A New Work

To update, we had some bad news recently. We have been trying a medication for a few months now and it looks like it may not be working. Right now things don't seem great, and we are going month to month knowing each month that there is only a very, very small chance of getting pregnant. We do have a consultation at a new fertility clinic towards the end of October, so that is something to look forward to. I am hoping to get some answers and a game plan in place very soon. I have hoped for that before with no success, but hopefully the doctors will have enough to go on this time to give us some concrete information and suggestions.

I've been doing pretty well the past week or so, all things considered. The weather is beautiful, I love my new job, and I just got home from a shopping trip at the mall! So life is okay, and parts of it are very good.

I have been taking a class called "After the Boxes are Unpacked" here at the seminary on Tuesday nights. The point of the class is to help the 'sem wives' adjust after moving, get to know each other, and make friends. We talk about how hard it is to pick up and move away from home, etc. For me, moving here was really not very hard. I was already living far away from family and friends, so it was not as traumatic a move as many other families experienced. I thought it was a pretty easy transition, actually. But the class has still been very helpful for me when I think about my TTC journey.

Last Tuesday we talked about some of the things that it was hard to let go of when moving. I thought that this did not really apply to me at first, since I really did not let go of anything during this last move. But I think what I need to let go of is an idea and not a physical thing in this case. I always pictured myself living here while my husband attended seminary having and raising kids. Now that I am here and I do not have any children it is really nothing like what I imagined. I think it is hard for me to let go of what I thought this part of our lives would look like, which is making it hard for me to truly enjoy what we do have right now. I see other couples who move here and are pregnant, or have brand new babies, and I think "that should have been us." I know that is a horrible way to think, but it happens. I really want to be able to enjoy the time we have here, and enjoy all the good things we have going on in our lives right now. And I do notice them and appreciate them. But at the same time, I know that until I have children, I am always going to be missing something. There's just no way around it.

These are two verses that were shared in this class over the past two weeks. Even though I was listening to those verses with a different spin on them than the rest of the class, I found them to be very encouraging.

"Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland." ~Isaiah 43:18-19

"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generation, for ever and ever." ~Ephesians 20-21

These verses remind me of God's power over all creation and that He, the God who created the whole world, is also at work in each of us. I desire very much to start a family, and I am going to continue to work towards that goal. But I also want to be open-minded to look for what God may be trying to do in my life through this. I do want to trust Him. This is definitely much easier said than done, but -

"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." ~ Philippians 4:13

Daydreaming

I used to daydream all the time about babies. I would start at the beginning, planning out just how I would tell my husband when the wonderful, long awaited, positive pregnancy test came along. I would then look forward to all our conversations planning for the future, telling our families, picking out names, setting up a nursery... every detail until the moment we brought that beautiful baby home. And then I would daydream some more. About teaching Baby colors, shapes, words, and all the wonderful "firsts." I can't wait for all these experiences and for the incredible joy, honor and opportunity of raising a child and watching them grow.

The past couple months I have been more successful than I thought possible in shutting the daydreaming down. I thought that "getting my hopes up" every month lead me to be more devastated in the end. And it probably did. So I stopped hoping and I stopped daydreaming and I stopped planning. Of course we kept trying,  but I worked hard to convince myself that there was no real hope because a) I believed that, and b) it was too painful being continually let down.

But the past week or so the daydreaming has slowly crept back into my thinking, and I've let it. I think I'm finding that I far prefer the daydreams and hopes to the bitterness of having no hope. Sure, it may not be likely, and sure, I may be disappointed. But I love the idea of having kids, and I am thrilled and beyond excited about it. And one way or another, this IS going to happen. Maybe not how I think it should, and clearly not in my timing. But it will happen. If it never happens naturally, we've already decided that we will adopt some day. So I WILL be a parent some day. And I am going to look forward to that day with excitement. Sure, I might spend a few days of each month devastated. But I think I'll be happier overall than being just moderately miserable all the time.

I don't want to give up hope. I want to learn to trust God to guide my path. I want to rely on His promises that He loves me and He has a plan for me. It is hard, but I think allowing myself to daydream could actually be one small step toward living out that trust.

And daydreaming is fun! I can't wait to have a baby!

As Anne Shirley says, "I can't help flying up on the wings of anticipation. It's as glorious as soaring through a sunset... almost pays for the thud."

It's Getting Old...

I realize that I haven't posted in about a month. I promise that is not because I forgot, or because things have been better, or because things have been worse. I resolved at the beginning that I would not make this a depressed, ranting, complaining blog.  The internet has plenty of those. I resolved to follow the advice of Thumper from Bambi and my mother: "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."

So it's been a month of silence from me. Nothing has happened really on the infertility front. My husband and I moved from one area to another so my husband could start attending graduate school. I started my new job, which has been going very well, but has kept me really busy. We have not found a new fertility doctor yet, so I feel like everything is kind of paused for us.  I've been very busy with my new job so I have not had a lot of time to work on that, but that doesn't mean that time is going by fast or that I don't feel more and more devastated with each passing month of not conceiving.

To be completely honest, I have been very sad lately, and that is why I haven't blogged. My life is good, my apartment is good, I seem happy on the surface, and in many ways I am. But there is this undercurrent of sadness constantly. It keeps me from ever feeling completely 100% happy. It's kind of like numbness most of the time, and then like acute, sharp pain at other times.  But I don't want to complain or dwell on my sadness, so that's all I'm going to say about that.

Hopefully something positive will give me hope soon, and I can come on here and write a more uplifting (or at the very least insightful) post. Until then, like the title said, this whole waiting thing is getting old.