hope

Lately, I've thought a lot about trials. 

We're all put through these trials in life that sometimes feel so heavy you simply don't think you can go on. Everyone has them - hard, ugly, heartbreaking trials. What I've been thinking about lately is how although my trial seems too heavy for me at times, I'd never swap someone for their trial instead. 

But, ugh, life can be so brutal and totally unfair. 

Last year, at this time, some of my family and I sat around a table making a vision board for 2020 with all the things we imagined for the year. Well, you can probably guess mine had some things about getting pregnant. Now, here we are a year later and that simply didn't happen for us in 2020, which completely crushes me to my core. I had no idea last year this time that I'd go through another year of infertility. I was so naive. 

Since June, I've had five close friends and my sister announce that they are pregnant. Six people. Each announcement came with pure happiness for them, but the utmost jealousy of what we can't quite seem to get right. It's a totally unfair feeling. There have been many days and nights where I've felt so paralyzed with fear that it just simply isn't part of our story. 

This past year has been filled with lots of crying, anger (oh, the anger), shots, medication, countless visits to the doctor's office (most alone because of Covid), so many messages on MyChart, heartbreak after heartbreak, negative pregnancy tests, getting our hopes up only to be let way down again, pregnancy symptoms to trick my brain, and days where I just simply couldn't move because I was filled with such anger and sadness. 

In December, we did our third IUI. We had a lot of hope. I've heard of a lot of people having luck on their third, so I thought maybe it would be our lucky time too. It wasn't. It failed. I look back at these pictures and it breaks my heart for these people I see in them. We had a lot of hope that day. Dan even wore his lucky Christmas sweater. By the way, it was his first time getting to come to one of these appointments with me, which made it even more special. We got lunch after at Knickerbockers and it just felt like a really good day. I had a lot of hope throughout all of the special holiday things, thinking this could be it for us. Well, it simply wasn't. I started my period on New Year's Eve. Talk about ending the year with a bang. 

Now, you'll probably remember that I titled this post "hope". While we feel defeated, exhausted, and utterly heartbroken, we are choosing to pick up all of our broken pieces from 2020 and move into the new year with hope. I think that will be my word this year. I need it. 

Our original plan was to give ourselves until May to see if anything happens before starting IVF, but we simply can't wait. A few nights before I started my period, as I was beginning to prepare myself for the hurt that a third failed IUI would bring, we made a decision. With tears in my eyes, I told Dan that I don't want to do anymore IUIs and that I'm ready to move on to IVF now. I have to say, I've been having this thought for months, but I knew Dan wasn't ready. So I was surprised when he responded that he was ready to move on too. Wow, talk about 900 pounds lifted off my shoulders. 

So, we have our IVF consultation scheduled for January 12th. We're hoping to start stims sometime in the beginning of February and if the first one takes, we could potentially find out we're pregnant in March. 

That's the scary part. It's not a 100% guarantee it will work and it's a whole lot of money. It kind of feels like we are playing with fire here, but this is our best chance at this point. I actually am not sure of the exact success rate for our age at our clinic. I'll know that soon. But I know it's somewhere in the 60%-70% range per cycle. Which, is really good. Our chance of success with IUI was only 12%. 

IVF will not be easy. This is a totally different ball game from IUIs. I hope I can be strong throughout the process. 

So, here we go. I want to document as much of this journey as I can. I hope very soon that I'll have some good news and can finally announce that I'm pregnant. I have a lot of hope. I feel terrified, excited, and anxious! But, Dan and I are in this together and we're determined to do anything it takes for this to be successful. 

We feel blessed that we GET to do IVF. We know that so many people out there never get the chance at a family like this.