Back to Reality

We are back from our 6 day vacation up North! We had a great time :-) We left last Friday morning and headed to Sioux Falls. We arrived at Shirley's house in the late afternoon and decided to have a BBQ that night for dinner. We had a great time catching up with the family. Glen's grandparents were able to come over for a while and visit too. Saturday Glen, David and I went to the Falls to walk around the park. Most of it was blocked off due to recent flooding in the area. We later headed out to the Sioux Empire Fair to have some good fried foods! We watched a hypnotist while we were there as well. Troy, Julie, John and David all left on Sunday. Glen and I went to dinner with Shirley and then headed over to the B & G Way, a local favorite ice cream shop! Monday morning Glen and I headed up to Minneapolis. Our first stop was to tour St. Paul's Cathedral. I have never seen such a beautiful church. It is close to 100 years old and the paintings and intricate detail on all of the walls was amazing. The next stop was the Mall of America. Boy is that a big mall! We walked around all 3 levels looking thru a lot of the stores. I was hoping they had different stores than we have at home but it seemed to be all the same stuff we already have here. After leaving the mall we went to dinner at a Diner's, Drive-in's and Dive's restaurant. We ordered a pizza and it was great! Tuesday morning we went to yet another DDD recommendation, Al's Breakfast, which was on the campus of University of Minnesota. I had the best waffle of my life! Glen was completely impressed that I actually finished the entire waffle. We then toured the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. That is the place famous for the spoon and cherry sculpture. Then it was time for the Twins v. White Sox game. This was the highlight of our trip for Glen! We toured the new stadium before the game started. Luckily, the Twins winded up winning the game in the 10th inning! Glen was a happy camper. That ended our trip on a good note. We headed back home on Wednesday. We had a great trip and was happy to see family as well.

While we were on vacation we received a phone call from our adoption agency to set up a time for them to do our in-home meeting. So, we actually did that yesterday. I woke up yesterday with a lot of anxiety and anticipation as to what to expect for the meeting. As soon as the social worker arrived and we introduced ourselves, I began to feel completely at ease. She was super nice and knew what we were going through because she is the mother of 2 adopted children! She interviewed Glen and I together and then separate, we took a tour of our home and then it was over. It was so much nicer than I had ever expected. It is great to have that part done. We now have a workshop to attend on Friday night. Glen and I also decided tonight which referral service we are going to work through so we have sent the email off to get started on their paperwork. According to the service, they typically place a child in less than 1 year! We are looking forward to the next step of the adoption process with the hopes that we find our baby soon!

Vacation

What a crazy week this has been. Every night we have had something going on and it feels good now that it is all done. We turned in our homestudy workbook yesterday so we are one step closer to finding our child! The agency will call within a week to schedule our in-home meeting. Then we have a workshop to attend on August 27th, which is also our 5th anniversary. We thought that was a very appropriate way to celebrate our anniversary this year!

Glen and I are on vacation! We are headed to Sioux Falls for the weekend to visit Glen's family. We plan to spend time with Shirley, David, Julie, Troy and John. On Monday we are headed to Minneapolis. This will me my first trip that far north. We are hoping to go to a Twins baseball game on Tuesday if there are tickets available. The Twins built a new stadium this year so every game seems to be sold out. I am also looking forward to the Mall of America! I have been saving my "clothing fund" for a few months now so we should be able to have a little fun!

We will keep you updated as our adoption process moves forward. I am now collecting pictures so I can start our profile book. This is a scrap book of our life. Being the crafty person I am, this is the fun part :-)

The Journey Begins

Well, it has been way too long since the last time I wrote - I do apologize. We literally have been so busy I haven't had the time to sit down and write all the exciting things going on with us.

After much thought and prayer over the past few months, Glen and I finally decided to pursue adoption! On July 15th we met with Adoption & Beyond to discuss our plan with them. Steffany Aye, the director at Adoption & Beyond, was very welcoming and gave us great information on where to begin our journey. We left that evening with a Homestudy workbook in hand. If you can guess, I had almost the entire book filled out by the end of the weekend! At this point we are done with all the paperwork, getting our physicals next week and then turning in the workbook on Thursday, August 12th. We are completely ready for this and super excited for this great journey of finding our child to begin. As many of you know, we sent out an email telling everyone of our decision to adopt. We were hoping to find a birthmother on our own but will also be using a referral service that searches the US to match us with a birthmother. This type of service usually finds a match within a year or less. We are keeping our fingers crossed and praying that our match comes sooner rather than later. We still have our in-home study to do, hopefully within the next month. This is when a social worker will visit our home to make sure it is kid friendly and safe. Then they will interview Glen and me separately and together. After that meeting we will be on the waiting list! I hope to keep everyone posted on this blog with all of our updates as we go through this journey. We have a lot of reading to do along with other usual life activities so I hope to make time to sit down and write. I have started a handwritten journal to document everything we do as well. I hope to one day give this journal to our son or daughter so they will know how we came to be there parents - it is titled "Our Journey to You." Just writing that title makes me feel so blessed that we are doing this and following what we feel God has lead us to do. We want to raise the child that is meant for us, however that child comes into our life.

We have also started our Marriage Prep classes with an engaged couple. Glen and I have enjoyed this tremendously. Discussing all of the topics with the couple has been great for us as well. I can tell this is something that we were meant to do and it feels great!

Over One Hurdle

I have been going to Dr. Mary for about 5 weeks now. I have some good news to report - I actually ovulated on my own this month!! As far as I am aware, this has not happened on it's own for over 3 years or longer! So, we are over one hurdle for this month. Glen and I are very excited that my body is responding naturally to the acupuncture treatments. I love going as it is very relaxing and a great time to just be quiet and still. Dr. Mary thinks that I shouldn't have a problem getting pregnant so I am going to go with what she is telling me :-) She said she is impatient and hopes that it happens this month. I, on the other hand, am being patient and will take it as it comes! I just love Dr. Mary and honestly feel the best I have in several years.

Yoga has been going well too. I am taking 2 classes a week at the Zen Zone in Lee's Summit. My Monday night instructor is very calming and makes the experience very relaxing. The Wednesday night instructor is very energetic and makes the room full of happiness with her sparkling personality. Two completely different experiencing each time. The part I look forward to every class is when we lay flat on our backs with eye patches over our eyes and blankets on us and the instructor goes to each person and gives them about a 30 second neck massage! I love massages even if they are only 30 seconds!!

My sister, Shelley, and my two nieces, Morgan & Mckenna, are coming in to visit this Friday and staying for a week. We are so excited to spend some time with them. They usually come visit every summer but were not able to make it last summer. We love hanging out on the boat and having a good time over at my mom's house. This year Glen and I are taking a few days of vacation while they are here. We will have 5 days off work over the 4th of July weekend. I can't remember the last time I had 5 days of vacation - maybe our honeymoon 5 years ago.

Glen and I have become a "certified" marriage prep lead couple at our church. When an engaged couple comes to the church to get married they are required to take a Marriage Prep Class. The engaged couple will come over to our house for 5 sessions. The sessions include such things as finances, intimacy, communication and religion. We are to discuss the different situations that they need to talk about before marriage. Every couple we know that has lead these classes say that they received as much out of it as the engaged couple. We are really looking forward to this experience. We have already been notified of our first couple.

Acupuncture

Over the past few weeks I have had several people mention doing acupuncture for infertility. I actually tried acupuncture last year before I started going to Dr. Starks. At that time I had no idea I had endometriosis so I don't believe the doctor knew how to treat me correctly - due to no fault of his own. Shortly after starting the acupuncture I started going to Dr. Starks. It was all becoming a little too expensive so I stop going to Dr. Sherman. It was so relaxing and I felt great afterwards but at the time I needed to choose between the two and the acupuncture didn't win.

Well, after several great success stories that I have heard recently we have decided that I should give acupuncture a try again. I was recommended by a friend to Dr. Mary Zhang at the Chinese Medicine Clinic. Last Thursday was my first appointment. Within 10 minutes of meeting with Mary she felt that I might have some sort of blood clotting/flow issue that is enabling me to get pregnant. So she wrote out a plan for me to follow with her. I will go to her 2x per week for 6 weeks and then 1x per week for the following 6 weeks. I am also taking a handful of herbs that she has recommended will help me with ovulation as well as my endometriosis and anything else that might be wrong! I have stopped all caffeine intake as well as no alcohol. My workouts have changed from bootcamp to yoga. And next week Dr. Mary will go over a nutritional plan with me. So, it is pretty much a complete turn around of my entire life. I figured things weren't working out the way I had been doing them so why not try the complete opposite! It has now been 5 days since my first appointment with Mary and I can already tell a difference in the way my body feels. I seem to be a lot more relaxed as well. If anything, I feel good! Over the past few months I have been so bloated from all the hormones and pills that my other doctor had been giving me. I just needed a changed of pace and wanted to feel normal again. We have decided to skip this month's IUI and wait another cycle or two before trying that again.

We are also still exploring adoption. We have been reading "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Adoption" that was recommended to us by a family who has adopted. Once we feel comfortable with the research we have been working on we plan to start meeting with a few agencies and hopefully setting up a profile with one or two. It is by no means an easy process so we want to make sure we know as much as we can before we jump in!

The Suspense is Over

The suspense is over......we didn't have success with the IUI this month. We were very upset to hear this news but life will go on! I actually went in today to have my baseline sonogram to see if we could start another round of the IUI. Unfortunately, my lining was too thick again and I had a few cysts. So, I am back on the meds to thin the lining for another 3 weeks. What an evil cycle it is - this thing called infertility! We will go back in around the first week of June to see if we are "approved" to try one more time.

In the meantime, Glen and I have been researching, praying and weighing our options on other methods of expanding our family. We attended a class on Natural Family Planning that our church offered a few weeks ago. It was a very informational class that we plan to start practicing after we give the IUI at least one more shot. It is a method of charting your cycle daily and then working with a practitioner to come up with a plan to try and "fix" the fertility problem rather than bypass it like the current program we are on. It is by no means a cure or a sure way of obtaining pregnancy but it is another alternative to in-vitro.

We are also starting the informational process of adoption. This has been an option that I have been interested in my entire life. We would like more than one child if God allows us, so we are going to start this process now. After going thru the many procedures, drugs and countless disappointing months of our infertility, we have decided maybe it is God's plan for us to have a baby another way. At this time we are actively researching adoption agencies and adoption attorney's and hopefully meeting with a few couples that have already gone thru this process. We are very interested in hearing how the process works from others who have chosen this route for expanding their family.

The Waiting Game

Our sonogram last Thursday went great! I had three large follicles on my right ovary!! We were good to go on our first round of IUI. So we were instructed to do the HCG trigger shot on Saturday night at midnight. That in itself terrified me because this was the shot that Glen had to administer! Glen had kept imitating how he was going to give the shot and it was more like "stabbing" than giving an injection. I joked about it to my nurse that I hoped I survived it! Saturday night came and as I mixed the liquid part with the powder to make the shot, I thought to myself 'If our neighbors see this thru the window, I am sure they will think I have a bad drug addiction!' Glen did a great job administering the shot and everything went fine. I actually didn't even know that he was already done. He now wants to go to Med School :-)

Monday we went in for the IUI procedure. It was very awkward as we never in a million years would have thought this is how we would have to go about trying to "make" a baby. The actual procedure was very simple and we were out of there in about 20-30 minutes. While visiting with Dr. Starks he reminded us that this procedure does increase our chances of having twins and the likelihood of having a boy if we do get pregnant. We were okay with both! At this point in our journey to parenthood we are open to a lot of possibilities. Dr. Starks as well as one of the nurses commented on how this has been a very successful month for the clinic. They have had 36 women get pregnant this month and most of them are having twins. This statistic if from doing IUI and IVF at the clinic. That was great news to hear! Dr. Stark wished us luck and said that he was kissing the lucky horseshoe above the door for us.

After this long journey we have been on, we know it is up to God as to when/how we will have a baby and we are leaving it in His hands. This has been a hard concept to grasp as Glen and I are both organized planners. We always thought we would get married, have a fun first year of marriage and then start our family. We wanted 3 kids and planned out when we would have them. After many years of trying to plan our lives we now know that God is in control and we will follow what He wants for us. All we can do is pray and know that there is a plan for us - we just have to be patient. (Patience had never been one of my strong points!)

I have an appointment for a pregnancy test on Monday, May 10th. In the meantime we will wait, pray and hope for good news to come!