This Wasn't the Plan!

"This wasn't the plan"....I kept repeating that to myself over and over for several months. 

We first went to the Fertility Clinic in December of 2005. The place in itself was depressing.  Everyone was super nice and really supportive, but every patient there was stressed and sad just like me.  This wasn't a place people went to because life was going perfectly. It wasn't out of the ordinary to see several people crying with just one visit.  Little did I know at that point, that the person crying at many visits would be me.  At first, I tried hard to be optimistic, because they would find the reason it hadn't happened yet, fix it, and I would give birth to a beautiful baby.  Wrong!

After doing a battery of tests on both of us, they sat across the desk from us shortly thereafter and said that our case was "unexplained infertility."  I don't mind telling you that I had a range of emotions at that moment.  I was sad that it had come to this; angry because this wasn't MY plan; anxious because the future was unsure now.  Right then and there, I became paralyzed with fear that I would never hold a baby of my own.  They started listing off statistics of our chances of having a baby and the options we had to get there.  Honestly, they could have just told me to jump out of an airplane with no parachute and it would have been just as scary.  Time to put my big girl panties on and move forward.

We decided to try IUI (Insemination) first since we get six chances free (minus medicines) but they gave us about a 10-15% chance. I tried to put aside the percentages and focus on this unbelievable desire I had to be a mom.  God can do anything, right?  It's all in His perfect timing anyway, right?  After several (by this I mean nearly 50) trips to Birmingham to get my levels just right, the day came.  This could be it.  This could be the day that changes my life forever.  It did, just not in the way I wanted.  The procedure went well and we just had to wait.  Two weeks doesn't feel like a long time, but when you are waiting for an answer of this magnitude, it feels like eternity.  After about two weeks and my levels being "perfect" with every check, the answer was "No."  Devastation!  This wasn't the plan!!!!!!

After finding out it did not work, I will never forget falling down in my hallway at home in the fetal position and doing the ugly cry.  You know that cry.  It's the one only those who REALLY care about you love you through.  I knew this wasn't the end, but it sure felt like a roadblock the size of Texas.  When we went for our consultation visit to discuss our next course of action, I heard my husband say that he couldn't watch me endure this five more times and he thought we should do in vitro.  Wait a minute!  This very statement from him was surprising for several reasons...mainly, no one on earth is as money conscious as Jason.  (That is a kind way of saying, "tight"). In vitro is very expensive and we both are teachers, for Heaven's sake!  We had discussed the idea of In Vitro a few times, but that always seemed like a last resort. We would never have to do THAT.  This wasn't the plan!

We discussed it to death (if you know me, you know that's an understatement), gathered the money (lots of it), and decided in May of 2006, In Vitro was our plan....