Our Battle With Infertility: Back to the Beginning

Hey, friends! I realize that I haven’t posted since…August? There may not be any of you out there anymore. If that is the case, I deserve it. Luckily (?), today’s post is as much for me as it is for you.

Chris and I (and typically, our budget) love DIY projects and making our house a home a little bit at a time. Don’t worry, if you are friends or family of ours who haven’t gotten to visit lately, we have more projects in the works than we did for ALL of 2013. Some of them will be posted very soon and we hope you will feel the virtual welcome we extend for you to come on in and make yourselves at home.

I, however, have always been an open book…except about this one big thing. Besides Jesus and Chris, this one big thing is the most important thing to me (us) and I’ve finally just gotten tired of keeping quiet about it. So, Chris and I have finally decided to break our silence and address the elephant that is literally living in the room with us at. all. times.

Backstory: I was married before. Chris was engaged and a month out of a wedding, also. We were both young and, of course, had a “5-year plan” with our previous significant others. In my plan, I got married in 2008 and we were going to start trying for babies in 2009. I have literally wanted to be a mom for as long as I can remember. When I was born, my mom wanted to include “Danielle” or “Heather” in my name (hello 80s!) but my dad wasn’t feeling it. When I found that out, I hypothesized (at like, age 8, mind you) that I would have boy/girl twins with the names Heather Danielle and Daniel Harrison. Those poor children, haha. As time went on, my future-family-fantasy grew to include another boy and another girl. I wanted 4 kids. I grew up in a house by myself (sibling-wise). I really wanted a big family and I didn’t want an odd number, partly because I’m OCD and partly because I didn’t want anyone suffering from middle-child syndrome. I became a teacher. I practically adopted some of my students. I became personal friends with families. I got divorced. My 5-year plan came CRASHING down, to say the least. Lowest of my lows, by far.

Then, I decided I didn’t want kids. I didn’t want a husband. My divorce was God’s way of telling me that I was a terrible wife and that I shouldn’t make plans and that all of my plans were crap. It was a dark day. Then, Chris and I hung out. It was a very different feeling from before. He had moved to a different city and we didn’t see each other or talk very frequently. Then, all of a sudden, he came back to visit and everything was…weird. I talked to him about my feelings of failure (I mean, he’s a minister, that’s his job, right?) and he talked to me about how he had felt that way after the deterioration of his engagement. His relationship had been 7 years long and they had grown up together and planned to grow old together. I met him for the first time a little over a year after the end of his relationship and his pain was still evident back then. We continued to talk and realized we had feelings and that maybe, just maybe, God really did want us to be someone’s spouse, maybe even each other’s. Thanks, God. We decided that making all of those plans hadn’t helped us before so we would try to just be married for a little while. Chris was working part-time at a church over an hour away and trying to have kids just seemed like too much…but God had brought us this far in relationships and after being friends for 6 years…so we had PLENTY of time for a family.

This is from our engagement shoot by the lovely Rachel May Photography. *Finally* we found where we belong. 🙂

In June of 2011 I caught wind of a rumor that my friend from work was pregnant. She wasn’t making a “big announcement”, but was OK with it being public knowledge so, I went and asked her if it was true. Then, I cried. (She is a really great mom.) I left work that day and I KEPT CRYING. If you know me personally, at all, you know this is strange. 1) I hate to cry. 2) It was a Wednesday and we had church, but I could not get it together. I believe I actually went to eat dinner at church and then went home and cried some more. Honestly, I had NO idea why I was crying. I prayed and cried and prayed and cried and realized that this friend of mine wasn’t planning on being pregnant, but she was. It made me realize that I REALLY wanted kids and I didn’t want to wait. I wasn’t mad at her. In fact, I went and bought that baby some onesies right that second because I knew she would be the most precious little baby ever. She is gorgeous, by the way. But it made me realize that I have this amazing husband and we know we eventually want a family so why would we NOT want whatever God was trying to bring us, even if it was soon and scary and our finances weren’t 100% stable. I think that some part of me had a tiny intuition that we might not get pregnant right away (probably best described as paranoia) so, maybe we should start sooner so we have time to iron out any wrinkles, right? Weird analogy, but accurate for how I felt at the time.

Chris came home from church that night and we talked about it extensively. I cried some more because I was just so caught off guard at my jealousy that someone was accidentally pregnant and I wasn’t. I mean, duh, of course I wasn’t. I was trying NOT to be pregnant and doing a darn good job of preventing it! Even in my first marriage, I was working NOT to get pregnant the whole time because we HAD. A. PLAN! Well, Chris and I realized that kids were what we wanted, even if it was sooner than we had originally thought we would. I mean, he’s a youth minister and I’m an elementary school teacher. It’s not exactly a secret that we love kids. I knew he would be a fabulous father and I could not WAIT to see him in that role. We decided that since I was supposed to start new birth control in the middle of June (during the last week of school) it would be perfect timing to discontinue the b.c. and start trying that next month. We were totally aware that it takes time for hormones to work out of the system, but we knew there was an app for that (haha- seriously!) so I started taking my temperature and monitoring all of my fluids (gross, but true) and we started to try to figure out WHEN we could possibly get pregnant. It was SO exciting for us! We couldn’t believe that God had overwhelmed me with that crazy jealousy and made me realize how badly I wanted a baby. [Sidenote: The jealousy did NOT negatively affect my friendship. I love my mom-friend, even more now, and her baby girl is so. freaking. precious. I love knowing their family and she is 100% supportive of me/us. She actually felt sad when I told her- just this fall- that I cried the day I found out she was pregnant because it made me realize I wanted babies, too. She’s awesome.]

So, we embarked on our little journey of trying to go from a family of 2 to a family of 3. As you may well have realized by now, that was 31 months ago, but who’s counting? We are. We didn’t know it at the time, but June of 2011 began our journey battle with infertility.

This is us in the fall of 2011, not too long after we started trying. I mean, who wouldn’t want these folks as parents, am I right?!

You may not understand why I started writing about this. If that’s the case, you surely won’t understand why I write the posts to come. During this whole journey, until relatively recently, we have felt VERY alone in this. It’s not the fault of any of our family or friends. Infertility comes with a LOT of shame. We decided to start writing about it because I truly believe that someone out there is googling this and there just aren’t a lot of resources that make you feel much better. I’m hoping that this sheds some light, answers some questions, or just lets someone out there know they’re not alone. There will be more to come, some with personal details. All we ask is that, if you comment, you comment politely. If you’re related to us or consider us close friends and you don’t know MANY of the details of our journey, don’t feel hurt or offended, please. For one thing, we can’t really juggle anyone else’s feelings. For two, it is NOT personal. It is hard for us. It is scary. Sometimes, it’s too much to verbalize. Writing it down, I hope, will help us AND someone else.

To those of you who do know and have been supporting us, thanks. If you’ve been praying for us, thanks for that, too. Keep ’em coming! 🙂 I promise we will be back with house updates soon, but, we will also be filling you in on our story of the last 31 months. AND last, but not least, if you or someone you know is battling with infertility, there are great blogs that make you feel less alone. One fabulous blog friend I’ve gotten to know is Bethany from Sawdust & Embryos. Her story keeps that light glowing at the end of the tunnel. 🙂

To read about the first year of our battle, click here.

To read about year 2, click here.