Battling With Infertility

 

Well I'm breaking my 2.5 year silence on this blog so I can share something personal that is way too long for a simple Facebook post. This week is National Infertility Awareness Week and I just felt that I should share our story to help raise awareness that infertility is more common than you think.

Honestly, I continue to be amazed by how clueless some people are about infertility. And I'll admit, I was one of those people until six years ago. I had my life all planned out: we were going to have kids no less than 2 years apart, no more than 3 years apart... we were going to have 5-6 kids, at least 4... etc. I even had family members who struggled with infertility and I still thought this way. In my mind we already had a kid and that would not be a problem.

What I didn't expect was what is called Secondary Infertility. Secondary infertility is when you have problems conceiving after you have already been able to conceive a child without any medical assistance. So even though we already had our wonderful little boy, it didn't mean we weren't going to experience infertility.

I also didn't realize how common it is. The Center for Disease Control estimates that 11% of couples who already have a child experience secondary infertility (that equates to 4 million couples). source

On this blog post (and I love what she says about secondary infertility!) I found this quote from Dr. Alice Domar who wrote the book Conquering Infertility: "Statistically, secondary infertility--the inability to conceive and deliver a second child-- is actually more common than primarily infertility."

Us with our little guy in 2012

Add that to the millions of couples who can't conceive their first child and the CDC has found that 1 in 8 couples experience infertility. source

ONE in EIGHT couples, people! And yet, people still assume that if a couple doesn't have a child (or more than one), there must be some other reason why like to make more money, to avoid the responsibility, because you don't like kids, etc.

The problem with secondary infertility is that once you have a child, you and everyone else think you must not have any problems and should be able to "pop them out" whenever your heart desires. It wrenched at my heart every time someone asked me, "So when are you guys going to have another one?" I would say something like, "Hopefully soon." but after about a year of that, my answer changed to, "Ask Heavenly Father that one and let me know." It's not that I was trying to make them feel bad that they asked such a ridiculously personal question, but I needed a way to let them know that not everyone has control over when they have their next child.

As if it wasn't enough to go through the month-after-month infertility treatments, the cruel cycle of hope and disappointment, and the tear-jerking prayers of my 4-year-old praying for a sibling, I also had to put up with stupid people who said, "You ONLY have one?" or give me every tip under the sun about how to get pregnant (my "favorite"-- sarcasm there: "Just relax. You're too stressed."). It is not easy.

Then there's the people who think, "Oh so if you can't have a baby, you go to the doctor, he puts you on clomid and you get pregnant that way." It doesn't always work that way. Ryan and I went through infertility treatments for years and the doctors could never figure out why we couldn't get pregnant. This is called unexplained infertility. The doctors told us in 2012 after all those infertility tests and treatments (short of in-vitro fertilization) that if we kept trying, eventually we may get pregnant. That wasn't good enough for me. I didn't want a "may get pregnant."

You see, I already had one child and I wanted him to grow up with siblings. I wanted the answer to his prayers and ours to come before he was too old to appreciate it. I also knew what it was like to be pregnant and hold that baby in my arms at birth and I longed to experience it again. This is one aspect unique to those experiencing secondary infertility. In no way am I saying that secondary infertility is harder than primary infertility (or vice versa); I'm just showing that there are things that are tough about it too.

I loved how that Dr. Domar put it: "Women with secondary infertility are the Rodney Dangerfield's of infertility--they get no respect. Other infertile women can't stand them. After all, they've got one child--isn't that enough? Family members don't understand them. They got pregnant once, why can't they do it again?" 

The best way to describe it for me is to say that you don't feel like you fit in either the infertile category or the fertile one. You feel like you're in-between. Those experiencing primary infertility think you shouldn't complain because at least you have one child and those who can plan their pregnancies to a T do not understand what it's like to experience infertility.

I'm not writing this so that anybody feels sorry for me or feels like I'm complaining. Instead, I just want to help you understand what it is like to go through this trial of infertility (especially secondary infertility) so that you can understand how to be more compassionate for those around you who are experiencing it as well.

So after 3 years of trying to get pregnant, we decided in September of 2012 that we would go forward with in-vitro fertilization (IVF). In infertility years, 3 years is not a long time. I've known women who have gone through infertility treatments for many more years than that. But for us personally, we felt that it was the right time to do it. I had already been struggling with anxiety which was related to our infertility and we decided that it was better for my mental health to go ahead and do IVF.

We went through a wonderful clinic called Reproductive Care Center in Utah. We had already been working with them on other infertility tests and treatments and we loved the doctor we worked with, Dr. Swelstad. My son and I lived at my sister-in-law's house for 2 weeks in Utah while I went through the IVF process.

The IVF medicine (complete with huge needles)

For 10 days I had daily shots that I had to administer myself. I got used to needles, let me tell you. I was terrified of them to begin with and only got to practice inserting them twice into a little sponge thing (I really wanted to practice on Ryan so he could know how it was going to be, but they wouldn't let me at the med class. Haha).

I also had a blood draw and ultrasound every other day until the egg retrieval where they had to put me under anesthesia. I was nervous about it because the last time I had been given anesthesia was when I got my wisdom teeth out and I bawled like a baby when I woke up out of it.

When I woke up from the egg retrieval (not crying this time thankfully), the doctor congratulated us on getting 17 eggs! (You know how weird it is to hear about future life referred to as "eggs" and "embryos". It honestly makes me feel like I'm a chicken or something.) That was a lot of potential embryos right there. The doc was happy, we were happy.

Trying to keep my humor about these needles!

After five days of updates on how many embryos we had (10) and how they were "growing" (how many cells there were), we were back at the doctor's office Saturday morning.

I will never forget the moment when Dr. Swelstad came in and informed us that ALL 10 of our embryos had survived. This is pretty rare. Not only that, but the doctor and the embryologist recommended that we only transfer one embryo. Before that point, we had already decided we were going to transfer 2 so that we could have "better odds." The doctor said the decision was up to us, of course, but that they really thought the embryo would take because it was rated an "excellent grade" embryo. We decided to go with their recommendation and I remember pushing the paperwork at the doctor thinking, "No regrets Kadie, if it doesn't work we can try again in December with two of the other embryos."

Then we signed some papers and got all decked out in the pre-op room (I am not attractive in those hair caps, but we had to record the experience):

The procedure was done in 5 minutes, I laid there for 15 and then we changed and left. You feel like after what you've been through over the last month, that you should get to know if it worked that day. It just seems so anti-climatic to have them give you some instructions for recovery and then just go home to wait 2 weeks to find out if your body decided to want that little "bubble" of cells.

The next day we said goodbye to our amazing hosts who let us move in for half the month and drove back home. The embryologist called and let us know that 2 of our 9 remaining embryos hadn't made it to freezing, but that still meant we had 7 left.

The next week and a half were SO. SLOW. Any of you women who have wanted to be pregnant before can relate to this: I looked for every possible sign that I was pregnant before I could actually find out. I would get nauseous and think, "I'm pregnant!" Then I'd have to remind myself that it didn't start near that early and that my body could mimic any of the pregnancy symptoms at that time because of how jacked up my hormones were from the shots.

Finally on Wednesday, November 7th, I got my blood drawn to see if I was pregnant. In what seemed like FOREVER (really only 3 hours later), my nurse called me. I don't think I even said "hello." All I said was "Please tell me you have good news." She said, "I do! You're pregnant!" I was so relieved and happy. Then I said, "You're ABSOLUTELY sure? There's no maybe?" And she reassured me that there was no way I wasn't pregnant.

Eight months later, on July 3rd, 2013, we welcomed this beautiful girl into our family.

Oh my heavens, isn't she so cute and squishy????

She's now in the terrible twos and I can't believe she was once so small and cute and docile. Haha. I remember we were like first-time parents all over again with her. Our son was almost 5 when she was born and we didn't remember how to take care of a newborn! But life was great and Kaleb absolutely loved having a sibling.

At the end of 2014, we decided that it was time to start thinking about using one of our frozen embryos. After contacting Reproductive Care Center they told us that I first needed to have my local OBGYN do an ultrasound to make sure that everything looked healthy.

Since I wanted to switch clinics this time around I made an appointment with a doctor from the new clinic to do a yearly check-up and then the ultrasound. Unfortunately the doctor I met with had his own ideas about my infertility (having never met me before and also not being there for all my previous infertile years) and tried to convince me to try Clomid or Femara again. I firmly told him that no I was not going through that again. Several times throughout the appointment I had to decline his "help" and finally he said, "Nothing I say is going to change your mind, is it?" and I said, "Nope!"

I still cried all the way home because here is another misconception about infertility: even after you go through IVF or other infertility treatments and conceive a baby, infertility still affects you. All those feelings came back of what it was like to go through all those treatments and the heartbreak and disappointment of getting my period every month. When that doctor tried to convince me to let him work his magic (never mind that we'd already been to an infertility specialist), I already knew I couldn't go through it again. We did IVF so that I would never have to go through it again.

It's bad enough that every year, we get a bill in the mail for our embryo storage and it's like a smack-in-the-face reminder: Hi, you have infertility! Or every time we get together with our close friends who have a son that my son's age and a daughter that my daughter's age but have one son in between, it's like a reminder: hey you could have had another kid in the time it took you to get through your infertility treatments!

It never leaves you, but it also creates who you are today. I can say I am stronger. I am wiser. I am more compassionate. I know I am loved. I know I am supported. I am closer to my husband. I appreciate my kids more. I know what a miracle it is that anyone gets pregnant! I know I can do hard things. I know my Savior can truly give me comfort. I know that Heavenly Father hears my prayers. I know that I can be guided by the Holy Ghost.

And that guidance led me to decline that doctor's offer (he's retired now thank heavens so I never had to see him after he did the ultrasound) and go ahead with the embryo transfer. It was a lot easier than the IVF process, let me tell you! And we were blessed to get pregnant with another girl who joined our family on November 12th, 2015.

So during this week, National Infertility Awareness Week, I want you to know that Ryan and I are 1 in 8. The person sitting next to you in psychology class could be that 1 in 8. That person in your church who plays the organ could be that 1 in 8. So please, please, think before you ask him/her when they're going to have a baby or another baby. Think before you complain about how you've tried to get pregnant for three whole months and it's not working. Think before you ask them, "Do you only have the one child?" That "only" digs deep. Think before you tell them how you read this article where Vitamin B helps you get pregnant. Or sleeping upside down or jumping on the tramp or whatever.

Because what a person dealing with infertility needs most is sensitivity and support. They need the world to be more accepting of them saying out loud, "Hey we're having a hard time getting pregnant" or "we can't ever get pregnant." Infertility is not taboo. Once they tell you that they are dealing with infertility, don't be afraid to ask them how they're doing with all the treatments and what you can do to help ease their emotional heartbreak. Most likely, all they need is a listening ear and a good hug.

And chocolate. Lots of chocolate. :)

If you're someone that's dealing with infertility, please know that you are not alone. Even that family with 8 kids on your street could have dealt with infertility. You never know until you open up. You'll be surprised to find how many have dealt with the same trials you are going through right now. I know not everyone can be so open about their experiences as I am, but I strongly believe that the more we talk about infertility, the more the "fertile" world will understand how to react and be sensitive and supportive.

And most of all, hang in there. Your family will come (all of them). In the meantime, don't forget to enjoy the good parts of life. One of my favorite quotes (and reminders) while I was going through infertility was this one:

For more information on infertility, go to www.resolve.org.

Baby Girl's Nursery Reveal!

I'm done! Well... for now. I have a Phase Two (My hubby says, "Of course you're not done...") that I will do in the future, but I'm done with what I wanted to finish before this baby girl comes.

I think there's virtually nothing in the room that hasn't been left in it's original state. Except for maybe the crib sheet and bumpers. That's it. And that is why it took so long. I like to create a lot of work for myself. Although thank heavens I didn't do it all alone! Thank you to my amazing and ultra-supportive family. It took me, my hubby, my mom, both of my sisters, and one of my brother-in-laws to get this room finished.

The first thing we did was put up crown molding at the top of the walls and add two chair rails. I loved how different this look was. I saw it in a picture on Pinterest and knew it was what I wanted to do. What I underestimated was how long it would take! If I ever do a chair rail again, it will only be ONE with no moulding!

But it was totally worth it for this room. Top it off with off-white paint for the borders and grey in between and I had a great neutral background for the room so that it can be a girl nursery, boy nursery, guest room, whatever it needs to be in the future.

Next we painted all the furniture. My sister Natalie brought down her paint sprayer and we set up a little painting booth in our unfinished basement. Oh my heavens it was a lot of work for her and I will owe her eternally for it. :) We chose off-white for the crib and glider to keep both very clean looking.

And yes my sister might just kill me for posting this pic, but I just love her in paint mode.

Then to spice things up, we did green for the dresser with a distressed look and a stained top. The stain is the same custom mix I did for my dining table and chairs and it worked perfectly! I still have some more for anyone who wants to use it!

 

Amazing transformation, huh? I got the dresser from Craigslist for $60. Between using paint and stain that we already had, as well as the same knobs for the top two drawers, the total cost for this awesome dresser with character is around $85 (I'm including the cost of the new knobs and polyurethane to the original price). You just can't beat that.

The next thing we did while my mom and Natalie were here was to make a roman shade for the window. This window is the only one in our house that gets direct sunlight (hence why our indoor plants always die...) and I knew I would need a good black-out curtain if this baby ever wanted to sleep during the day.

Sorry lighting is bad here!

 We followed this tutorial and made this black-out roman shade from a mini blind. These roman shades sell for $200 on Pottery Barn. Crazy. We made it for less than $35. I love this fabric. It was perfect for my color theme and I loved how it was polka dotted but didn't make you want to zone out while looking at it.

Oh so much more to share! Yay. Years ago we bought a very cheap bookcase (as $4. Seriously) and I wanted to use it in the baby's room, but it definitely needed some TLC. First of all, it was laminate so I had to prime it before painting it. Then for the color, I used a darker version of my grey wall color. Add a coat of polyurethane and it was ready to be moved into the room. But it really needed something to spice it up. Following a Pinterest find, I went to the dollar store and bought 2 foam boards to cut and fit in the back of the shelves. I then hot glued some great fabric I already had on hand to the foam boards and slid them in the back.

Why did I do it that way? Because now I flexibility of switching them out in the future if I move the bookcase to a different room. I love how it dresses up the plain bookcase. And since you've probably noticed, I didn't do it on the bottom shelf because in Phase Two, I will be putting some cute bins on the bottom shelf for baby toys. The rest of Phase Two involves hanging some more things on empty walls (like above the crib).

Above the bookcase I hung the awesome bow holder my friend Janell gave me at my baby shower. I hung it a little high so that I can add hooks sometime to the bottom for the baby headbands I have. That little box on top of the bookcase holds her little hats. The flower pot is one of my favorite little touches in the room. I got the bottom vase at Deseret Industries for $1 and the flower bunch for $1. All I did was spray paint the vase white and add the two together.

Back to the glider: After painting, I recovered the ugly blue cushions on the glider. Oh man that top cushion was a bit of a nightmare because of the inset sewing in the middle. I had to hand sew some of it (and I HATE hand sewing). But it was worth it. I got this fabric from Hobby Lobby and it's duck cloth, which is great for upholstery. This glider also has a footstool that I recovered just using a staple gun.

 

Another thing I made was this ruffled crib skirt. You can't see the ruffles very well because the crib is on the highest setting for a newborn but once we move it down a setting it will be perfect.

My sister Jennifer helped me with this and was kind enough to do all the math and most of the hemming. Love her for it. :) I got the idea for this crib skirt from Pottery Barn (they have SUCH cute stuff, just way too overpriced!). They were selling it for $70 and I made it for less than $10. Have I sold you on DIY yet???

Thank you to my friend Jess who made the green and white pompoms for my baby shower since I was planning on making some for the nursery anyways! And thank you to her for responding to my SOS when my first attempt at making the pink one failed miserably. :) I also love the bedding I have for the crib. It's all ready for a cute little baby!

I also added another flower accent to the room. I just love hydrangeas and there are some very pretty fake ones. I found this bunch at a Down East Outlet for $5. I bought just a clear vase from DI For $1.50, spray painted it the same white as the other vase and I love how clean and pretty it is on the dresser.

Another DI find: This lamp base for $6 and a plain ugly shade for $1. I spray painted the gold base the Oil Rubbed Bronze and then added ruffles to the shade to cover it and tie it in with the cribskirt. The inspiration for this came from here.

 Add a cute little flower made out of the roman shade material on it and it's perfectly girly.

Okay almost done. I needed a mirror above the dresser and when I saw my sister's friend's tutorial on making a sunburst mirror on their blog here, I knew it was perfect. To top it off, it was cheap to make!

Between the mirror (from Michael's, used a 40% off coupon), glue, paint sticks (free from Sherwin Williams -- thanks to the awesome guy who helped me!), and spray paint, this cost me $10 to make.

I love how this mirror makes a statement. It's very large, but I love that because it holds the entire wall's attention and really looks impressive above the dresser.

And that's it! Thank you to my sister-in-law for letting me use her camera so I could properly show you the nursery. Never to be left out of a photo session, here's the big-brother-to-be:

I think he's as relieved as I am happy to have the nursery done. I've spent a lot of time this last month working on it and he's noticed that I haven't been able to entertain him all day long. He better get used to it since that won't change once the baby comes along!

Planning Baby Girl's Room

I am currently sitting in our office-soon-to-become-baby's-room at a desk that's in the middle of the room, away from the walls which are half-taped and begging to be painted. And I'm itching to get there. But this 7-month-pregnancy bump and bad back are slowing me down so alas, here I am wondering why I didn't tackle the baby's room any sooner.

Not that I haven't been doing my research. And by research I mean spending hours on Pinterest, finding my inspiration for this room and pretty much mapping out every detail. In so doing, I created a billion projects for myself. Thankfully I have a totally-rad sister who loves doing room makeovers because she's coming to my rescue in a week to spend "as long as it takes" to get this nursery almost done. It also helps that she's bringing me all her baby girl clothes and accessories that her 10-month-old has outgrown.

So I'm planning that 4 weeks from now I will be totally ready for this baby and then just sit in the sun and rest until this baby makes her arrival. Okay so I'm being optimistic.

But that's totally besides the point of this post. When my sister offered to come, she asked me to make a montage that would show what I was thinking for Baby Girl's room so she could get a feel for it too. And thanks to Pinterest, it seemed like I could find a tutorial or at least a picture for everything I pictured in my mind. So here's what I came up with:

I wanted to keep the dominant colors in my room neutral so that next time around, if we're having a boy, I won't have to re-paint or take out furniture. Grey and off-white was the way to go for me. Then I loved the idea of adding pink and green. The green I could use in permanent pieces and I could switch out the pink accents for blue ones if again, we have another boy in the future. I found a good color scheme (that you can see above, although my off-white and grey are not the same colors as shown there).

Picking paint was a one-day nightmare for me. Why did I have to do it in one day? Because Ace Hardware was having an awesome deal on their paint and I found out about it one day before the sale ended. My first sample of grey turned out blue on my walls. Totally not what I was looking for. That's when I realized that I needed a grey with a warm undertone (and with 0 blue in it at all). My carpet is brown and so with a warm undertone, the grey wouldn't look so out of place.

My 2nd sample came out too brown, but I scored with my 3rd and 4th (some of these I got free at Lowe's with a coupon so I wasn't buying a ton of samples really). Either one would have worked, but I ended up going with Bleached Shadow. I bought one can of it in a darker shade and then asked them to mix me another can of the color, but mixed at only 60%. This is the way to do it if you want the same color but lighter. They can mix it at any percentage, you just have to ask!

The dark grey is for some of the furniture, the lighter grey is for the middle part of the wall (the green part in the picture above) and the off-white (I went with Bone White, but ended up mixing a little bit of brown with it because it was too white) will be for furniture and for the borders on top and bottom. The only paint I have left to get now is green for the dresser.

A word about chevron: I love it in small doses. The chevron fabric above is for the baby glider and I will mimic it on the love sign, but that's pretty much it. Which means I also still have another kind of fabric to find for my valance curtain and teething pads on the crib sides (neither of which are pictured above). Decisions, decisions.

In the end, the main theme of this room is: DIY cheap but cute. I'm using furniture I already have (with the exception of the dresser that I got from craigslist for $60) and my sister & I are doing/making everything ourselves. The paint is the most expensive part really and thanks to coupons and sales, I've bought that cheaper than usual (and I'm going to have leftover for sure! Anyone interested?). Keeping it frugal is how I balance my crazy-project-redo-everything side with my rational-we-should-not-be-spending-money side. And my husband basically tolerates it all (but I know he'll think it looks good when it's all done).

So in a few weeks I'll hopefully be posting a nursery reveal and praying that it looks just as good as everything pictured above or I totally blew previewing it all. :) I'm so excited to see it all done but tired at the thought of completing it all!

Ramblings of an Imperfect Mother

(Disclaimer: I fully recognize that I have a wonderful child who I love and cherish. I would never give up being his mom for anything. Nor can anything compare with his unconditional love for me. But in my quest to keep things real on this blog, I must say the following is true.)

Being a mom can be hard. There are days where you think there is nothing else you'd rather be doing. And then there are days where you think, "I need to get the heck out of here." And I only have one child so far. I like to think that my patience capacity is just going to magically expand with each child I have because then I won't go completely out of my mind on the hard days. Please no one burst my bubble.

It would be easier if children came with a handbook. "Turn to page 14 for temper tantrums. If these ideas don't work, turn to page 18 for ideas of where you can hide before you throw a tantrum of your own."

But they don't. And really, each child is uniquely their own. What works for one, may not work for another. So you feel like you're reinventing the wheel with each child. Sometimes, it's just so refreshing to see another mother say "I have no clue what I'm doing, but this is what Heavenly Father wants me to do and I sure love my kids deep down inside."

Sometimes the only way to keep cool is to have some humor. One of my favorite mothering memories is when a friend at church had her sobbing daughter next to her, whining about one thing or another and my friend said to her, "Child, let's go find your mother." (Janelle, you always crack me up.) Sometimes you've got to laugh or otherwise you'll cry.

I don't think I've ever met a mom who isn't hard on herself or isn't thinking that she's failing as a mother in one way or another. It doesn't help when you get negative reinforcement from your kids yelling, "You're a bad mom!" or "I don't love you anymore!" every time they're upset. (My 4-year-old does both without ever being taught it). Or when you have other moms laud their superior mothering techniques or tell you what would work better for you and your child (as if they know your child better than you do). Bottom line is even those women are thinking that they'll never reach the lofty "good mom" status.

And this is why I laughed at this quote from Pinterest:

 How true is this?

What's a "good mom" anyways? I can bet that each mother's description is vastly different from the next and full of reasons why they do not fit this "good mom" category. We look at the next woman over who's sitting there in church, her children quietly paying attention to the speaker and you think, "Now there's a good mom." What you don't know is that she totally had a breakdown the day before because her 2-year-old pooped in the corner and then smeared it all over the wall, her 6-year-old cut his own hair, she yelled at her 9-year-old when he broke her favorite vase playing soccer inside, she burned dinner cleaning up the aforementioned calamities, and then she forgot to pick up her 12-year-old from a birthday party and the neighbor had to bring her home.

The worst thing you can do is compare yourself to the other moms around you. I promise you that it doesn't make you feel any better because you don't know what their life is truly like and besides, you're always comparing your weaknesses to their strengths. So when I'm at my wits end and I'm feeling like the worst mother in the world, I have to remind myself of this:

I am enough for my children. I am doing the best I can and that's all that's asked of me. I am doing the most important thing a woman can do in this world. And Heavenly Father will help me because they're His children too.

Now if only I could remember all of that when the going gets tough and I wonder, "What have I got myself into?"

10 Things I've Learned From Kids' Television

1) No parents in the world have as much patience and calm as Cailou's parents, especially for such a whiny, horrible child.
2) Dora's parents should be ashamed of themselves for letting her go off on adventures ALONE.
3) Bob the Builder can build anything in a day.
4) Using adult voices for kid voices is SO not okay, Fireman Sam.
5) Yo Gabba Gabba has some weird power over children even though it's simply psycho... maybe it's a form of brain washing?
6) Ornithomimus is the fastest dinosaur that ever lived. Thank you, Dinosaur Train.
7) Thomas the Train never learns and always causes "confusion and delay."
8) That completely wordless animated penguins are nevertheless entertaining to my kid and very very annoying to adults. I detest you Pingu.
9) Penguins are blue, Ladybugs are pink, Hippos are yellow, Moose are orange, and Kangaroos are purple. If you don't believe me, check out The Backyardigans.
10) The girl cow was the worst addition to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse EVER.


I never knew that children television could be so educational for an adult.