Tag: infertility uncovered

Momma guilt

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Mom guilt. That dreaded feeling can be the worst. I’m currently feeling a few different emotions, mostly out of sheer exhaustion and uncomfortableness (physically) but I have pinpointed back to Mom Guilt.

I’m sitting here in Starbucks parking lot typing this. Just sitting in the parking lot because my stomach is swollen and uncomfortable so have feet up on dash and probably getting looks from passerbys but I don’t really care. 😂 I had every intention of going inside, getting a decaf coffee and working a little while I wait for Dr results today. Waiting to see if I need to drive back up here tomorrow (which would be the 3rd trip to KC this week) aka 21 hours of driving to and from KC THIS WEEK. Y’all, it’s exhausting, but love the reason we are doing it.

Anyways, sitting in the parking lot, debating with myself, if I need to drive back to Arkansas or not, just to come back tomorrow at 7:30 am. The answer is no, I don’t NEED to drive back to Arkansas. I’m tired, I’m uncomfortable, I have tons of work I could be doing or housework I could think about doing, but more importantly Zayden is going to miss me and what if I end up missing something important in the next 30 hours or what happens if he falls and just needs his mama?? Here’s the deal I don’t need to go home today.. Only crazy people drive 21 hours when they can easily stay in town and see friends, get a pedicure, maybe shop, right? But the Mom Guilt is real. I know he is fine with an extremely capable and awesome I might add, nanny, and hubs is there to take care of him when she leaves. They will probably have Mac n cheese or order pizza because those two things Jason is a pro at doing 😂. Zayden may ask where I am or be a little sad, but he will be ok! But the Mom Guilt is just weighing extra heavy on me today. I feel bad every morning this week that I had to sneak out of bed at 4 am and he woke up crying to see me leave. 😭 Part of my brain is saying, you’re leaving your child for just a potential child – and then my silly brain goes down the rabbit hole on how unfair that is. Arghhh. Does the Mom Guilt ever leave? Do you ever know you’re making the right decision when it comes to your kids or do you always question things?

Alright, Mom Guilt aside, things in IVF world are going good. I have a killer support system, from family doing what they can to cover Z shifts as needed, friends staying the night to take care of pups last minute, friends letting crash their house last minute, and just neighbors or friends saying they’re there for us if needed, and friends from literally across the US sending us cookies just to brighten the day 😭😭😭❤️. It may seem like a small item to them, but the love that is pouring on me when I’m feeling a bit down is overwhelming. All this love just makes me want to adopt and have all the babies we can so share this love with them! Killer support system is so so important and have been blessed in that arena. Speaking of support system, I have two other friends going through the exact process literally right now (say a prayer for them too please, B & C).

Tests have been going pretty good, just slower than planned, which means more drugs. Tentatively, we are looking at Friday retrieval and next Wednesday transfer. So prayers are appreciated (for me and my two friends if you have an extra prayer for them, they definitely deserve it). ❤️

To all those mammas (or dads) that are experiencing the parent guilt – I feel ya. You’ve got this though. If not, holler at me and I’ll talk you down from it. 😊

Here we go again…

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This blog began a few years ago as my infertility journey and has slowly changed to Zayden’s journey. At first I felt a little guilty that my depressing, sad blog turned into an over abundance of cute little things Z does. But then I realized he’s such an incredible gift…he IS the journey and I’ll continue to document his life.

Today, I have a little deja vu as I tell you we are attempting IVF again. We still are actively pursuing adoption and it’ll happen when it’s supposed to. We thought we wanted to try IVF once more and if it doesn’t happen, then we understand that’s God’s will.

I’ve been on a few pills and one injection for the past few weeks. Everything was looking good until last week, I wasn’t “suppressed” like they would like me to be so they decided to push our entire plan back a week. If this Wednesday my levels are still high, we will stop and reevaluate (whatever that means). In the meantime, they doubled my meds. It’s a little frustrating but I know God has perfect timing. Actually, the delay my Dr has made has put me on a similar schedule as two of my lifefriends going through IVF. Talk about having a good support system! ❤️

Today was the first day I’ve struggled with the medication. Two different times today I’ve felt dizzy, serious headaches, nauseous, hot and overall just crummy. It’s all normal and apart of the journey but it is just a gentle reminder that infertility is not for the faint of heart. I question if I’m strong enough to do it again, but we’re going to try so I need to be. Luckily, today is also the day Zayden has been overly sweet (he is almost every day, but today he just knew I needed some extra sweetness).

I’ve so thankful for the opportunity to be able to do IVF and thankful God thinks I’m strong enough to handle this.

Moment 4 | Understanding Our Infertility

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The most recent moment to our infertility journey you may think end with having Zayden. But infertility is not something that just disappears after having children, it sticks around, haunts you some days, traumatizes you some and tucked in your heart forever.

Throughout my pregnancy, I was a bit of a hot mess. I was surprisingly calm through most of it but I worried every single day what was going to go wrong, when I would lose Zayden, if I was going to die during delivery. Literally I thought about every possible bad scenario and would replay it in my head. I did everything I could think of to not think like that but it was inevitable.

When you walk through life with infertility, it sticks around, haunts you, traumatizes you forever. Granted, I thank God every day for that sweet baby that He gave us but I worry. Will he fall and hit his head, will we get in a car crash, will a pop fly hit him one day when he’s old enough to play baseball? I’m sure my parents used to think the same thing about me, and guess what – the answer is ya, probably. We can’t control what they do or what happens to them. But we can be thankful for every moment we get to share with him.

When I started this 4 piece blog about understanding our infertility journey. I initially thought Moment 4 was this big epiphany I had after having Zayden, but the more I thought about it, I don’t think I’ve had my moment 4. I don’t fully understand why God chose us to go through this journey…

Maybe He wanted us to not take any second for granted.

Maybe He wanted us to be a rock for someone else going through a struggle?

Maybe our struggle was preventing us from more heartache, someway somehow.

Maybe He needed us to be a voice to someone else going through infertility.

I can’t really speculate because our journey is ever-continuing and will be something we struggle and question every day. So we will enjoy every moment He has given us, the sad, the bittersweet and chaotic moments and continue strong down our journey. ❤️

Moment 3 | Infertility Uncovered

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“Chasnie, none of your embryos are going to make it.”

We got around this morning and the hotel room was pure silence. We were both anxious and cautiously excited about that day. Today was the day for transfer. Last we heard 4 days ago we had 13 healthy embryos! 13!!!! Then we got the call. See they told us at our last appointment they wouldn’t call unless they had bad news. Instantly my anxious, excited mood changed and I started to break before the call came through.

(Paraphrasing bc I don’t remember the exact words due to my mind set) “Chasnie, none of your embryos are going to make it.” WHY was this happening to us again? I get it, it doesn’t happen the first time for most people but I had 13 embryos, I knew it was going to work. She continued, “There are a few that are currently here, but they are rating so poor that we can’t rate them but you can put them in if they survive. Do you want to move forward?”

So many thoughts racing through my head, but I didn’t hesitate to say, “Uh ya… I mean, we’ve gotten this far, if they’re still alive when we get there, we are doing this.”

I text my family and a handful of close friends and just asked for prayers. Prayers for strength for those sweet babies and prayers for peace for us. We needed them, we needed the prayers. We felt alone. We were in an empty hotel (construction was going on and literally we didn’t see anyone besides the front desk when we were there). And we felt like He had been given up on us. Once again, we felt like God was telling us, your time isn’t now. But how could this be? Hasn’t it been long enough? Haven’t we lost enough? Haven’t we fought enough? What we’re we doing wrong? We literally followed every instruction to a T. We made sure I rested and didn’t get stressed out. I gave up working out like I was instructed when that’s all I wanted to do. I gave up fun events and get togethers bc the timing didn’t mesh with injections or I was tired. This may all seem like measly things we gave up (and they are) but we started to feel like ALL of this and ALL the hormones were for no reason.

So we prayed alot, cried some and got our minds right. Then we went into the doctor a couple of hours later and transferred 2 embryos. The doctor told me she wasn’t going to talk to me about the ones that didn’t survive nor would we talk about how poor these 2 were, because stressing about it that day was not what we needed. Grateful for this, we agreed.

We transferred those two poor little embryo that day and God (yet again) showed us just how powerful He is. Below is a reminder.

I could sit here and tell you how I mourned that 2nd embryo and how I still mourn not having my two tubes to have just a surprise pregnancy, but the truth is we received a miracle. Not all stories end on a positive note like ours did. IVF doesn’t work for so many families and it’s important to remember it never happens like we plan or think or pray for. There’s a bigger plan that we may not see now or even in 10 years but there is a plan. Be thankful for what yo have been given, but also don’t give up faith while waiting to see what He has in store for you! ❤️ My heart goes out to all the families struggling and will pray for you all!

Moment 2 | Infertility Uncovered

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This week is National Infertility Awareness Week!  If you’ve been following along the past couple of days, I’ve been sharing 4 moments in our infertility journey that have opened my eyes to the bigger picture.  These moments are a little more personal than I care to share, but I think it’s important in sharing our story, not just to mend ourselves, but to help others on their journey.  I know sharing their stories isn’t for everyone, but I feel like God placed certain situations and certain people in our lives to help us grow and to help others grow.  So…I’m sharing, no matter how difficult the stories can be at times, I just remind myself, there’s a bigger reason for our infertility journey.  I’ve come to understand it more over the past 9 years, and leads me to Moment #2.

Moment #2:

I heard a heartbeat.  Surprised, I looked over my shoulder at the nurse and she said oh, that’s not a heartbeat, that’s just your blood pumping and she quickly turned the sound of the machine off.  She was lying to save my sanity.  

Ughhhhhhhhhhh. Where do I even start here?

This day was one of the scariest days of my life, literally.  Probably for Jason as well and we’ve both done some crazy scary things in the past but this day took the cake.  I woke up about 4:15 and was headed to hot yoga. I felt fine and ready to start the day, sat in my car and I felt a little sick to my stomach.  I thought to myself – you’re fine, just indigestion or something – keep moving along.  I made it about 3 miles down the interstate before I turned around and came back home.  I layed on the couch from 4:30-8:00 waiting for this “indigestion” to go away.  I debated going to the doctor but figure nah, you’re fine.  Looking back now, I was just being stubborn and a little stupid.  I was in the most pain I’d ever felt as I layed there curled up in a ball on the couch, this was not a stomach bug. Jason finally asked me what my gut was telling me, do I need to take you to the ER.  Yes. That was it, yes my gut (or the pain in my gut) was telling me something was wrong.  I needed help.

The ER was a typical ER & always so many people.  We waited for over an hour and finally they took us back.  In the same breath we found out I was pregnant, we found out it may be an ectopic pregnancy (again).  I’ve done research on this, the chances of someone having 2 ectopic pregnancies in 2 different tubes is pretty rare, but I  honestly wasn’t surprised.  We knew what was coming next.  I thought they’d take me back to surgery right away and the tube would erupt and we’d be no longer able to have kiddos the way we wanted to. However, they took me back to do some bloodwork and an ultrasound to confirm it was an ectopic.  I was sitting there waiting to hear the yup, it’s an ectopic, let’s go back to surgery.  Instead, I heard a heartbeat.  Surprised, I looked over my shoulder at the nurse and she said oh that’s not a heartbeat, that’s just your blood pumping and quickly turned the sound of the machine off.  She was lying.  I knew what she was doing, she was trying to save my sanity.  Shortly after, the doctor came in, told me it was unusual that an ectopic pregnancy would have a heartbeat but we needed to go into surgery to remove the tube right away.

“Wait.  Wait a second.  I need some time.  I want to keep my tube.  Wait…there’s a heartbeat?” – Me

“Sure. We have all the time here. No, we need to do this surgery now and you always have the option of invitro.” – Doctor 

So many thoughts were going through my head in that moment.  Can an embryo survive as an ectopic pregnancy?  I mean, I know it can’t because I’ve been told that, but can it really and they just don’t want to do it?  How does it have a heartbeat?  Wait, how am I even pregnant?  I want to celebrate and mourn all at the same time.  WHY AM I STILL SITTING HERE IN PAIN?  This is the second everything started to make sense.   I didn’t really know the extent, but I knew that little embroyo was gone and my tube had ruptured.  I had bled a little over a liter of blood into my abdomen. No, this was not indigestion, this was me fading fast.

I honestly don’t remember much else from that day or week or really that month for that matter.  I was mourning, pissed, annoyed, exhausted, basically all the negative adjectives I can think of, I was.  I was physically sick and weak. My entire stomach area was covered in bruising.  I questioned everything, I pushed Jason away, when all he wanted to do was support me.  I threw myself into whatever would keep me busy, and I “seemed” fine.  But…I was not.  I was broken.  And here I was at a point in my life (yet again) where I couldn’t understand why God was letting this happen to us.  Why was it necessary that I experience this. Hadn’t I gone through enough?  It’s GREAT that He thinks I’m strong enough to handle this, but news flash – I am not.  I was pretty mad for quite some time.  Eh, I may still be upset when I think about it from time to time.

What I didn’t know…. Our story wasn’t over.  It was just another step in this journey.

Ps. I’ll never forget that sweet heartbeat that I got to hear for a few seconds.  That was the little bit of miracle I needed to push through.

Moment 1 | Infertility Uncovered

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If you’ve read my post yesterday, you’ll know I’m going to share the 4 most memorable moments during our infertility journey. These specific moments I usually leave out of our story because they’re some of the darkest moments I would like shut out of my memory. However, they’re the memories I can’t seem to shut down. Let’s do this…

Moment #1:

During the first emergency surgery, I remember my doctor looking at me and asking if I was ok, and I yelled at him. I’m not kidding, I yelled at him with tears running down my face, “I’m done, just do the surgery, I don’t care anymore. I’m so damn tired of waiting for it to pass. JUST DO THE SURGERY. Get it out.” (There may have been a couple more cuss words in there… It wasn’t my finest moment).

Let me rewind and give you a little context about this statement. We found out we were pregnant (YAY!) Excitement overwhelmed us. Around 5 weeks, I started to have pain on my side. I was told, oh that’s normal, it happens when your uterus stretches and getting ready for your baby. Although that can be true, this wasn’t the case for me.

We found out that we were likely having an ectopic pregnancy and that baby wasn’t viable, but we needed to do some testing and wait and do some more in a couple of days and then we would see what was going on. We waited a couple of days, tested again, numbers didn’t confirm anything. So we waited 2 more days, tested again, numbers again didn’t confirm anything again. We tested again. FINALLY, we found out it was an ectopic pregnancy. We were given two options, surgery or to have an injection and see if it helped pass it through the tube. I chose the shot to see if that helped things pass. It didn’t. I went back in and was told I could have another injection and if that didn’t work, I would need surgery. Again, nothing happened.

At this point my patience was running thin, my composure had gone out the window. To say I woke up in a poor mood is an understatement. I was frustrated and didn’t feel like going into work, so I called in sick. Who knew God was preparing me for what was to come. As I moped around the house, something hit me. I was no longer just in emotional pain, but I had physical pain down my leg and side. It wasn’t unbearable, but it did hurt. So I layed down in the guest bedroom and cried because I was over it all. I was done waiting. I was done keeping my composure.

We called the doctor and he asked me to come in right away. Jason took me to the hospital and at that time, we weren’t entirely sure what was going on or what was happening but we were ready for this to be done. As the doctor took me back and had me lay on the table, he tapped my foot with his fist and pain shot up my leg and side and that’s when I yelled at him.

“I’m done, just do the surgery, I don’t care anymore. I’m so damn tired of waiting for it to pass. JUST DO THE SURGERY. Get it out.”

I was so emotionally drained that I didn’t want to wait any longer, I was over this. I had taken as much as I could take and I was done. When the doctor went in for the surgery, the tube ended up erupting and tube numero uno was gone. Forever. And that little embryo that was not alive in the first place, but it too was gone. Forever.

lNote, I did later apologize to my doctor & the nurse for yelling & cussing at them. 😬

Why I didn’t understand the pain I was experiencing in that moment, I would later get it all. I questioned God and His purpose for me and purpose for the pain, but I didn’t hear the answer. This was Moment #1 to understanding the bigger picture to our infertility journey.

National Infertility Awareness Week |Infertility Uncovered

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Infertility Uncovered

Today marks the second day of National Infertility Awareness Week, and if you follow our blog, you know that we’ve been on this path of infertility for quite a few years.  I was so afraid to share our story a few years ago because it was personal.  And let’s be honest, I was ashamed I couldn’t do the one thing I was made to do.  I was frustrated (and still am) that I never get the opportunity to surprise my husband with a pregnancy announcement or throw a gender reveal party and feel comfortable that I won’t lose the sweet baby shortly after. My heart still aches from time to time when I see that baby announcement from someone else, but I also celebrate because I know just how precious that gift of life is.  If you follow my posts this week, you’ll read about the 4 moments that truly brought me to where we are now.  Where I can celebrate precious life others get to celebrate…. But first, here’s a recap of our journey.

A little over 9 years ago we decided to start our family and were told we should have no issues because everything “looked good.” Fast forward to today, here’s what two healthy individuals with no signs of any potential issues went through: 

  • 2 miscarriages
  • 1 empty sac pregnancy (where there is a sac and your body thinks your pregnant but you really aren’t)
  • 2 ectopic pregnancies, which resulted in 2 emergency surgeries.  1 of which was life threatening.
  • 2 lost tubes, meaning never being able to have a natural pregnancy again.
  • Months and months of hormones
  • 5 heaven babies that I think about every single day.  
  • 2 new doctors (THANK THE LORD FOR THEM)
  • Countless injections, daily meds, and hormones
  • 1 round of IVF
  • Large medical bills that insurance doesn’t pay for, because ya know, infertility is not acknowledged always. (You should be able to hear my eyeroll from where you’re sitting reading this)
  • During IVF – 15 embryos, 13 fertilized (yay), 2 survived by Day 5 but they were rated so poor they didn’t receive a grade, 1 embryo that took.
  • 1 sweet baby boy that I get to hold every night

When I think about our journey, I don’t remember all of these little details and events unless I really think about it.  When someone asks me about our journey, my mind tends to focus in on 4 certain moments, life changing moments.  Do you know what I remember most? Follow me this week and I’ll share them.  Some moments may seem like I will always be broken, but even in the darkest moments, God prevails, as He always does.

If you know someone going through infertility – feel free to share my information with them.  Sometimes it just helps to talk to someone that understands what they’re going through.  Everyone’s journey is different, mine is very mild compared to others.  I don’t share my story for myself (although it does help get through the tough times) but I share for others.  I’ve had women literally all over the world reach out to me to ask me questions or advice and I’m here for them. So never hesitate to give them my # or tell them to message me.  #infertilityuncovered