Our Journey...

Hello World!!! Don and I are starting this blog to update friends, family, strangers and those struggling with infertility on how we are doing and where we are at in this not so fun process! As of this moment we are doing our last IUI this month and are scheduled to start our IVF process mid-March! To say that I am excited is an understatement!

Don and I are very blessed to have a few great friends that are either going through this struggle with us or are comfortable with such an awkward topic. However there are many people we love dearly that are very uncomfortable talking with us about our struggle for a baby. We understand this and hope that this blog will open the lines of communication a bit.

Also, I admit that with this whole ordeal I am a little overly sensitive, blame it on the hormones! I have been deeply hurt by friends and family's well intended, yet very inappropriate, words of "encouragement." I have also been equally hurt by those around us who know what we are going through and have said nothing. I guess these days you can't win with me! Damned in you do, damned if you don't!

Don and I are nurses, so we tend to look at things from a scientific/medical perspective. We realize that many of the people we love do not have that same perspective on life. We hope that this blog will help those around us to recognize that infertility is a medical condition, not a psychological or spiritual one. This is not to say that we do not ultimately acknowledge that children are a gift from God, we realize this. We also realize that God made physicians to help with medical issues. To not utilize the medical field resource would be foolish. I can't help but look back on so many women who have passed though my life without children. Growing up I always thought that they must have not wanted children. I now know that many of them did want kids and spent years in prayer for a baby. They would have done anything in their power to have the medical advances we now have. If Don and I would have been born even 20 years earlier we would not have this opportunity to start a family. We are grateful and indebted to the doctors who are making our dream come true.

On to me and Don... Don and I married on January 6, 2007. I immediately wanted a family and we went to work on it.... 3 years have passed and all we have to show for our work is two beautiful gray cats. We have done everything under the sun at this point, except the big gun... IVF. We have taken hormones (both orally and as injections), drank teas, seen an acupuncturist, a midwife, a urologist, an endocrinologist and a few radiologists. We have made dietary changes, tried "just relaxing" and anything else you can think of. I personally have stood on my head for extended amounts of time, made myself confined to bedrest and gained quite a few pounds from all of this, yet we march on!

We are currently under the care of a reproductive endocrinologist, Dr.Hessla at Oregon Reproductive Medicine. Without getting into all the messy details, I will say that Dr.Hessla was very up front with us from the start. He informed us that he was willing to try a few rounds of IUI (intra uterine insemination) , but that with our medical issue we would probably end up needing IVF with ISCI. In other words, would would have to to in-vetro fertilization (think test tube baby) along with intracytoplasmic sperm injection. To put it even simpler, I will take tons of hormones, the doctor will put me to sleep and suck out a bunch of eggs. Don will provide a "sample" of love juice which will be spun in a centerfuge and the lab will pick out the liveliest of the bunch. From there my eggs will have a chemical placed upon them and make their shells softer and a single sperm will be injected in each egg. 5 days later we will see what has grown, and if I am medically stable, we will implant 2 embryos. The rest will go on ice for use later.

What we are excited about right now is that we are about to start our last round of IUI. I will get back on Clomid (a nasty med!) next week, have some ultrasounds and do the injection some time mid February. At this point we are fairly certiain that IUI is not going to work, but our doctor has asked us to do another round. Also, before we invest in IVF we want to know that we have done absolutely everything! Who knows, maybe Dr. Hessla is right and this last crack at it will work and we won't need IVF!