The Infertility Breakdown

I read a blog that's supposed to poke fun at the things we experience dealing with infertility. Most of the things on this blog are only funny in a wry, sarcastic way and some of the things, I admit, are a horrible attempt at humor. However, this particular posting caught my attention, probably because we're dealing with infertility and doing treatments to continue trying for a biological child while concurrently working with DCFS to try growing our family by adoption.

Sometimes, the humor comes a little close to actual truth... except for the multiple sex partners thing... even though donor sperm has been mentioned to us more than once.

The Infertility Breakdown

No doubt, during your infertility journey you've had the "Oh my God, will I ever get pregnant?" breakdown. This breakdown can occur at any time and at moment, leaving your partner to believe that you've actually gone insane. You cry. You feel angry. You don't want to talk to anyone who is pregnant or had children. You want to stay in bed all day. You google every pregnancy symptom. You stick a thermometer in your mouth several times a day. You examine that toilet paper every hour. You stop drinking coffee but then you start drinking it again. It's official. Infertility has driven you to insanity.

If Children's Social Services arrived at your house tomorrow, they would totally think this crazy woman wasn't fit to be a parent.

Children's Social Services: Would you consider yourself a friendly person?
You: Of course but I do glare at pregnant women or women who look like they could be preggers.
CSS: Are you a patient person?
You: Yes but I tend to get a tad anxious if the fertility clinic doesn't call me back right away.
CSS: Would you ever cheat on your spouse?
You: Of course not but I have wondered if having multiple sex partners would get me pregnant.
CSS: Are you financially stable to take care of a baby?
You: We were but then we spent thousands on fertility treatments. To save money on groceries, I can breastfeed until they are eight.
CSS: Do you ever think about stealing a baby?
You: Yes. But I wouldn't do it... I think.

I promise, Social Services Lady, I'm completely stable to raise a child. Now here, try some of my delicious Folic Acid, Pineapple, Rasberry Leaf Tea Brownies.

Monday's Musings

I'm thankful for... renewed hope in the midst of despair.

Outside my window... snowflakes that barely deserve the name. I'm wishing for a deep and burying snowfall and we haven't yet received one this winter.

I am going... to try drinking more than a gallon of water every day. I hate drinking water because I hate going to the bathroom every half-hour to hour of the day.

I am reading... Adopting the Hurt Child in preparation of hopefully adopting an older child (or children) from the foster care system... someday.

I am hoping... to be able to sense and follow God's nudges down this journey where I often don't hear Him anymore.

I am hearing... the sounds of a movie that I'm watching to keep me company in Gil's absence.

One of my favorite things... puppies who curl up and tuck their noses underneath their tails.

Here is a picture I'm sharing... a ferris wheel from when we went to the fair a year and a half ago with some of our closest friends. I love ferris wheels and the child-like wonder they bring back.

Blessings from Hai.ti

One of the blessings coming from the disaster of earthquake aftermath in Hai.ti is that many orphans are able to come home on humanitarian parole to their forever families to wait out the rest of the time until their adoptions can be finalized. This video shows someone from my online support group. I've been following her story since I joined HP in 2008. She was actually in Hai.ti visiting her son when the first quake hit and she had to leave him behind in the rubble. He was able to rejoin her and the rest of the family yesterday. I am still rejoicing!

It's Official...

I. Am. A. Dork.

Just in case it was ever in question before, I will admit it now. I've lost my mind! Maybe I've lived in the country too long already after my time as a "city" girl. Maybe I am just alone too much, working from home and staring at a beautiful landscape, yes, but one with just not enough action.

This is the view from my office window... the gorgeousness I get to bask in every day.


Today, I got a major case of the chuckles when I saw a big ol' semi truck (or tractor trailer as some call 'em) driving in reverse (yes, BACKwards) a little over a quarter-mile down our lane from the main road in order to pick up some cattle from the place just east of us.

And I chuckled even harder when I thought to run down and take a picture.


I do realize you can't tell the truck is driving in reverse from this picture; you'll just have to take my word for it. I am impressed by good backing up skills. Even more so when they're done with big rigs like this.

It doesn't take much to amuse me.

I realize I need a longer lens for my camera but this is as close as I could get from a window in the upper level of our home. Cows are being chased up onto the ramp and into the truck. Or, to be more accurate, into the trailer.


Have I mentioned how much I love this old barn? Oops, maybe I haven't mentioned it yet. Here's a link to a picture of the barn from my old photography blog I haven't updated in months. I even like the old water tank on stilts that is actually just on the other side of the fence from our property.


I grew up in the country where we raised our own beef and cut our own hay so this isn't "new" stuff for me. It's just been awhile, I guess. Either that or I really do spend too much time alone out here in the boondocks with nothing terribly exciting going on.

And in a completely un-related matter, we've been dealing with a lot of early daytime fog lately. Unlike a lot of people, I love the fog. It never lasts long and as long as I don't have to drive anywhere, I find it very comforting to be encased and blocked off from everything else around me. Yesterday morning, once it got a bit lighter outside, I had to take a quick break from work to walk outside and snap a few photos of our trees against the fog. I have a thing for trees... don't ask. This is probably one of my faves, though, of the trees just on the other side of the corrals adjoining the barn. I love the fading of color from bottom to top and how the trees are ghosted while the corrals are so stark in the foreground.


Yep... too long in the country. I love it.

Monday's Musings

I am thankful for... unconditional love of family by blood and family by choice. This past month and a half has been a huge struggle for me - physically, emotionally and spiritually. I am grateful for those who stand beside me and love me through it.

Outside my window... a pitch black sky with a beautiful shining sliver of moon and bright stars. It feels like a spring night out there rather than one supposedly in the dead middle of winter.

I am going... insane by reason of insomnia. I've been lucky enough to have my husband beside me every day and night for a solid month and this is our first night back into his traveling schedule. I miss him terribly.

I am reading... a fellow HP sister's blog and twitter feeds detailing their journey in trying to get their adoptive son home from Hai.ti, whether by immigration visa or huma.nitarian parole. She was in Hai.ti visiting her son when the quake struck.

I am hoping... for a better year than this past one (or three). Though there have been some joys and major blessings scattered in, the years since we were married have been tumultuous with grief, sorrow and being stressed to the max by crazy schedules and house projects.

I am hearing... a muted tv with news coverage of the destruction in Hai.ti. I thought looking at a tv screen with my burning eyes might prompt them to shut and allow me to go to sleep. So far, it's failed.

One of my favorite things... a raspberry limeade drink from one of my favorite burger places I figured out the recipe for! Mmm.

Here is a picture I'm sharing... our nieces (family by choice) square dancing; with those skirts, I just had to make them twirl! One of the last things I did before we moved was to go watch them at their performance capping off a session of square dance lessons. I still need to get them copies of these pictures. I just want them to know they are not forgotten and we miss them terribly.

Icing on the Cake

Here it is, the third and final installment of my update postings detailing our turmoil from the past month and a half. This is going to be about all the other "stuff" happening outside of our infertility and adoption journeys.

First of all, a little history about Gil's family. He has a relatively large extended family but they weren't a part of his everyday life like mine generally was. His dad was killed in a work accident when Gil was only 18 months old. So, as any newly widowed young mother would do, his mom moved back to be near her parents to raise her son and continue with school and life. So there was his mom, his grandparents, his uncle (mom's brother), and him. Because his dad was in heaven, his grandpa and uncle had a huge hand of being the "father figure" in his life. Five people. His family. They were (are) close-knit and that's the family who raised him... non-traditional yet traditional.

Two and a half years ago, his grandpa was unexpectedly diagnosed with gastric cancer. Unexpected because the man had never been sick a day in his life and was healthy as a horse. Even though retired (mechanic), he still worked 2-3 days a week for the local car auctions and walked 18 holes on the golf course about 3 times per week. He started experiencing reflux and then vomiting a week before getting an EGD. He got his diagnosis of cancer and was admitted to the hospital. Six weeks later, he came home to hospice and 10 days after that, had passed into the arms of Jesus. Two months from diagnosis to death. It was harsh for all of us involved.

Gil's uncle began the process of selling his home and quitting his job (he lived 350 miles away) and moved back to his hometown to help take care of his mother. He took some time to rest before looking for a job, as he tended to be a work-aholic and was understandably tired and worn out when he moved. Some back pain he'd been experiencing progressed to the point where he finally went to the doctor last February. Like his father, he'd never been sick before and had never been to the doctor and definitely never had a hospital stay. At 54 (now 55), he was diagnosed with stage IV (the worst stage) colon cancer, only a year and some months since his dad passed away. He was in the hospital for a couple of weeks and then discharged home. He continued having intense chemotherapy infusions for six months before insurance requirements made him go back to work in August. He began having what I call "maintenance" chemo, a quick once-every-two-weeks chemo injection. Around Thanksgiving, he started getting worse again and was told he would have to start the intense infusions again. Christmas was difficult for all of us - for uncle because of the increasing pain, for us because we now live so far away and are unable to help or spend time with him. He wanted to wait until after the holidays to begin chemo again and two weeks ago had his first bout. He reacted horribly. Last week, he was admitted to the hospital again... and he was diagnosed with having shingles on top of everything else.

So in less than 3 years, Gil lost his grandpa and is bound to lose his uncle, both men who were very important and close to him (and now me) as any father figure would be. As hard as losing Grandpa was, it's been extremely difficult dealing with his uncle because of age and distance.

Also, just days before Christmas, we came into a situation where someone we've always been "friends" with damaged that relationship. It came out of nowhere and sucker-punched us pretty hard. We were completely caught off guard and it stunned us pretty badly. We're still reeling in those effects and trying to understand why people claiming to be friends can act in such atrocious ways.

I've also been emotionally distressed for my brother, who's been persecuted beyond all sense of reason. It's difficult to watch someone you love so much deal with pain that we all inevitably deal with in some way, shape or form growing up. A person's twenties are supposed to be fun and carefree but I've never changed so much as a person as I did in my twenties... and it took a lot of hard knocks and being beaten down to learn how to survive and become the person I am. I haven't finished learning or growing yet, but hopefully I've gotten through the worst of it.

I think that pretty much sums up the past month and a half. When added all together with the infertility and adoption junk, let's just say I've been very stressed, saddened and pained and some days, it feels like I can barely breathe. I've begun to find that though I consider myself a pretty open person, the longer we deal with the infertility crap, the less I want to talk about any of it. It hurts too much... and the pain from the infertility makes everything else in life hurt way more than it's supposed to.

Hurry Up & Wait

Now for the adoption update...

We started the actual adoption process almost two years ago. It took us about two months to decide which route we were going to go, infant vs. older child, domestic vs. international while thinking of all the other things that come along with it, such as private/closed vs. open. I've been asked multiple times: Why don't you just adopt? Well, honestly, there's no "just" about it.

We chose to go through the state's department of Child and Family Services for now, hoping and praying for an infant/toddler placement but open to older children up to age five or seven, depending on how many children are in the sibling set. We're open to receiving up to three children in one placement. There are many reasons we chose this particular path toward adoption rather than going through an infant-focused agency, the biggest factor, honestly, probably being money. I don't think people realize a typical domestic infant adoption costs approximately $15,000-$20,000. And the agencies in this state have sliding scale fees based on income. For some reason, I have a real problem that I would have to pay more than someone else for the same service. This may be something we'll pursue in the future, but for now, we feel comfortable that we're where we need to be on this. God has continually brought us back to DCFS. It took us about six months to get through the interrogations and investigations and educations before we were officially licensed.

We just went through our first annual renewal of our foster/adopt license with the state. So even though we started this process two years ago, we were only licensed just over a year ago. I think ALL parents should be fingerprinted and have house safety inspections and take classes to learn how to deal with certain child behaviors, but that's another story entirely. Our license went from being approved for two children ages 0-5 to now being three children ages 0-12! Wowzers! We're still most comfortable with ages no higher than seven, but this would allow us to act on a situation if there were multiple siblings of differing ages if we felt led to at that time.

We made the decision we did not want to do foster care. Emotionally, we cannot open ourselves up like that. It's really difficult when we desire children so badly so see how awful some "parents" treat their children, then to have to take those children in, love them, and work our arses off to "reunify" them with their "parents"? I believe in second chances, but not third, fourth and fifth chances when it comes to the life and well-being of children. We can't do it. Our hearts can't do it.

But every adoption essentially starts out as a "foster" placement. Laws in this state are that you are unable to officially adopt your child until s/he's been in your care for at least six months. We have opened ourselves up to the possibility of a "legal risk" placement, meaning it's a foster placement and TPR (termination of parental rights) hasn't happened yet but there's a high probability that reunification will not work out.

That's what we're open to... and we're still waiting.

Last year, at this time, we had two very likely possibilities of private adoptions that we put our hearts fully into. January 2009, there was a set of twins referred to us by a mutual friend... the mother was told all about us, shown pictures, and she really desired to have us parent her babies. However, the tribes had already gotten involved in the situation and although we were licensed to care for them, and I have tribal affiliation although am not enrolled, they chose not to allow it because we would've been almost 400 miles away and too far to "effectively" allow visitations and other things, even though my job would've allowed me to work remotely from wherever I needed to be. After working on that situation for a month, it fell through.

February 2009, the next month, Gil's mom referred a situation to us and we met with a birth-mother's liaison about a baby boy due to be born in March. Meetings were done, photos exchanged, the mother stated she wanted to place with us, wanted a private, closed adoption so there would be no contact, her family wasn't supportive and she didn't want them involved. At the last minute, she changed her mind and placed with a cousin.

It was difficult for us. We went through all that work to become licensed adoptive parents and to have two situations so suddenly come out of nowhere and then to fall through... it was hard. I was also coming off of four unsuccessful cycles of clomid and I think the combined effects of both situations threw me into a very deep depression for a few months. In that next few months, we found out Gil's uncle had stage IV (the worst stage) colon cancer only a year and a half after his grandpa passed away from unexpected gastric cancer, I had exploratory surgery, Gil was promoted and we had to sell our home, find a new home, and move... which all factored into my depression, as well.

When we moved, we had to be re-evaluated with the new county and go through the home inspection and all that stuff again. Then our regular license was up for renewal in November so we went through it all... again! We just got our license back in mid-December. There have been no potential placements and no more adoption leads since a year ago.

In the meantime, we've been looking at waiting children profiles listed throughout the U.S. We currently have our homestudy submitted on three different sibling sets with an out-of-state DCFS. Family selection processes are long and drawn out so it may be some time before we even hear if we've been considered or not. I'm hoping our out-of-state status won't affect us too much; most of these children they state they want some level of continued contact with bio-family to remain, even though parental rights have been terminated. Which is fine with us... to an extent. But it's not like we'll be able to make multiple visits a year to a different state hundreds and hundreds of miles away.

So... there we are. In the past month and a half, we've suffered an unsuccessful IUI, celebrated 5 years of infertility, and submitted our home study on 3 different sibling sets. The next post will be unrelated to our journey of trying to grow our family and explain some of the other things that have been going on in our lives lately.

I'm not looking for sympathy by coming out with all this, maybe just some understanding. Understanding as to why I may burst into tears at odd moments, understanding as to why I'm sequestering myself away from social activities, understanding as to why - as much as I love you and rejoice with you - I don't want my continual pain and sadness to affect my interactions with you. I want to be a positive presence in your life. I don't like being sad all the time. I'm struggling with the anger and sadness I have because I am sad. I know; it's messed up. So please, just bear with me.

Abandoned and Forgotten

Infertility sucks.

I'll start with that very blunt, two word statement. After all these years, the times of intense grief and sadness happen less frequently, leaving a dull ache in its place and it's manageable for the most part. Then, very unexpectedly, just when you think you've mastered it, it rears its ugly head and smacks you back and beats you down until you're writhing in pain and not sure if you'll ever see sunshine again. Infertility sucks.

Things were going good... but somehow the holidays always bring out the worst while bringing out the best. The first news is that our IUI was negative. I know it rarely happens on the first one but I thought, "It must be a sign! We could conceive on Gil's birthday and give birth on mine! How great of a gift would that be?!" Yeah, well, no gift. We found out 8 hours into the new year that our IUI had not worked. I was still suffering all the side effects from all the drugs from our medicated cycle (I get intense pelvic/ovarian cramping from the hCG and being on progesterone). I stopped the progesterone and was hit hard from that effect two days later.

Unfortunately, the timing won't work for us to go through IUI again this month. And financially, February and March are our most difficult months of the year so we're going to postpone another IUI until April, if the timing then will work. It really stinks to have make those kinds of decisions and worry about spending so much just to try - with no guarantee - just try to become pregnant.

The new year also brought us an anniversary... not the kind to celebrate, but it's now officially been five years since we started trying to conceive. I knew the new year was going to be emotionally difficult because of that, but then the pregnancy announcements started coming in... four of them so far.

Please know that I do not begrudge and am not jealous of those who are able to easily achieve pregnancy. I am truly ecstatic at the miracle of pregnancy and rejoice in the gift my friends are given. But it does hurt. It rips my heart out. And right now I'm hurting even worse because I'm feeling guilty and pained because I am so hurt by such announcements. I'm mad that I can't celebrate a new life without crying for the one(s) I don't have. I want so much to jump with joy and start planning baby showers and discussing name options and buying those cute little baby clothes... but I can't. It's all a reminder of something I can't have, and very possibly never will... and it's the only thing I've ever wanted (besides the mandatory husband to go along with it, of course!).

Friday I was knocked to my knees with grief and pain at the unfairness of it all. Over the past year, I've lost the ability to pray. I go into His presence and open myself up to Him, but I'm unable to say anything. He knows what's in my heart and mind already but I feel like my words are meaningless anyway... and I was beginning to sound like a broken record. In the beginning, I would ask for strength... I soon learned to stop because I was only given more things to bear. I asked for a sense of peace, I asked for patience, for emotional healing, for whatever... I never asked specifically for a baby. So I decided to try that. It didn't work. So I stopped praying... praying with words anyway, because I don't even know what to pray for anymore. On Friday, when the grief came out of nowhere and smacked me down hard because of something I heard in a song (God always speaks to me through music), I went to my HP sisters to ask them to pray for me because I couldn't do it myself... and I knew they of all people would understand exactly what I needed prayer for.

One of my sisters sent me a written-out prayer of how she prays for me so I can have "words" and to be able to pray along with her. I was bawling so hard while reading it that I couldn't finish the first two attempts. One of the things she expressed to me was the knowledge that I'm feeling "abandoned and forgotten". Until now, I'd never seen it that way. It fits.

New Year's Void

I've been void of words lately. Forgive me. The past month, though it has brought many joyous moments, has also brought many intense sadnesses and stresses. As "open book" of a person I am, I'm finding that the longer and harder my struggles become, the more I keep to myself and I haven't wanted to talk about it.

I will update. I will probably do so in multiple postings. Please bear with me. And if you think about it, please lift us up in a quick prayer.

More to come soon.