thanksgiving

we got to have thanksgiving dinner with kennedy this year. we were very excited to have her in utah. we celebrated wednesday night because that was the only night she was allowed to be with us. after stuffing our faces, we got everyone together for a group picture/video...

then mike got so excited/nervous that he pushed the pause button on the camera. but what he said was "on the count of three, everybody say cheese. 1...2....carly's pregnant!"

 

and here are the reactions we got:

 

 

then he realized he pushed pause and started recording again...

 

 and in case you can't hear, he said "oh, and there's more news...it's two."

 

so yes...we have more than ever to be thankful for this year! i am 17 weeks and due may 11, but will likely deliver in april, just a couple of weeks before we finish building our house. life is about to get really awesome around here.

 

while i am so excited i can hardly stand it, my heart hurts because i know some of you are praying for the same miracle. i'm praying for you too. i'm so sorry if this announcement brings pain or sadness. i've been there, and i don't think i'll soon forget what infertility feels like. you are not alone, and i know God will answer your prayer in His own time and His own way just as he has ours.

 

breathe.

image on my pinterest here

i am breathing. and considering the hell we've been through the last few weeks, i don't care if it's the only thing i've done all day. yesterday our doctor asked if we're ready to try again. can he really be asking that? have the shots and appointments and blood draws and retrieval and fertilization and freezing and embryos and the heartbeat and the miscarriage already come and gone? he told me to take a deep breath. all i can do is keep breathing.

i'm trying to just let myself feel right now instead of pushing it all aside, and i feel like i let people down. i feel stupid for telling anyone about IVF and for telling a select few that it worked. i feel stupid for thinking it would work and at one point thinking there might be two babies cooking. i feel stupid for getting excited, making future plans, dreaming of names and a nursery. i feel sad and discouraged. i am bereft.

but in the moments of my deepest sorrow, i have also felt the most intense gratitude and humility. i am incredibly thankful that for 8 short weeks, i was pregnant. i was pregnant! i am thankful we heard a heartbeat; it's worth fighting for. i'm thankful we can keep fighting. i'm thankful for my husband. as cliche as it sounds, he's the reason i get out of bed each day. i'm thankful for our doctor and a wonderful staff of nurses who are rooting for us. it's refreshing to have a doctor who knows what we've been through, reads our chart, knows our names and cares as much as we do. i'm thankful for his optimism that using our "second string" of embryos, we can achieve a healthy pregnancy.

i'm also thankful to God for showing His hand through all of this and for inspiring so many to reach out to us through cards, notes, and flowers. i'm thankful He inspired my friend Taylee to send me these verses of scripture. while this has been a time to weep, a time to heal, and a time to break down, i know that God will build us up so we can laugh, dance, and feel peace again. He will make everything beautiful in His time.

Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8,11

1 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
11 He hath made every thing beautiful in his time.

infertility awareness week

it's national infertility awareness week.

it took me a while to open up about our infertility. i figured if i never talked about it, it wasn't real. i also worried that i would become defined by infertility if i told anyone about it, and i didn't want that. i have come to realize that infertility does not have the power to take away who you are: your kindness, your happiness, your smile and your laughter. it's a choice and almost every day for the last 5 years i have chosen not to let infertility define who i am or take away my happiness.

we've had some pretty funny times because of our infertility, including that one time when...

-a very expensive bill for a certain test which you normally wouldn't tell anyone about was sent to mike's parents instead of us. what a fun conversation to have with the in-laws!

-an awkward technician once smiled and said, "oh honey, this shot is MUCH too big for your arm." i felt like responding as steve martin might, saying, "do i! know! you!?

-that same awkward technician opened the door on two seperate occasions while i was still getting ready for an ultrasound. so basically i was standing there with my pants off and he walked in. twice. ever heard of knocking?

-we went to our first appointment with a new specialist last year and his nurse, seriously lacking personality, completed her routine check list of questions and in the most monotone and unconcerned voice asked me, "do you feel threatened by anyone around you." mike looked at me and said, "don't you dare answer that." i don't think the nurse even noticed, but i had a hard time keeping a straight face.

so infertility isn't all bad! it's funny and awkward and humbling and everything in between.

i plan to check in later this week for one more post. in the mean time, check out this article for ways to have fun during national infertility awareness week.

hang on to hope

i wasn't going to post this, but after reading a friend's blog this morning, i felt like i should. if i can't laugh and be a bit sarcastic about our situation, i don't know how i will get through it.

i loved whitney's funny post: infertility: the board game. as she says, infertility is as much fun as a barrel of monkeys! i would just add a few spaces:

*you are asked for the 1000th time "when is it your turn." skip your turn and wait patiently until everyone else has their turn two or three times, then spin again.
*go to hospital for hystosalpinogram. lose $2000 but there's nothing wrong with you!
*doctor forgets to read your medical chart. go back to the start and lose all your money.
*switch doctors for the third time. go back to the start and lose all your money.
*receive a perfectly-timed text or email from someone who simply says "you are great" or "thinking about you." move forward 3 spaces.
*babysit other people's kids (or teach the 3-year-olds at church) and wonder why you want kids in the first place. move forward one and back two.

i keep getting told that i don't know how hard it is to have a baby. i've honestly lost count of the things my family members have said to me this week that begin or end with "well you just won't understand until you've had a baby....you just don't know how hard it is." and they are right. i don't know how hard it is. but i have tried my very best to be loving and supportive and concerned for those who are experiencing the trials of motherhood. really all i can offer to those experiencing the "hard" times as a mother is my empathy. maybe you don't know what it's like to experience infertility (or a myriad of other difficult situations), but you can be empathetic.

i guess this is all to say that the empathy that has been extended to me and the empathy i've felt for others gives me a lot of hope, and the final space on my own infertility board game would have to be hope. (was that a really awkward transition or attempt to bring it all together? sorry.)

i'm hopeful that one day i'll read this and laugh because i'm knee deep in the trials of motherhood. i'm hopeful that one day i won't have to fight back the tears and force the smile when someone announces a pregnancy or i hold a new baby or see a pregnant woman, hopeful that i can repay all the kind acts and words that have been extended to me, and hopeful that i will love my babies all the more for having felt so much pain at not being able to have them.

and for those of you who are also suffering, i hope the same things.

hang on to hope.

no words

it's been an interesting few days around here.

first: we were pulled over by a cop who accused us of smoking pot.

read that again and please laugh as hard as we did when he asked us, so have you smoked any pot lately? the cop even called back up because you know, mike and i have a pretty bad drug habit and have been known to resist arrests before so he was definitely going to need some help with us.

the cop's basis for our smoking pot (we were pulled over for having a burnt out tail light) was that mike's eyes were red. why else would he have red eyes unless he had been using illegal drugs, right?  the cop kept shining his flashlight through our car and in our faces, and when he wasn't satisfied with our insistence that we hadn't been smoking nor have we ever, he asked, "well do you have any open food in the car? i smell something that just really smells like pot." we did have some chips in the car and a diet coke in the back seat. we offered him a drink and a taste of our chips, but he wasn't interested.

it was the weirdest thing, and you better believe i wrote a long letter to the editor about this idiot of a cop. if nothing else, it was motivation to clean the car and try to scrub out that pot smell.

second: i offended at least one person with what i wrote here, and i'm truly sorry. i didn't mean to belittle motherhood or those of you who are raising babies. believe me--i want to be a mother more than anything else. that's my problem: all i want is to be a mom and sometimes, nothing else matters. in the midst of our quest to have a baby, i often lose sight of my worth as a daughter of God, failing to recognize my capability to do great things simply because i'm not a mother right now.

i was just trying to say that i think we are all loved. we each have a divine worth that is independent of anything else. God loves us, and i believe he wants to make something great of us, something even greater than we can comprehend. that's all.

even greater

being brave on the blog today. and it's long. you've been warned!

C.Jane has done it again. i've re-read this post 100 times. i’m nodding my head, i’m crying, i’m wishing i were as good with words as she is, because this is what i’ve wanted to say. this is what i want to say to people who don’t get it. to the mean but perhaps well-meaning ladies at church. to the woman who asked “when is it your turn” every time she saw me holding a baby. to the man who rebuked me and mike saying, “you’ve both graduated from college, you both have good jobs, you're making good money, you should be having kids.” to the woman who told me i was “ornery because you hate being around babies.” to the sister-in-law who offered to be a surrogate because she gets pregnant “as soon as he looks at me.” to the countless people who have offered their two cents on an easy fix: just adopt. just lose weight. just see this doctor—he has a 98% success rate!  just try acupuncture. just eat better. just have more faith. just “practice” more. just relax: your time will come.

it’s not just about being pregnant or having a baby anymore, and especially right now when i couldn't be much more infertile or aware of it and not sure how to move forward, i’m realizing that it’s not even about a baby, or lack thereof. infertility and the longing, the emptiness, the excitement, the discouragement, the hope, the heaviness, the sorrow, the laughter (and i have some funny stories to tell some day)--they are all the symptoms, but not the cause.

the cause as C. Jane puts it is “not seeing who I really [am], with or without a baby.”

it wasn’t a minor breakthrough when i realized that who i am, and my value as a daughter of God, is not defined by my infertility.

several years ago i had this skewed mindset that i was trying to do things "right," so God loved me and i’d be a mother soon. i had based my worth on becoming a mother. when that didn't happen, i seriously doubted my capability of doing anything.

silly, right? i was basing my worth on something i have absolutely no control over. i was basing His love on all the wrong things, and i was looking for evidence of His love in events that have yet to happen.

i remember driving home from work several months ago and pleading, "my burden is too heavy. i can't carry it anymore. i am too tired. i am done. please. please help me."

i had said the same prayer a dozen times before, but this time was different. i think the difference was instead of saying the prayer i wanted, i said the prayer i needed, and i was open to hearing the answer. i didn't suddenly become pregnant. i didn't have an epiphany about what medical procedure to try next. my situation didn't change at all, in fact, but a clear realization came to me: you are a daughter of God. you are valuable. you are loved. and that is enough.

my burden didn't feel so heavy when i allowed myself to feel that His love is enough, and i began to understand that He loves me not because of something i have or haven’t done—He loves me because i am His. and because i am His, i am capable of becoming something even greater than a mother.