people praying with us and rooting for us! God remains faithful and good to us and we will continue to trust and believe in His plans for our life! I realize some of this post may be confusing to those who don't know much about this process but I will try to break it all down as we get to it in the process! :)