Hope Injected

Today I learned how to give myself shots. It was a rather strange experience. I guess I just never thought that I would be sitting in a room learning how to give myself shots, let alone that I would be learning this skill in an attempt to get pregnant.

While I was waiting for my appointment I overheard a conversation between my doctor and one of his former patients. She gave birth, I learned, in January and was visiting the staff so they could see the baby they had helped her conceive. From what I could gather from the conversation, this woman had been a patient at the clinic for a couple of years (longer than most people work with this type of dr) and had been trying to have a baby for about 7 years. After struggling so much this weekend with faith and hope I found this woman's story encouraging. I guess I needed an injection of encouragement, and thankfully the Lord met my need once again.

Hope Updated

So last week I had about a gallon of blood drawn for a multitude of blood tests and thus far everything looks ok. Rob goes in for his test on Monday, and then I head in on Tuesday to be trained to give myself shots. Rob and I talked about it and we are going to put off starting the meds and treatments for a month or two because we are in the midst of looking for a new place to live since our lease ends in May. We thought trying to find a new home, move, and putting chemicals in my body so that we could resume rather stressful fertility treatments all at the same time would be a little unwise.

I know some of you are wondering how I am doing with all of this. The answer? Good. The honest answer? Not so great. My brain is in a constant battle to hold on to hope, and let go of self pity, fear and jealousy. It is an exhausting process. I guess the purpose in my sharing this is to give you more specific ways to pray for me. For us.

Hope Renewed

Earlier today Rob and I made a step toward picking up hope once again. For the first time since we began our journey nearly seven years ago, we met with a Dr. at a fertility clinic. I had very mixed emotions about this visit. Part of me was excited to see what treatment opinions were available to us. The other part of me was fearing that my worst nightmare would be realized. That we would meet with the Dr and be told that there was no hope for us, that we would not be able to have children of our own.

After more than an hour and a half of meeting with the Dr., discussing insurance coverage, and scheduling tests and training sessions here is where we stand. I'm going to have several verious tests done on my blood and Rob will have another one of his tests, based on these results we will either be starting on injectable meds and IUI's (the training sessions are to teach us how to do the injections) or we will have to reevaluate our situation and most likely start looking into adoption. All of these tests and training sessions should be completed by the end of the month, so as long as the tests come back OK we could be starting up with the meds as soon as the 3rd or 4th week in April. I'll keep you posted on how the tests go. Please continue to pray for us. Your prayers and God's grace are all that keep us going so we are more than grateful to each of you that have held us up for so long. Thank you.