Attempting to Move Forward

It has been 18 days since we got our test results back. In many ways, it has been a very long 18 days. Today was the day that I finally took my ultrasound picture down from the fridge. That is always a big step for me, as I feel like it's the time when I am coming to grips with my reality and am beginning to accept what has happened. I added my picture to what is unfortunately becoming quite a collection of ultrasound pictures from our previous cycles. Tessa's birthday was coming up quickly after our results came in, so while I sat and moped for a few days, I threw myself into party planning. I'm pretty sure I went a little overboard. When Saturday morning came to start decorating for her party and my list of things to do was growing extremely long and my house was full of balloons all over the floor and decorations piled up on the couches and loads of streamers were needing to be hung, it hit me that I have really tried to bury myself in this party. Thankfully, my mom helped me get food ready and my sister in law came early and took charge of getting decorations hung, otherwise it would have never all come together. My mom, kinda jokingly, kinda not, suggested she's a little afraid of what might happen to me after the party when reality sets in. I reminded her that we have vacation to plan for then, and I will get busy getting ready for that. That's when the concern turned to what might happen after vacation, when I no longer have something big to prepare for and distract myself. It's totally legitimate, and I have thought the same things myself, but just haven't vocalized them. I'm sure it's not the best way to deal with all of this, but in my mind, I'm just hoping if I keep distracted long enough that maybe the hurt will just heal itself. One can hope, right?

Throughout this last cycle, I tried really hard not to look ahead and make plans. With as much disappointment as we had been through in the last year and half, it was hard not to think positively that it would work, and at the same time it just seemed inevitable that it wouldn't work. That may seem contradictory, and it doesn't make sense, but it's just how your emotions are. In my positive moments, I was sure it would work and that God would give us both of our babies. I had even thought ahead so much that I figured my ultrasound would come before Tessa's birthday, and that I was going to tell my family the ultrasound wasn't until the next week so that when I found it it was twins we could surprise everybody at Tessa's party. I was going to make her a cute shirt somehow announcing she would be a big sister to twins. I had it all planned out. That thought came to my mind on Friday night when I was making her birthday shirt to wear for the weekend. Again, it's another strike of reality. Tessa has been such a sweetheart though. As much as I have been in a really hard place, she is my reminder of faith. There were so many days when I would sit down to pray and sit in silence because I didn't even know how to pray. I was, and still am, hurting so badly that my brain couldn't form the words that my heart were feeling. Tessa still has her faith though. When I would sit down to pray with her before bed, we would say her prayer, thank God for the day and the great things we did and ask for blessings on the next day and say amen. That's when she interjects and says, "what about my baby sister?" We had spent every night for the past month or two praying for God to bring her baby brothers or baby sisters, then I stopped praying for that with her because I couldn't form the words. But at the prompting of my two year old (now three year old), we would pray and tell God that only He can know how much we really do want a baby brother or baby sister for Tessa and ask Him to bring her one. I am thankful to my little princess for her faith, because it was through her prompting to continue to pray for a baby that I was finally able to verbalize my prayers for it too.

The days have been long. Some are much better than others. Some days I hardly think about it at all, and other days, it's on my mind so much of the time. I feel like I'm finally able to take phone calls from my friends again. I know I blocked so many of them out in the last couple of weeks, and for that I'm sorry. I really needed my space and I hope I didn't hurt any of them in process. I have thought often of one my friends during this time. She and I went through the infertility process at the same time when I got pregnant with Tessa, her son was due two weeks after I was. When they started trying again to have another one, they went through three failed IUI cycles, then had an IVF cycle that got cancelled, then it looked like their next IVF would get cancelled, but they ended up switching to an IUI and that one worked. I can remember talking to her after the 3rd failed IUI, at that time we were just getting ready to start our whole process again, we had our first consultation with our doctor in just a few weeks. I can remember feeling so sorry for her and so much pain for her that they had had three disappointments in a row, and I told her, "I don't know how you are still functioning, there is no way that I would be able to keep going after having three failed cycles." Huh. Who would have known. Here I am, after 5 failed cycles, and I'm still standing. Some days I feel like that's all I'm doing, just standing, and on those days, I think that's enough. When it's just Tessa and me at home, I feel like I'm doing pretty good, then I hop on facebook or head out the door and I am flooded with newborn babies and pregnancies. I want so badly for it to not hurt. I really do. I can smile and say the right things, but what I want is for it not to hurt my heart, but I'm not sure how to fix that. How I feel is how I feel, and I don't know how to change that. Maybe it's too soon to try, I don't know. So many of my friends are pregnant or have just had babies, and I feel like a bad friend because I don't ask enough questions about how things are going or oooh and aaahhh over the babies. My sister is pregnant, and while I'm so excited for her, again, I feel bad because I know I don't talk to her enough about it, especially these last few weeks, I don't think I've brought it up once. I'm back to that guilt that I felt before because my situation not only affects me, but the people around me too.

But today....today is the day that we attempt to move forward. When the nurse called me 18 days ago to give me the news, she said my doctor would like us to come in for a return consultation so we can discuss our options in moving forward. At the time, I told her I needed to call back and make the appointment. It was not something I could do in the moment. So I called the following Monday and was shocked when she said they had an opening the next day, so I scheduled the appointment. As the day dragged on, I realized that I just wasn't ready to go in and talk to him yet. I hadn't had a chance to clear my head and get a good idea of what I wanted to talk to him about and the questions that I wanted to ask, so I called back again and rescheduled the appointment. We go in today. David and I will sit down with him and hear what he has to say. I'm really not sure what he's going to tell us, but I'm anxious to hear it. I want to know what he thinks our best options are for moving ahead and then we're going to leave and take some time to think it over and pray about it. I'm not ready to jump into anything. We're not entirely sure if we will pursue anything else at all, I think we will, but just throwing in the towel and putting all of our attention on Tessa is one of the options we're considering. I'm just not sure how much more ups and downs I can put myself through. These last 17 months have put me through the ringer and I am just not sure how much more I can handle. I'm hoping to leave the appointment today, not with answers, because I know I won't get those, but with some good information that we will take and mull over for the next few months.

Through it all, we have felt so incredibly blessed. David and I have said so many times that all of this that we have gone through has only magnified the fact that Tessa being here is such an incredible miracle. The odds for success with that procedure were like 25-30%, and here she is. It seemed so easy at the time. I see now that none of it's easy, she truly is our miracle and we are so thankful for it. It's been great having her birthday in the middle of all of this because we have been able to focus on her and celebrate how blessed we are to have her in our lives. I hug her a little tighter every night and tell her I love her a few more times a day. She is my greatest blessing. And while some may look at me and think I'm a little bit of an overprotective mother, if they knew what we'd been through, they'd understand. After losing 10 babies, I am only all too aware of what a gift a child is and I will do whatever I need to do to protect her and keep her safe. Ultimately, everything is in God's hands, but He has trusted me with her care, and I will do everything in my power to do the best job I can taking care of her.

We have also been given another absolutely incredible gift. Mother's Day fell on the weekend that we got our results back. I didn't go to church that morning, I knew my limits and I knew that would be pushing it, so I spent my mother's day home with my best girl. Anyway, David still had to go to church because he had to lead worship. He called me around 9:45, after worship would have been finished and told me some incredible news. He told me that a good friend at church had been talking to him and said he and his wife just really wanted to bless us in some way that would be helpful to us. He had asked if we were planning on taking a vacation this year, and David told him no, we just don't have the money, and he asked if we would be willing to take a vacation if he and his wife paid for the accomodations. We were absolutely so blown away by his incredible generosity. Long story short, we thought about where we'd like to go and worked it out with him and in 12 days we are leaving for a week to go stay in Gatlinburg, TN (Pigeon Forge, actually) to spend a week relaxing and having some fun family time in the mountains. There is no way that we could have afforded this on our own and we just couldn't feel more blessed. We still needed to come up with the money for gas and for spending while we're down there, which was proving to be a challenge, especially with Tessa's birthday and all the expenses that come with birthdays and throwing and a party and whatnot, but we figured there are plenty of things to do down there that don't have to cost a lot of money, and we're fine with that, we just want some time to spend as a family and to clear our heads of everything that's been going on. So you can imagine our surprise when, over the last few days, we have had two different family members give us gifts of money for us to use on our vacation because they want us to relax and have a good time. We just feel so loved and so lifted up by our community of family and friends that have surrounded us during these last few week, months, and last year and a half. We are so incredibly blessed. We may walk through trials and not always understand why God choses for us to face those giants, but He always gives us what we need to deal with our situation. On the Saturday before Mother's Day, the day after our results came in, I had been talking to my mom and told her, "what we really need is a vacation, " (knowing that financially it was in no way possible) and the next morning, we had our vacation dropped in our laps. I may never understand why God chose me to walk down this path, but I know that He has provided for us along the way, and I know that it has made me a stronger person because of it all. If I can face losing 10 babies and still come out fighting, I can do anything.

Please continue to pray for us. Pray for our appointment today that we would feel hopeful after we leave. Pray that God would show us the next step for us to take, no matter what that step is. Pray for us as we are still healing from our incredible heartbreak. I'm thankful the good days outnumber the bad ones now, but that doesn't mean the bad ones are gone. And please pray that our miracle is still on the way. Thanks for following our story and hopefully, it's not finished yet.