Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Little Girl Haircuts

Little Girl Haircuts Biography


Source(google.com.pk)
So many readers have asked me questions about our own adoption experience that I decided to publish here the entries from my personal blog as they happened.  I share this because the Heart to Heart agency we used has 18 babies being born in June and July of 2010… and they do not have enough homestudy-ready adoptive families for them.  
What I share here is quite personal, I know, and this is really putting myself out there for scrutiny… because these are my thoughts and emotions (un-edited) as they happened. I hope that this information will allow you to experience ‘second-hand’ what adoption was like for us, and perhaps if you are going through it yourself, you can relate and possibly see how we coped with all the ups and downs. Through these posts, you literally will walk with us as we begin the process from Day 1 all the way through finalization with our son, and beyond…
I know that some of these posts are religious in nature, as I am a very religious person, and I truly believe that my son came to our family by divine design. I apologize in advance if the emotions I talk about are not familiar to you or do not fit your religious beliefs. I will try to my best to insert explanations where I feel appropriate, but hopefully you will be patient with me and my views on God, religion, and family.
Again, I know that by doing this I and my family open ourselves up to judgements and ask that you read these entries in the spirit in which they were intended. Please understand that, until now, these experiences have only been shared with close family and friends and were originally intended to be personal journal entries. As such, they are very personal, sacred, and heart-felt moments of mine and I hope you will treat them with the same respect even if you don’t agree.
Lastly, in an effort to make my 37 single-spaced pages of journal entries into something more reader friendly, I have broken my writings into nine separate posts, linked one to another, instead of one massive post. This way you can read a little one day and come back to it another, etc. Thanks for understanding!

You know, everyone has times in their lives that are simply more difficult than others. I suppose it is the normal cycle of life. For the first eight years of our marriage, I would say that my husband and I had it pretty easy. Not that everything was always perfect, but for the most part we were able to “make lemonade” with anything that did go wrong in an otherwise extremely blessed life. For the last two years, however, I would say life has become much harder. Not to say that life was at its worst, or that there aren’t bigger problems we could face, but these two years have been long and difficult in many respects for our family.
To begin with, our move back to Utah from Missouri was definitely an adjustment. We really miss everything about Missouri. It simply felt like home. It felt so good to experience life outside of the Utah ‘bubble’, to experience the charm of the Midwest, and get to know and love so many new people. Utah, for us, really has a very unique atmosphere (good in most ways), but it can take some getting used to.
For purposes of background, my husband and I have been trying to have another baby for nearly two years without success. The short version is this: I had an IUD (Mirena) put in after our #4 daughter was born and had it removed shortly after moving here. After nearly six months of no baby and a very irregular menstrual cycle, I called my OB for an appointment. All the doctors swore up and down that the IUD has extremely minimal side effects or long term problems when it became more mainstream in use (and when I had it put in). Since then, however, the statistics became more concrete and I happened to fall into the 0.02% who experiences complications with it. This ‘no-baby’ period may seem short to many of you, but for us that is a really long time. We seemed to get pregnant at will with our previous four girls. After going through a variety of tests (progesterone therapy, hysterysalpingograms, ovulation tests, etc), the doctor seemed to find nothing abnormal and simply wanted to put me on Clomid. (This would seem like a very risky move given that our first two girls were identical twins, and our #4 daughter started out as a twin.) Out of concern that we could end up with quadruplets, I declined and called my uncle.
You see, my uncle is one of the most prestigious fertility specialists west of the Mississippi. And, yes, this new uncle/niece interaction was a little strange at first! At least in my head, but in reality I was OK with it. My uncle is uber professional and very kind to be helping us try to sort this out. If anyone needs a good fertility doctor, I would most definitely recommend him.
My uncle had me come in to complete more specific tests (often at varying times of my cycle, so this process took months). During one of the ultrasounds on my ovaries, he found scarring on my uterus which was causing my body to retain blood (thus the weird cycles) and very likely the cause of infertility. YES!! Finally a real problem that seemed would require a quick fix, but… that was too easy. We have now had two invasive procedures to correct the problem, neither of which has worked, and talked to several doctors who are all wondering where to go next. Because it isn’t a common problem, there isn’t a common fix either. In escalation, my uncle had many more amazing services he could provide to more reasonably guarantee us a baby and a gender of our choice. Those procedures, however, would be quite expensive even after he waived is own time. As it was, this discovery was already becoming costly.
We have obviously run the whole spectrum of emotions. I have been angry, bitter, hurt, sad, emotional, happy, and excited… sometimes all at once. Watching the calendar every day, like a hawk, desperately holding on to any hope… just to come crashing down when the cycle started all over. Living in a neighborhood where there are 16 wonderful women that have had babies in the last six months doesn’t help either. I don’t begrudge them their babies at all, they are wonderful women, but I want one too. I’ve tried to be strong by being kind, smile, and be happy for all of them, as I should. That, however does not stop the pain.

Little Girl Haircuts

Little Girl Haircuts

Little Girl Haircuts

Little Girl Haircuts

Little Girl Haircuts

Little Girl Haircuts

Little Girl Haircuts

Little Girl Haircuts

Little Girl Haircuts

Little Girl Haircuts

Little Girl Haircuts