The Road We've Travelled
Well, here we are... getting ready to begin the coolest road trip of our lives - the road to us becoming parents. If you'll just fasten your seat belt and keep your arms and legs inside the car at all times, we'll take you through our journey so far!
When we got married in August of 2004, we both knew that we wanted to have a family. We immediately bought a house and started planning for our first little addition. (We actually had baby names picked out before we got engaged!!! We're nerds, right!) After we'd been married for about a year, we decided that it was time. We thought it would be a piece of cake and that we would even be able to choose the time of year for our little one to arrive... boy were we in for disappointment!
We tried to conceive for a year and a half before finally talking to doctors. The doctors didn't have the best news: both of us had problems that would affect our ability to conceive. We were obviously upset and decided that we would keep trying to conceive and if we still weren't pregnant in 6 months, then we'd find the best fertility doctor in the state!
We decided to ring in our 3 year anniversary with a bang... a cruise to Alaska! It was so much fun - cruises are addicting!!! Everything about Alaska was amazing and we had a blast... until the last day. I (Heather) suddenly was super sick. I thought I was dying! Finally, we called the ship's doctor and went to the infirmary around midnight. The doctor had no clue what was wrong with me so he just gave me some pain pills and told me to go to the Emergency Room back home if I didn't feel any better. 24 hours later, I lay in an ER in Salt Lake, scared for my life. One of the first questions the ER doc asked was "Is there any way you could be pregnant?" We looked at each other, smiled a sad smile, then told the doc a solid "Nope!" The doctor returned 20 minutes later to tell me that we were wrong and that we were in fact pregnant.
It's hard to put it into words what that moment felt like. After years of disappointment and tears, it had finally happened! We were going to have a baby! I remember James and I looked at each other when the doctor left the room and we both just started crying. We hugged for what felt like an eternity. Finally, our baby was coming to us! It was the most amazing feeling we've ever experienced!
After about 15 minutes (filled with some serious JOY!!!) I realized that I was still in so much pain. When the doc came back in, I asked him if what I was feeling was normal pregnancy stuff. After a series of tests, he thought everything was perfectly fine, but he told me to come back in a few days for some blood tests to make sure that the baby was okay. When we left that hospital, we drove straight over to each of our parents houses to give them the good news. Most couples wait a little bit to tell anybody, but our parents knew that we'd been in the ER all day and were totally freaking out that I was dying! That truly was an awesome moment, when we got to tell our parents that a grand baby was on the way.
Over the next few days, we immediately calculated the due date, and we started making all kinds of fun plans. James even surprised me after work one day with the book "What to Expect When You're Expecting" which was super sweet of him! Then the interior designer in me kicked into gear as I started designing the coolest nursery ever! We were sooooo ready to be parents and it was finally going to happen! (Keep in mind that I was still in some serious pain and I thought that maybe this is what everyone experiences when they're prego and I'm just a weakling!!!)
As per the doctor's orders, I went back in for a blood test to make sure everything with the baby was progressing the way that it should. The nurse told me that they'd call me in a few hours with the results. I waited anxiously for that phone call to make sure that our little one was doing okay. That phone call changed me forever! The nurse explained that we had "lost" our baby. Lost. We're not talking about keys here! It would be impossible to put into words how we felt, but we were DEVASTATED! It was a really tough time for the both of us.
Some close friends of ours had a baby just as we were experiencing all of this and it took me a few weeks before I was ready to go and meet their cute little guy. When we talked with them about what we had been through, they immediately gave us the number of their fertility doctor - one of the best in the state! We called Dr. Peterson a few weeks later and so begins our journey with the fertility doc!
Dr. Peterson reviewed all of our test work and was super confident that with his help, we could get pregnant again! I spent 9 months on Clomid, a fertility drug, and we went through 5 rounds of artificial insemination. We were at a dead end and nothing was working. It was time to bring out the big guns in the fertility world - In Vitro Fertilization. Not only is the process of IVF terrifying, but it comes with a HUGE price tag and our insurance wouldn't cover a dime of it! We decided about a year ago, to halt all procedures so we could start saving our money for IVF.
This past March, we suffered a huge loss in our family. James' wonderful mother Carolyn passed away rather suddenly. She went into the ER on a Sunday and was on life support by Thursday. As we were saying our goodbye's to her in her hospital bed, we tearfully asked her to keep our baby company up in heaven and to help send that baby our way asap!!! We miss her more than words can express!
In April, our close friends adopted a beautiful little girl named Addison. While I was holding her for the first time, I felt a very strong impression that we should think about adopting. James and I went home, and had our first SERIOUS talk about adoption. We've talked about adopting a dozen times over the past 4 years, but always just as a possibility, not a reality. This conversation was different. We both felt really thrilled at the idea and we KNEW FOR CERTAIN that adoption was the road for us! We called the adoption agency the next day to start the process!
So here we are beginning our adoption journey. We hope that by sharing our emotional roller coaster with you, you'll gain a greater understanding of who we are and how much we can't wait for a little one to call our own!
