bump #44: glimmers of hope

I was cleaning out my car this afternoon and found these...

I'm going to risk y'all thinking I'm a crazy person and tell you why I had these binkies in the first place. Two months ago when we were in the middle of our third iui, I found a pacifier on the ground in the parking lot right next to my car. I stepped around it and sat down in the driver seat but before I closed my door I had a thought. My first thought was "eww gross" because those things are full of germs. But then I thought, "hmm. finding a binky seems like a sweet little reminder that perhaps a baby is near and maybe this will finally be our month." You know, like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow (except really a filthy chew toy for an infant). So I picked it up {with a tissue} and kept it.

And then a few days later Andrew found a pacifier on the ground right in front of our mail box. Random, right?!  So we started this little collection thinking how crazy it was that we kept finding binkies everywhere we went. Like some sort of strange scavenger hunt.

We were super hopeful that those binkies signified some good news. But a few days later we learned that our 3rd iui failed. And those "good luck" binkies were nothing of the sort. They were just plain, old, yucky binks neglected and forgotten. In fact, I forgot all about them until today. And for the record, I finally threw them away. But at the time they offered some small glimmer of hope. Which makes me think how silly some of the things I place my hope in are.

"Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?

Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God."  Psalm 43:5

bump #24: be still

Sorry for the hiatus! Let’s catch up, shall we?

I am still alive.
I am still not pregnant.

　

“Be still and know that I am God.”

　
Still doesn’t sound like a great place to be, it sounds counter-productive and lazy (spoken from a true obsessive-compulsive, multi-tasking busy-body). I don’t have the patience or desire to just chill and be still. And yet I hear God clearly telling me to be still right now.


The conversation goes something like this:

Me: God, what in the world is wrong with me? Why can’t I have a baby?
God: Be still and know that I am God
Me: Ok, but what about the six girls on my newsfeed that had perfect, precious babies last week? They are the same age I was when I started trying to get pregnant. What’s up with that?
God: Be still and know that I am God.
Me: Um yeah, you said that already. Duly noted.  Thinks ’yeah, I’ll have plenty of time to be still once I have a nice big baby bump and am restricted to bed rest.’ 
God: {face palm} - at least that’s what I imagine his response to be :)

　
The conversation doesn’t always end there, but His response is always the same. It’s kind of infuriating. Until I realize that He keeps telling me the same thing not because he is a recorder on playback, but because I am simply not getting it. His words go right over my head (FYI: I am 4’11” so most things do go right over my head!) Perhaps He is a little infuriated with my response as well. Ugh. I keep missing the point. Can anyone relate? I so want to please my heavenly Father and live a life that reflects his truth, but my tiny brain just can’t fathom how He loves me so much when I miss the mark so bad.

I’ve tried to be still. I even tried yoga once. It was a disaster of epic proportions. My downward dog looked like disco duck. Don’t ask! I don’t think He understands just how hard it is for me to be still. There are way too many things for me to be busy worrying about. I guess that’s why he doesn’t stop there. He goes on to say AND know that I am God. Apparently these concepts go hand in hand. It has always been easier for me to know that He is God. Of course I don’t acknowledge it when I act like I am, but deep down I know. He is good at reminding me.

Here is an example:

I am terrified of the ocean. (Luckily cruise ships combat that fear!)
It all started when I was 4 years old and walking at Shell Beach collecting shells. Imagine that! (I feel it important to say that this was the only time I ever went to the beach without my mom, and of course, the only time I almost drowned.) I ventured out into the water and it was only up to my knees so I took a couple more steps. Unbeknownst to me, the sandbar I was walking on dropped off suddenly and the water was immediately over my head. I panicked. I had taken swimming lessons, but the elementary backstroke of “monkey, airplane, soldier” wasn’t going to save me from that current. I dropped my handful of seashells and my arms were flailing, I was not a svelte tot and was sinking fast. I reached up as high as I could and still was underwater. My eyes stung from the saltwater so I closed them tightly and just as I did, I felt something hit my feet. It was flat and soft and it lifted me back to where I could stand. It could have been an angel or a stingray or a wad of seaweed, but whatever it was, God used it to rescue me. When my arms were flailing and I was sinking down, down, down, he was already there to pull me out.


God wants to rescue us.

All he asks is that we be still so that He can. 

Bottom line: We cannot rescue ourselves. We need to get out of our own way so that He can.

Right now I am drowning in a sea of infertility.

It sucks.

He knows. He is already here to pull me out.

But sometimes I am not still; sometimes I worry that He has let go of me for a minute, you know to see if I can swim. 

I can't.
So I panic.   

And then I turn on the radio and this is what I hear:

Oh no, you never let go
Through the calm and through the storm.
Oh no, you never let go
Every high and every low.
Oh no, you never let go
Lord, you never let go of me…

I can see a light that is coming for the heart that holds on.
There will be an end to these troubles, but until that day comes,
Still I will praise you
Still I will praise you.

image via

　

bump #23: recovering and moving on

*** We are celebrating our 5 year anniversary this weekend... check out pics here ***

Ok, so day 2 after hysteroscopy was harder. The bleeding mostly stopped, but the cramps got worse. It will be two weeks before the doctor calls with results from the biopsy but most polyps are benign so we aren't too worried. I have been recovering on the couch with a delicious box of chocolates courtesy of MIL and had a lot of snuggle time with my sweet puppy (she's 2 and a half, but tiny so she'll always be my pup!) She is coincidentally in heat right now, so we are sort of commiserating together...

Chocolate makes everything better, (or vanilla for maddie bear)

I am only slightly embarassed to admit that it took me 2 days to realize that I still had those surgery snap things stuck on me. I'm still not exactly sure what they were for, but when I went to get in the shower and noticed them I thought "oh my gosh, I've turned into a robot... cool."

So I expect to be fully recovered by tomorrow (our 5 year anniversary!) and then on Monday we make the 2 day drive to California/Alaska to visit our families for about a month. (Yes, we are always on vacation :) Perfect timing because that gives me just enough time to finish this month's pack of birth control pills and hopefully get back on a normal cycle schedule so that we can start trying to conceive naturally in 6 to 8 weeks (doctor recommends to wait at least a month to let my system heal). That puts us at August-September. We might consider IUI again in October or November. Maybe. No surprise that I'm not eager to inflict anymore pain on my body!

Here's the deal:

As fun as getting all of these procedures done has been (gag) and the overwhelming excitement followed by underwhelming disappointment of a failed IUI, we are going to take a little time off from the infertility center and doctors and try to make a baby au naturale for a while.  Assuming those polyps were the main cause of our inability to get pregnant (apparently the big one "papa polyp" was really big and in the worst spot possible for embryo implantation),

Hopefully the worst is over.
Hopefully bump #24 (or even 25 or 26, I'm willing to be flexible) is finally the real baby bump. Hopefully there will be no more surgeries and no more things other than babies taking up space in my uterus.

Yes we are hopeful, but we are also realistic.

Realistically there could be a whole other plethora of problems preventing pregnancy. The more books I read the more I am convinced that I have a whole laundry list of ailments. So we will continue praying for wisdom and what steps to take next, we will trust that God knows better than we do and is already taking care of everything, I will stop reading books that freak me out (or at least skip over some parts), and we will enjoy an entire month of being surrounded by family and friends that love and support us (and some of the littler ones even help curb our desire to be parents one stinky diaper and tantrum at a time, bless their hearts!)

It's the middle of the year and thus far 2012 has been mostly a let-down. I like to dwell on the positives, but this year has been tough for that. In the whole analogy of "cup half full or half empty" I gotta say irrelevant: my cup is shattered into a million pieces right now and the water is spilled all over the floor. But the year is only half over and still has a chance at redeeming itself. Hopefully 2012 will be the year that started out awful and turned awesome.

Hopefully.