Continuing to be a Work in Progress

Wow, another month has passed since my last post. I guess I haven't been keeping with it quite as much as I had been originally. Also, I don't always have quite as much to say as I used to, so I guess that is part of it too. We have really been enjoying our summer. It's been hot, so hot, and so dry, Lord please send rain, but we have been having fun going to the pool and playing with friends and cousins and enjoying time with our family. I will admit, I think I'm ready for fall though. Usually by the middle of July when it's nothing but hot, hot, hot, I start getting the itch for fall and the cooler temps, wearing jeans and long sleeves, apple cider, campfires, the whole nine yards. We are looking forward to a fun mini-vacation to Michigan with the Lee side of the family in a few weeks. First time this side of the family has vacationed together in a long time, and first time for Tessa and I, so it should be loads of fun!

We have done a little redecorating in our house over the last couple weeks and have plans to do a lot more over the next several months. We decided to make Tessa's room a little more little girl like. She's been in a twin bed long enough now that I felt comfortable moving it out of the corner we jammed it into and put the head against the wall and let the rest stick out into the room. She got a new lamp and a new rug, and we moved her Tinkerbell table over into the corner so it's more useable for tea parties and set her dollhouse up so that she can play with it from the front and back. The biggest change we made was to her walls. When we put her in the big girl bed last fall, we bought all this cute pink, green and orange owl bedding. In September, when we got it all, I also found a big set of owl wall stickers/decals that were from the same line as her bedding. I have left them in her closet for almost a year and haven't used them. They are kinda a use once kind of thing, you can't really move them once you've stuck them on the wall, or they don't stick so well the next time. I kept thinking all along, we're going to end up pregnant from one of these cycles and Tessa's room will become the nursery again and we'll be moving her to the bigger bedroom so I didn't want to use the wall decals then not be able to have her use them when we move her to the other room. Well, since I am no longer placing all my bets on the idea of getting to have another baby, I decided it was time to use them. We made a big tree on her wall with owls and birds and leaves, and on the ground is little grass bunches and mushrooms and a squirrel and hedgehog. It looks soooo adorable! I'm so glad we did it. Almost every night, when we pray, she adds in to thank God for her tree, and her leaves, (she usually mentions the big leaves and the little leaves separately) and her owls, and her squirrel and her birds. It's so cute. She even had her Auntie pet her squirrel when she was here the other night. I can't believe I waited so long to do it. We also redid our downstairs powder room this weekend. I love it! I have hated the color we painted in there since the day we put it up 3 1/2 years ago, I just haven't known what I want in there. I've been thinking on it for a long time, and finally decided so David and I moved on it quickly (I think he was afraid I would change my mind) and redid it this weekend. We painted over the hideous reddish orangish mess with a slate gray and did buttery yellow accents. It looks awesome. I couldn't be more happy with it. We have a lot of other things we want to do with our house, change up our floors downstairs, either put wood floor down or a combo of wood floor and new carpet, plus I'd like to get new furniture for downstairs and change up the look of the living room/dining room. Also on my wish list is new bedroom furniture. What we have has lasted us a while, and we probably paid less than $50 for it all, but I have wanted a nice set of bedroom furniture for a long time. Of course, all these things take money and time for me to figure out exactly what I want then find what I'm looking for. But I am excited about some physical changes the Lee household has taken and will be taking over the next months.

As far as the baby process goes...we're still waiting. We're still thinking and praying and waiting for confirmation on the right direction to go. We are much closer to making a decision than we were a month ago, or even a week or two ago, but alas, still waiting and thinking and praying. For the most part, I'm doing much better. It's true, time does help to heal wounds. I wouldn't say time will heal all wounds, but it helps. It's still a challenge, and sometimes a daily challenge, but I'm working through it. I feel like I'm totally surrounded by newborn babies and pregnant women. I think I'm up to about 20 friends who are either pregnant or have a baby less than 3 months old. It's like an epidemic, and yet I'm somehow immune. A couple weeks ago, I finally went to visit my friend who had a new baby born in June. It was hard, really hard, but I'm thankful that I have amazing friends who are really understanding of my limits. I left there feeling really guilty because I really barely even got close to her baby. Just being there, and hearing him cry and talking with her while she nursed him, it just made my heart ache for newborn of my own. I miss that so much. I cannot say enough how thankful I am to have friends that are understanding, I am truly blessed.

I had a really hard moment yesterday. As I have said before, my sister is expecting. She's due in less than a month now. About a week ago, I really made the first mention of it to Tessa. I had been avoiding the topic with her mostly because she hadn't brought it up and I really was afraid of the questions that might come from it. But we're getting down to the wire now, so I figured I should talk to her about it a little. I said something to her about a week ago, nothing specific, and she didn't seem to have much to say about it. I think she maybe said somethig to my mom about Lissy having a baby in her tummy, but then the topic was dropped. Yesterday, I was working on a newborn pixie hat that my sister wanted for her new little guy to wear for his newborn pictures. Tessa came downstairs and asked what I was doing. I told her I was making a hat for Lissy's baby. She seemed a little confused, so I expanded. I said, "you know how Lissy has a really big tummy right now? That's because she has a baby inside her and I'm making this hat for Baby _______ (I'll leave the name out of here, as I'm not sure if they're sharing that yet :)." Her response was, "and I bring it to her (meaning the baby)." I said, "well, the baby is going to be a boy, and he's not here yet. He'll be here in a few weeks." She stood there and thought for a minute, then said, "Lissy have a baby in her BIG tummy, you have a little baby in your little tummy?" And.....confirmation as to why I was putting off this discussion with her. I had to tell her, "no, Tessa, I don't have a baby in my tummy." It just makes me sad for her sometimes, I know how badly she wants a brother or a sister, (in actuality, she wants a sister, when we pray at night, I pray for a baby brother or baby sister for Tessa, and she always interjects and says, "I want a baby sister") and it hurts me that I can't give that to her.

As much as I want another baby, which I desperately do, I'm also most definitely coming around to the idea of waving the white flag, calling it quits on the treatments and being a family of three. I'm thankful, so thankful, for friends and family members who are part of one child families who have been willing to share their thoughts and feelings with me about being a part of a one child family, either from the perspective of the parent or the child. It so nice to hear about people who feel that having only one child or being an only child is a huge blessing and how it benefitted their lives and that it can be a very fufilling life. Don't get me wrong, Tessa keeps me as busy as several children would, and if she is the only child we ever have, she will be MORE than enough. I think about the fact that she was only 19 months old when we first started all these infertility treatments again. And now she's 3 and on her way to being 3 1/2. She was still such a baby when all this started, and now she's a little girl. We have been able to do so many more things with her in the last few months as she is getting older and more mature and life no longer revolves around naptimes and I think...if we were to never have the blessing of getting another child, we have a whole new world of adventure opened to us in no longer having a baby in the family. All of these factors are weighing on our decision on which direction to take. David tells me that he thinks I'm finally in a good place in my crazy head because for the first time, we both feel like we no longer need another baby to complete our family, but that another baby would just be an extremely added blessing to our family which is already complete. We are happy as a family of three and my eyes have been opened to all the wonderful benefits of being a family of three which I was never able to see before because I was so blinded by my extreme need for another baby. If we decide to move forward with more treatments, we both feel like this is the best place to be in, a place where I'm good with where we are and feel complete with where we are, and would consider any other blessings that come along a huge bonus.

Unfortunately, I wish with this newfound contentedness with our situation, that the pain and sting of infertility would go away. It doesn't. Part of me is very afraid it will never go away. In the business that my sister and I run together, I deal with a lot of pregnant women. One of the most popular thing we sell is our sibling shirts, Big Sister, Big Brother, Little Sister, Little Brother, etc. So many people order shirts for a Big Sister or Brother as a way of sharing the news they're expecting or order with a Little sibling shirt to do pictures for the when the baby is born. It's always hard, but for the most part, I've developed a pretty hard shell to it because it is my business, my livilihood, and I don't have a choice. There have been a few especially hard ones that I have had to power through, like the lady a few months ago who convoed us wanting Big Sister shirts for her twins...in size 6 months. It's always hard for me when a Big Brother or Sister comes through in a small size realizing that some people, many people, really get to have their babies back to back (not that I would want that, by any means, having babies really close together in age is not what I would have chosen for myself). But wow, it just is a reminder that some people really have no trouble whatsoever getting pregnant. Then a week or two ago, we had a lady send us a convo asking how soon we could get a Big Sister shirt to her. Usually, that means one of two things (we get that kind of request often) 1) She just found out she's pregnant and wants to use the shirt to share the news or 2) She is really close to her due date and needs it asap before she has the new baby. Neither one of these was her situation. When I asked her what date she needed the shirt by, she told me that she didn't really have an exact date, she wasn't actually pregnant yet, but they're trying and she just knows it's going to happen right away. And she probably will get pregnant right away, and it will probably work exactly as she planned, because some people just seem to get to have everything they want, exactly when they want it and how they want it. Then there are others, and I am NOT just talking about myself, but so many others who struggle and fight for what they want who don't get things to come so easy. And I don't know this lady, maybe she has had a terrible life and having babies is the only thing that works easily for her, I have no idea, I just know, she unknowingly picked the wrong person to make that statement to. :)

 I often think of the words that I heard so many times from one of my friends when she was going through fertility treatments in attempts to have a second child. They had several IUI cycles that failed one after the other. She often said that she doesn't understand why this isn't working and that she just wished that if God wasn't going to give her another child that He would take away her desire to have another child. At the time she was going through this, we hadn't even started our round of treatments for a second child, and after her three failed IUIs, I remember telling her, "I don't know how you keep going. I would never be able to do what you're doing." Lo and behold, we are stronger than we think we are. Five cycles later and ten babies lost, I'm still standing. Never imagined that I would be.

Please continue to keep us in your prayers. Pray for us to come to a decision about what direction we want to go. Pray that we would be able to come up with the financial resources to pursue that direction. Pray for me, and David as well, as we are still learning how to deal with our situation. Every tiny baby I see, every pregnant belly...hurts. I wish it didn't, I'm hoping eventually it won't, pray that I get there.