A New Addition

When Caleb and I were married in 2008 there was no doubt that we wanted children, but we knew we wanted to wait and enjoy our time together as a married couple first. In August of 2009 Caleb and I decided that we were ready to be parents so we would start trying and see what happened. At first we were not too serious. I did notice that my cycle was not very consistent, but I did not think too much of it.   By February, we were more serious and starting to get frustrated, I figured my cycles were to blame. After a year, I was a complete mess, why were we not getting pregnant? I had several friends who had gone through fertility treatments, but never thought I would have a problem conceiving. My mom had no problems with me or my sister, Caleb’s dad and mom had no problems…what is the deal?

 Our OB/GYN suggested that Caleb have a semen analysis and with good results there, we try Clomid. After some research we decided to try this to see if it would make my ovulation more regular. Caleb’s analysis came back good with the exception of a lower than usual motility, he read up on this and began taking vitamin C every day as a couple of sites suggested.  We stayed on Clomid for 6 months and had no luck. In November, our doctor ordered an HSG test to see if my tubes were open and during the procedure they showed that my right tube was blocked!  We were very fortunate that they were able to open this tube up during the HSG and we had no additional procedures. We thought for sure that after seeing the tube and knowing it was now unblocked we would be good to go.  After another three months, our doctor referred us to the Arkansas Fertility Clinic in Little Rock. I had very mixed emotions going into this. How long will it take us, what type of procedure would we have to do, what kind of money are we talking about here since our insurance would not pay for fertility…the questions in my mind were endless. We did blood work, tests, ultrasounds, more tests and finally came to the conclusion that we would need to try the IUI or Intrauterine Insemination. This is one of the least invasive fertility procedures that can be done. Our doctor told us that the chances of conceiving were around 19% and most people would get pregnant after 3 tries if it was going to work. Now, 19% does not sound like very good odds to me. So, we continued to pray that we would not have to go through this struggle for more than three months and we would hopefully be blessed with this child on the first try. Caleb had his 3^rd analysis conducted before the procedure and his numbers were amazing! 47 million with very high motility and morphology so after the sperm were cleaned and separated, they did the procedure with 29 million sperm. Thankfully, this was a very fast process! I was told to come back in two weeks for a blood test to see if we were pregnant.

On that Sunday morning before our 2 week mark, I had to take a test because I had a feeling (do you ever get those?) that something was going on with my body. I tried not to make too much noise because I did not want to wake Caleb up. We had been here before, taking tests with failed results so I did not want to get his hopes up. After taking the test, it did not even take a minute to the words “pregnant” to show up…I was completely in shock! I have never seen these words and the emotions I felt were uncontrollable. I praised the Lord for allowing this miracle to happen to us, in HIS perfect timing. I then took the test, got back into bed (still in shock) and placed it on Caleb’s chest…he said “what is this?....are you serious?”  It was the greatest emotion to be able to share this with each other. We had both dreamed of what this moment would be like and it was PERFECT! It was the hardest thing to keep my mouth shut! We wanted to tell our family so terribly bad, but also wanted to confirm this with the two blood tests from the doctor. I went in on Tuesday and Thursday and my numbers had more than doubled so we were sure it had to be true! We told our immediate family over that weekend and all were ecstatic!

A few months ago I had stumbled upon a website that sold baby announcements that look like game tickets. I told Caleb this would be the coolest thing and we would really surprise our families with this. We ordered them, had them rushed in and that is how we told our parents, grandparents and siblings.

On week 6 we were able to see the baby for the first time and hear the heartbeat…what an awesome sound for something so small? This really made me feel more like this is real and I am not dreaming…it’s really happening!

115 BPM :)

You can see it's little head and eye socket if you look really close!

I wanted to share my story here because I know you can never hear enough encouragement about infertility. It is such a hard struggle and we were only on that path for a short time. There were months were all we could do was ask God why? Why can we not have children? We have a loving home, stable marriage, great family, good jobs, what else do we need to do. Caleb kept me so grounded and I am so grateful for him. Every month he would say it was just not the right time in God’s plans for our little one’s life or our lives. Patience is a hard thing. I am not very good with it, but I am learning to slow down and get better at it.

Only our close friends and family were aware that we were going through fertility treatments, so I encourage everyone to be careful how you approach people when discussing babies with those who may not have any yet. I had some very hurtful things said to me by people who had no idea what we were going through. It’s not their fault.  Being encouraging and intentionally calling to check friends you know are going through this struggle means so much. Our church family, family and friends were really good about this and it really helped me know that so many people were praying for us.

As I am writing this, I still cannot believe it is true! It is such an exciting time in our life and we are so blessed to be down this road at the perfect time, HIS timing for our lives!

God bless everyone of your who are going through this struggle and God bless those sweet little ones who are already in your lives.

We are at 9 weeks now and have not done a very good job at the picture taking, but my goal is to take a picture at least every two weeks if not every week.