Lessons Learned From Infertility #2

 #2. I am enough because of Christ

How many of us base our worth off of the worldly things? How many followers we have, how many likes we receive on a post, how popular we are, how much money we make, etc. The list could go on and on. For me, it was believing the enemy's lie that my worth as a woman comes from two lines on a pregnancy test. At the beginning of our journey I struggled deeply with this. It took time for me to realize that this was a lie Satan, our true enemy, wanted me to believe. He wares us down with his lie of us being unworthy of God's love. God defines our worth! And He tells us over and over again how much we are loved. But as I say this I'm also reminded that He is greater than I.

I must become less and He must become greater!!! 

I just finished a book a few weeks ago called Captivating and I want to share some of the notes I wrote down from it. It was a great book and just gave me a whole different outlook about how and why God created me. 

We were created because something was missing...one more time.. Women were created because something was missing. 

"We come to God in worship not to get from Him, but to give to Him. Jesus loves it when we offer our hearts to him in devotion."

"You, dear heart, are the crown of creation, His glorious image bearer. And He will do everything it takes to rescue you and set your heart free."

"The things you've struggled with - They came from the enemy who wanted to take your heart captive, make you a prisoner of darkness." 

"How many of us see God as longing to be loved by you? We see Him as strong and powerful, but not as needing us, vulnerable to us, yearning to be desired." 

Prayer from Captivating: Rejecting the Lies

"Jesus, forgive me for embracing these lies. This is not what you have said of me. You said I am your daughter, your beloved, your cherished one. I renounce the agreements I made with (name of specific message you've been living with). I renounce the agreements I've been making with these messages all these years. Bring the truth here, oh Spirit of Truth, I reject these lies." 

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Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens in Christ. For He chose us in Him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in love before Him. He predestined us to be adopted as sons through Jesus Christ for Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace that He lavished on us in the Beloved One. In Him we have redemption, through His blood, the forgiveness of our sins, according to the riches of His grace that he richly poured out on us with all wisdom and understanding. He made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that He purposed in Christ as a plan for the right time -- to bring everything together in Christ, both things in heaven and things on earth in Him. In Him we have also received an inheritance because we predestined according to the plan of the one who works out everything in agreement with the purpose of His will, so that we who had already put our hope in Christ might bring praise to His glory. In Him you were also sealed with the promised Holy Spirit when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and when you believed. The Holy Spirit is the down payment of our inheritance, until the redemption of the possession, to the praise of His glory. Ephesians 1:3-14

No Longer Slaves

Happy Thanksgiving! 

And WAR EAGLE! 

FET Update: We will not have a transfer in December. The timing of the transfer is out of our control, so January will hopefully be the transfer. 

5 Lessons Learned from Infertility, lesson 1

After a year and 8 months of blogging our story, I wasn't really sure what to share about in the blog next. This is why I skipped last week. It feels like I have hit all the possible topics. After praying for my heart to continue to be open, I've decided that over the next 5 weeks I am sharing the top 5 lessons I've learned through this process. 

#1. God is Enough

This is the hardest lesson I've learned through this experience. I have to lean on the fact that if this doesn't happen for us... God is Enough! I am watery eyed thinking about this statement. But this statement means that I've finally given over complete surrender of the valley we are in. I know deep down in my heart that we will continue to love Him no matter the results. Even if You don't, my hope is you alone. 

Even if- Mercy Me

Even when I go through the darkest valley: I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and staff - they comfort me. Psalm 23:4

Jireh - maverick city music

Biopsy Results

Happy Wednesday! 

Last week we finally received our ERA biopsy results! With the results they were looking at my progesterone and estrogen level to make sure they would be right for a frozen transfer! And guess what? OUR RESULTS CAME BACK PERFECT! We have been thanking the Lord for great results, and hope this will be it for us! Also, we had a great financial gift come our way as well! So we are financially prepared for the FET too! 

What's next? Either a transfer the first week of December or in January! 

Prayer Request:  

• Patience while we wait 
• For the doctors and nurses working with us
• Discipline to try to lose some more weight before the transfer gets here
• For FET to be successful! 

Week 3 Testimony: Trust God & NEVER doubt

Today's testimony is the last one for this year's Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. This week comes from one of my coworkers! She is not just a coworker, but a friend! A friend that has endured many loses to get to where her and husband are now. A friend that prays for me. A friend that I pray for often too!

Here is Mrs. Bruce and her husband's story: 

Oh what a journey this has been!!! My husband and I married in June of 2013. We knew that we both wanted children, but we didn’t immediately start trying. To our surprise, we got a big fat positive in November of 2014. Happy was a mere understatement. We were scheduled to have an appointment to hear the heartbeat. Here goes the wait...these couple of weeks seemed to take forever. December 9, 2014 we were crushed!!! To our surprise, there was no fetal movement and no heartbeat. The pain that we felt was indescribable. I actually went through depression for a while afterwards.  

As time passed, we made the decision to begin trying again. During this time of trying, people would give all kinds of ‘advice’. Some of the information was from the hearts of those who actually meant well, but some people taught me what not to say to someone who has experienced the loss of a pregnancy. After months of trying, we decided to make an appointment with ART Fertility. During the appointment, we found out that we conceived naturally. Our son was born in February of 2017. We are grateful, yet our journey doesn't end here.

I have always wanted two children. I grew up in the house alone and didn’t want the same for my son. It took a couple of years after having him, but here we go with a surprise positive in April 2020 only to experience a loss in June. I didn’t have any triggers or suspension that would even make me believe that anything was going wrong. I felt fine, growing and glowing. When we arrived at the first ultrasound appointment, I knew something wasn’t quite right. The ultrasound tech was unusually quiet. She then told us that she would be right back, because she needed to get the doctor. I immediately started to cry because I knew something was wrong. To our surprise, something was wrong which resulted in another failed pregnancy. 

My husband was really a great supporter. He kept the faith when it seemed like I had none. The journey isn’t over. May 2021 pregnant again, only to suffer a subchorionic hematoma (This was horrible!) and experience loss June 15, 2021 (our wedding anniversary). I refused to allow my son to watch me get in a deep depression, so I had him to shift my focus on and basically just kept myself busy.  

Here we are again! Another positive August 2021!!!! This time our first appointment went quite well. I am currently 8 weeks, and the baby has a very strong heartbeat at 170 bpm. We have truly been on a bumpy ride, but we know that with faith in God, somehow, someway, He can make things possible if it is in His will!!! The best advice that I could give someone else is to trust God and NEVER doubt Him. The road may seem rough at times, but when God is in it, there is no limit to what He can do. Trust and never doubt...hold on and take the ride...He won’t let go of you, so don’t let go of Him!!! 

Week 2 Testimony!

We are already in the second week of sharing testimonies for pregnancy and infant loss awareness month. The testimony today is from a sweet sweet couple that endured so much! I am thankful to call this wonderful woman my friend! She is also a prayer warrior for Brandon and I, and I got to be the same for her during her adoption process! Please take the time to read her story! Here is my friend and her husband's story...

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My husband and I got married in October 2010. We both had always planned to have children. So, after one year of marriage, we began trying to conceive. After 6 months of failing to conceive naturally, I started taking an oral fertility drug and after 6 more months of no success, we went to the ART Fertility Clinic. Over the next 4 years, we endured 5 unsuccessful IUIs, 3 unsuccessful rounds of IVF, 1 unsuccessful round of egg donation, 1 unsuccessful round of embryo donation, every type of testing you can imagine (including hormone and genetic testing), and 3 miscarriages. I endured hundreds of fertility-drug injections, dozens of ultrasounds, a laparoscopic surgery, 2 hysteroscopies, and I had my blood drawn too many times to count. We spent thousands of dollars out-of-pocket. At the end of that process, 4 Reproductive Endocrinologists, who each had been in this field for many years, couldn't tell us specifically why we couldn't have biological children, and they couldn't remember anybody else doing as much as we had done (basically everything that's available) and, at the end, neither having a baby nor knowing the specific problem. Neither of us has any "missing parts" or anything else wrong that any kind of testing can reveal. The doctors thought that the problem might be "egg quality" and bad luck, but they didn't know for sure. During the IVF treatments, fertilization was never a problem, but the embryos just inexplicably never could survive. We know several other people who have used ART and have been successful. We think the doctors and staff at ART did all they could for us, and we are grateful for their help, but ultimately it just didn’t work out. In the end, even our fertility doctor recommended that we pursue adoption. So, in September 2016, we decided to adopt and started the process.

The adoption process also isn't easy or cheap, but it ended up going much quicker than our infertility process. We were matched in January 2017, and then on March 27, 2017 (my husband's 40th birthday), God blessed us with our daughter. We got the call on March 26 that the birth mom was in labor in Tennessee, and we were fortunate enough to be able to make it to the hospital for the birth. I was even invited to be in the delivery room and got to cut the cord! My husband joined our daughter and I very shortly thereafter in the hospital nursery, and we had the opportunity to be with her and to take care of her continuously from then on. Due to exposure to opiates in utero, our daughter experienced withdrawal symptoms and was transferred from the hospital where she was born to the NICU at East TN Children’s Hospital where she was treated for 13 days.  We were with her the whole time in both hospitals. She was born completely healthy otherwise, and when she was discharged from Children’s on April 12, she was completely over the withdrawal symptoms, doing great, and the doctors told us that there shouldn’t be any long-term effects. We then were finally able to travel back home with our daughter, after living in Tennessee for the first 23 days of her life. We had custody of her since her birth, we then became her guardians, and less than 3 months after her birth, we were able to finalize her adoption! She is the child we prayed for over 5+ years. For all those years, we tried not to complain publicly about our problems, even though our attempt to have a child affected almost every day of our lives in some way for 5+ years. We wanted to wait for a happy ending, and the Lord blessed us with a very happy one!

Our daughter was such a huge blessing and we loved our first adoption so much that we decided to do it again. We began the process in October 2019. Shortly thereafter, the COVID pandemic hit and slowed the process down a little bit, but in July 2020, we were matched with a married couple who was very early in pregnancy and who wanted to place their child for adoption. Fortunately, we were able to be in contact with the birth parents throughout pretty much the entire pregnancy. We were even able to be present for the gender ultrasound back in October 2020.  The birth mother invited me to be in the room with her when we found out that IT'S A BOY! On February 25, 2021, our precious son was born in Ohio!  We lived in a hotel with him there in Ohio for 2 weeks. We had physical custody of him since birth, gained legal custody of him a few days later, and were cleared to bring him home two weeks after his birth. We just finalized his adoption last month.

We are grateful to our son's birth parents for being so great to work with throughout the adoption process, for taking such great care of our son in utero, and for choosing life! When we met the birth parents face-to-face for the first time and had dinner with them back in October of 2020, the birth father told us that when he found out that his wife was pregnant, he initially wanted her to have an abortion but that she wanted to "look into" adoption. Then, he said, after meeting us and seeing that the baby would be taken care of, he was glad that they chose to pursue adoption. I think this situation shows that everyone's mind is not made up concerning whether to have an abortion. In some situations, people are willing to look into alternatives to abortion, and if viable alternatives to abortion, like adoption, exist, they are willing to pursue those alternatives. Of course, that requires having people who are willing to adopt.

Adoption has TREMENDOUSLY blessed our lives TWICE! We are thankul for everyone who helped us throughout both of our adoptions! These individuals include our entire adoption team (our adoption consultants, our social worker, and our attorneys and their staffs). We are also grateful for all our family and great friends who supported us throughout both adoptions! Most of all, we thank God for giving us two precious gifts, our daughter and our son! The adoption process is neither easy nor cheap, but the blessing received at the end of the process is unbelievable!

Angel Fest Story & Other Updates

Last weekend I participated in Angel Fest at a local church in Millbrook. Let me share how this started! I made a facebook post with hymns to sell for our FET, and a family friend commented and said, have you thought about selling at Angel Fest? And of course, I had no idea what she was talking about. I got information from their facebook and noticed that someone I knew was actually over the event! Another cool thing is that the family friend that mentioned it to me, her and her husband paid for my booth fee to lessen my cost! I spent that previous week making and making hymns. I sure was tired! 

So Brandon, mom, and I set everything up that Saturday morning (the 16th). We get set up, and I had designed "business cards" and got my brother in laws company to make them! They also made a sign with my "business" name, Loving Hymn Creations. And they paid for them! I'll post a picture at the end if you didn't see them on facebook. 

The day started off windy with a little rain, but ended up a beautiful day to be outside! Mom and I met people in the community sold around half of what we had making around $250. We sure met some interesting people! One group that stopped by bought an item and then laid their hands on me and prayed! It was so powerful to think they would pray for a complete stranger, but it was known to almost all that visited the table why we were there. Another lady said she was glad she could help bring a baby into the world at 73. A young boy asked me if I tore the pages out of the hymnal, I told him yes and not to tell on me! Another young lady mentioned she had used the exact same doctor's office we did, and they were successful by IUI. It was overall a wonderful day and I am so thankful mom was there to help me! She has been a rock for us through this whole process. 

There are a couple of other things I wanted to share too... 

First, I hope you continue to read the testimonies from my friends. We have two more coming up this Wednesday and next week! They represent a strength that only God can provide and I am proud to call them friends! 

Second, we have not gotten the results of our biopsy yet. We are still waiting.

Third, I have also been on a weight loss journey. When I got off of all the IVF meds, I lost a little weight and continued to go with it. As of today I have lost 23 lbs! I can't really see it, but I can feel it. I am hoping to lose about 20 more before our FET. (which will hopefully be in January) I have started meal prepping lunches. I am only drinking coke zero and water, and trying to avoid sweets and snacking. I started IVF at 225, and currently weigh 202 this morning! First goal is to get into 100s, then to lose the 20 more. And maybe I shouldn't share the actual weight part on here, but I am excited about the change!

Fourth, this tik tok video hit me hard... it starts off by saying how the body doesn't do the one thing it should, the one thing I want it to do. And I just wanted to share what it often feels like experiencing infertility. Women's body's were supposed to be built for this, right? But as of right now, mine isn't. 

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZM8j7Xa6D/

As always, thanks for the love, prayers, and support! 

Katey

Week 1: The Hardin Family

The first testimony (story of hope) comes from one of my sorority sisters. This summer we endured IVF together! Our calendar (days of appointments, medication, retrieval, transfer, etc) were literally two days apart! You don't wish infertility for anyone, but you are thankful to have someone by your side! She was a huge prayer warrior for Brandon and I. We updated each other daily with how we were feeling and what to pray for etc. Read the rest to see where she is now!

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We are Brittani and Adam Hardin. We got married in 2014, and a few years later-we decided we were ready to start a family. 

In 2017-we began trying to get pregnant. We tried for several months, with no luck-and I (Brittani) was diagnosed with severe endometriosis. A few months later-I had surgery to remove several cysts and scarring caused by the Endo in hopes of increasing our chances of getting pregnant. We were told our best chances were in the 6 months following the surgery. 

Unfortunately-after another 6 months, we were still not pregnant and were referred to a fertility specialist in January of 2019. We began our journey at Alabama Fertility Specialists (AFS) and after two rounds of fertility medicine we found out we were pregnant. Unfortunately, a few short weeks later we lost that sweet baby. And decided to take a few months off from the doctor to give ourselves time to heal and process what happened. 

A few months later, I had another surgery to remove severe Endometriosis and large cysts from my ovaries. After surgeries-we did a total of 7 IUI’s (around $500-$800/round depending on monitoring and medications) all of which were unfortunately unsuccessful. 

IUI- Intrauterine Insemination

The next step recommended by our fertility specialist was IVF-which unfortunately is not a covered procedure by insurance in Alabama which led us to wondering how in the world we would come up with $15,000-$17,000 in just 2 months. 

IVF-In Vitro Fertilization

Luckily, we have an amazing group of friends and family that prayed and rallied around us and assisted us with multiple fundraisers that kept us from having to pay anything out of pocket. 

This process was a crazy, wild ride. Starting with birth control for a month, then 1 shot of Lupron in my stomach daily for 2 weeks. Then we added Gonal-F  and Menopur (along with Lupron)-all three in my stomach each night for 1.5 weeks. Then it was time for retrieval. We had our egg retrieval  July 21, 2021, and our transfer 5 days later (July 26, 2021). After the transfer-the dreaded Progesterone shots begin for the next 10 weeks. 

Then comes the LONGGGGG wait for our blood test to *hopefully* confirm pregnancy on August 4, 2021. 

I am the most impatient person EVER and decided to take a pregnancy test on Sunday August 1 just to see what it would say. Then I took 4 more…just to convince myself that the test was right. I AM PREGNANT-the blood test confirmed a few days later. 

As exciting as that is-its still scary. Will this pregnancy stick? Is this time REALLY going to be different? Can I get excited and tell people yet? Or should I just not tell anyone incase something happens?

Since confirming our pregnancy, we have had 4 ultrasound to check on our sweet baby and have since graduated from our fertility specialist and now see my regular OB-which was a very bittersweet moment. We are currently 14 weeks pregnant and baby is growing perfectly. 

Infertility is weird. Its hard. Its scary. Its all of the emotions at some point in time. A literal roller coaster. 

I pray every day for all of the ladies (and their families) struggling through this. Seeing the baby announcements. The happy stories…and wondering when it will be THEIR time. No one should ever have to endure the pain and sadness that comes with infertility and infant loss. If anyone is struggling-reach out. We are here and we understand what you are going through. You are not alone and your blessing and rainbow is coming.