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I always said once we used through the frozen embryos we had, that would be it, we'd move on to something else. But our last two embryos didn't "stick" and the night we found that out, God presented an option to use two donated embryos. The door was open and so were our hearts, so we did the 9 weeks of medications, and did the transfer. Throughout that cycle I reverted back to my old thought process that if this one didn't work, I was done. I couldn't do it anymore. It was a lot on my body. It was a lot on our family...in every sense, mentally, physically, emotionally, and financially. We found out we were pregnant and within a week found out we had lost the pregnancy. It was hard. God revealed to us that we needed a bit of a break and that it was time to stop saying "we will do foster care once our family was complete." It became clear that we needed to follow His will in that area, even if it wasn't at a time we thought was "perfect", maybe especially because it wasn't a time that was our version of perfect. So we started the process to get licensed to foster, something that has always been on our hearts. We are currently in the throws of that process (currently taking the 10 weeks of required classes and almost have the house all ready for inspection).
...but we are also in the process of trying for another biological child. As we moved forward with the foster licensing, I just felt in my heart I wasn't ready to give up on carrying another child. I felt like us not trying again was me quitting because I was frustrated and tired, but not because that was what was right for our family. We met with our IVF doctor and he said something that hit me, "the easy part of my job is getting someone pregnant; the hard part is keeping a patient in the game long enough." He wasn't actually saying that getting me pregnant would be easy, but he was saying you have to play the odds sometimes. Sometimes it isn't easy, but if you stay in it long enough, you will get there. We have decided to go all the way back to the beginning. To take eggs and sperm and make more embryos. It seems a bit daunting, but we know in our hearts this is what is best for our family.
The last several cycles we have gone through "alone," in that, we haven't blogged them. We told a couple friends and a few family members, but we didn't want to burden others with the saga of it all, and honestly, we wanted to be able to surprise friends and family. But failed cycle after failed cycle, God began to reveal something to me. I have racked my brain reflecting on what was different with Mckenna verses our other cycles. I have tried to model that cycle when possible. But God kept putting it on my heart that the biggest difference, and maybe the only difference that matters, was prayer. With Mckenna, we blogged everything and everyone praying with us. The other cycles, our prayers went up alone. We believe whole-heartedly in the power of prayer, and so we will be blogging this cycle, and asking (read: begging) for you to join us in prayer.
We are doing two weeks of meds (which is the shortest protocol we've ever done..HUGE BLESSING!!!) before they go in and retrieve eggs. We start the meds cycle day one (men: cover your ears...that means whenever my period starts), which will be any day now. We meet with our doctor this morning to finalize the plan. Then it's showtime. We will post specific prayer requests over the next couple weeks, please join us in raising this process up...after all, doctors don't make babies, God makes babies!
Prayer Requests
- Today's appointment goes well, and we make the right decisions about the cycle
- My body responds well to the meds, and we get a lot of high quality eggs, sperm and embryos
- We are pregnant by the end of the year...sometimes you just gotta make the ask ;-)
- God blesses our family abundantly with lots and lots of babies through IVF and foster care!
