My journey into mommy-hood Part II

The next few months actually were pretty smooth. My body had a chance to get a little more normal and my emotions were much easier to deal with. I was able to survive the end of grad school, get through my internships and land my dream job as a pediatric physical therapist right out of school. In November of 2002, a few months into my career, things were not going so well again with my body. Symptoms were no longer being controlled by the second drug. Back to the doctor we went, who sat us down in his personal office and told us that if we were serious about having a child of our own (apparently that was not clear all along???), NOW was our chance...no more postponing, no other treatments...have a baby...NOW. He felt like our window of conceiving without significant intervention was dwindling by the month. We left there feeling like someone had knocked the wind out of us. Rather than leaving there having been given another shot to suppress my endometriosis, we had much different marching orders!

I must admit, at this point, I was feeling rather self-righteous and had the attitude that I had already been through so much preserving my likelihood of conceiving a baby that surely the Lord would have mercy and let us get pregnant easily, right? WRONG! Not even close. The first major roadblock we encountered was that my body seemed to have forgotten how to have cycles on its own after all these years. Hence started the months of NOTHING. Well, nothing but crazy hormones, wicked mood swings but NOTHING productive!

In April of 2003, after having yet another fit of rage for no good reason, I decided for my and my husbands sake, we should probably go talk to the doctor again. Back we went to Dr. P's big office surrounded by diagrams, figures of mothers and their babies, doctors and newborns, all those things I so wanted to insert myself into! This time the diagnosis was not at all what we expected and almost comical: I was suffering the longest and most ridiculous case of PMS known to woman! He seemed to think that my body was on the brink of getting going but needed a little nudge. So, we started Clomid (a drug to make me ovulate which would in turn trigger a cycle) and this beautifully packaged drug called "Seraphim". Isn't that just a pretty name? It's code for PROZAC! Apparently, the known (and nearly immediate) side effects of SSRI's include lessening the effects of PMS. Who knew? I tried mightily to convince my doctor I wasn't crazy (don't think I succeeded though) and he assured me that if my problem wasn't truly hormonal, the pills wouldn't help. So, I took one on my way out of the office and went off to get my Clomid and go back to work. About 4 hours later at work, I had the strangest moment. I suddenly felt like a black cloud had been lifted. I literally stopped in my tracks, took a deep breath and fought back tears of joy. I felt like myself for the first time in MONTHS!!!

I took my five days of Clomid (which, incidentally felt a lot more like a sucker punch than the "nudge" the doctor said it was), followed all the other "instructions" and waited. And waited. And waited. Nothing. Then I started feeling a little bloated, nauseous, just weird. I was now 2 weeks late...could it be? I went to the doctor before work one morning thinking I surely must be pregnant...even he thought so based on my symptoms. I thought for sure I'd be going to work guarding the most amazing secret. So, let's take a look, he says and does an ultrasound. "Hmmmm, this doesn't look right" Not what I wanted to hear. Then, we were dealt the first of many painful blows....there was no baby, instead there was a cyst the size of a grapefruit on one of my ovaries. Hence, the bloating, nausea, general malaise. The regular dose of Clomid had overstimulated my ovaries. Dr. P proceeded to explain that it is the kind of cyst he would normally recommend surgically removing, but this particular one had "excessive amounts of blood vessels going into it" which would make surgery risky. If we weren't trying to get pregnant, he would proceed, but since we were, the safest option was to just wait it out and see if my body would get rid of it.

Needless to say, I didn't make it to work that day. That was the first time I felt completely brokenhearted. I cried, wailed, sobbed, and then cried some more. One of my dear friends, who had been fervently praying for us when we went into our appointment that day appeared at my house with a beautiful bouquet of flowers and sat with me and cried. She had no words for me but her very presence and willingness to sit and cry with me was a sweet comfort. There was supposed to be a little bitty baby inside of me....not a ginormous cyst!!! I was angry. Sad. Angry. Frustrated. There was absolutely NOTHING we could do for months. Just wait. Anyone who knows me at all knows that patience is truly NOT one of my virtues!!!

It took almost 6 months for that lovely cyst to go away. When my doctor suggested trying Clomid, I about came unglued....poor guy....I didn't even let him finish before I jumped down his throat. He only wanted us to do a 1/2 dose this time. Ok, pull yourself together, Julie. Time to put your big girl panties on and get on with it! (My words, not the doctor's). And, this time he wanted to add another step. After the five days of Clomid, we'd check to see if there were eggs ready to go and when they were, I'd give myself an injection that would ensure that they'd actually drop. Ok, I'll try it. But, not without doing some reading and finding out that this shot increases your odds of multiples to 5-6 times the normal odds. Yikes....we really wanted one baby but not a whole bunch!

It was now Christmas time of 2003 and we decided to dive in and do a cycle before we headed to Chicago for the holidays. I was on pins and needles the whole time we were there....did it work? Was I pregnant? Would we finally be having a baby? I took a couple tests....negative...but I didn't lose hope until I had my confirmation that it had indeed not worked. I laid on my bed at my parents house and sobbed. Cried. Wailed. Again. I hurt. I was angry. No one in my family had dealt with infertility issues so as much as they loved on me and tried to help me keep going, I felt very alone. We came home from that trip to find out that one of our closest friends was pregnant. That was the first time I experienced the terrible feeling of wanting to be truly happy for a friend yet feeling outrageously jealous and sorry for myself. Not a fun time.

We repeated the above described cycle over and over in the spring of 2004. Different minor details, time lines, locations, etc, but same end result: no baby and an increasingly angry red head. Somewhere in there, on a particularly bad cycle, I remember trying to clean the living room and hearing the song "Enough" by Chris Tomlin. I literally laid down in the middle of the floor with my arms wide open begging the Lord to be more than enough for me. Music has always spoken to my soul but that day was a pivotal moment for me. I had to choose to be ok with the Lord truly being enough for me. All my needs, all my wants. He was more than enough to take care of them. He also continually brought my favorite verse to mind over and over again..."Delight yourself in the Lord and He will grant you the desires of your heart". Psalm 37:4. I came to the realization as I learned to delight myself in Him, He would grant me the desires of my heart...if they were His as well. I believed with all my heart that He desired for me to be a mommy, but was realizing that the way I got there or who I got to be a mommy to may not look at all the way I had planned things out.

By late spring of '04, we were financially and emotionally drained. Fertility drugs are expensive and the ups and downs of the cycles were exhausting. My brother (in Chicago) was graduating from high school that year and John's brother was getting married (in Charlottesville). We had already decided we couldn't afford for both of us to go to both events so I went to my family and he went to the wedding. Since we were going to be apart during critical times of several months that summer in addition to the sheer exhaustion, we decided to take a break from trying to get pregnant. We decided that we'd re-assess in the fall and decide where to go from there.

Ok, I promise part III will be the end to my very long story!! Stay tuned!

My journey into mommy-hood Part I

So, I guess since this blog is mostly about my life as a mom, it might be fun to share the journey of how I came to be a mommy. Let me start by saying that it was nothing like what I thought it would be and was a journey that tested my faith like nothing ever had. Good news is, we all know how it ends! :)

I've always wanted to be a mom. I'm one of those weird people that figured out pretty young in life (when I was 14) what I wanted and just figured I'd follow my little plan and when I was ready, I'd have a baby. I'd go to college, become a physical therapist, meet the man of my dreams, get married and when we were ready, we'd just have a baby. Easy enough, right? Nope. That's not what God had in mind, that's for sure.

When I was 17 I was diagnosed with endometriosis by one my doctors in Uruguay. After undergoing surgery to remove the adhesions, I was placed on a very strong drug that essentially forced my body into a chemical menopause for 6 months. Let's just say that being 17 and describing what menopause is going to feel like to your 40-some mother just really seems wrong. It was very hard on my body and my spirit. But, I did it willingly, knowing that keeping the endometriosis at bay as long as possible would only improve my chances of conceiving and carrying a baby. I was told that having a baby would actually be the best "cure" for my condition. Really? That certainly didn't fit into my little plan for life, so we did the drugs.

Fast forward 8 years. Now living on the other side of the world, I had been checking things off my list....graduate college, check; meet man of my dreams, check; become a physical therapist, check. But then the plan began to crumble. John and I had only been married a few months (I wasn't even done with school yet at this point) and my endometriosis had come raging back. None of the previously effective measures were controlling my symptoms anymore and so we were given two options: start trying to get pregnant right away (definitely was NOT going to work in my little plan....I definitely needed to finish school first) or do another series of injections of a different drug to again induce a chemical menopause. The second time around was even harder on my body than the first time and let's just say that my poor husband had NO idea what to do with a 25 year old menopausal new bride. Very rarely does John comment on any of the difficulties we've faced but ask him about that one....I dare you! Not a good time.

I look back on that time and thank the Lord that I had married the real deal. He was all in and did everything he possibly could to make it easier on me. However, four months into the six month treatment he and I sat on our bed one night, me sobbing and him teary eyed and decided that it was simply not worth the strain on my body or our marriage to do 2 more months of the treatment. We just couldn't deal with it anymore. So, back to the doctor we went, who was very understanding and agreed to switch me to a less effective but more tolerable treatment until we were ready to try to have a baby.

Part II coming soon....

"At least you won't be bailing the sewer!"

Growing up as a missionary kid (MK), Christmas was quite different for my family. We melded some of our North American traditions like gifts on Christmas morning (rather than on Jan 6, Kings day) with some of the Uruguayan traditions, such as doing fireworks at midnight on Christmas Eve. Christmas looked and felt quite different in the middle of summer in the southern hemisphere. Often times, we had visitors at or around Christmas time, one of whom, my Aunt Ann, would bring everything you could possibly imagine for us! She would humor my grandmother and carry on stuffed animals, pack Martinelli's, bagels, chocolate and other baking goods along with her own assortment of fabulous gifts for us. Because cold cereal was basically unheard of where we lived, a common gift under the tree was Cheerios or some other kind of cereal someone brought or my mom managed to get a hold of. Needless to say, Christmas was very different but we loved it.

Well, I should say we loved all but one of our Christmases growing up. The first year my sister had moved back to the US to go to college was already going to be a difficult one for us. We had never been apart on Christmas. It also just so happened to be one of the few Christmases we did not have any visitors come. We all struggled with feeling a bit lost and tried to keep hold of what we were really celebrating. We did our Christmas Eve asado (barbque), did the fireworks, got to open one present at midnight and off to bed we went. The next morning we had a fairly subdued morning until we smelled something AWFUL. My dad went to investigate in the garage and came back with the most depressing, disgusting news....the "poso negro" aka sewer hole in our garage had backed up and was going to have to be bailed by hand!

We proceeded to spent the next several hours bailing the sewer and then cleaning and trying desperately to get rid of the sickening smell that had permeated EVERYTHING!!!! I don't even remember what the rest of the day was like after that. My mom and I came to the conclusion that we must have repressed the rest of the memories because it was so pathetic.

This past week I was talking to my mom and feeling rather sad about the fact that this will be the second year we have not been able to go to Chicago to spend Christmas with my family. I've been trying to focus on the joy of the season and the new traditions I've been starting with my little family, but was still feeling a little down. In her infinite wisdom, my mom said, "Well, Julie, no matter how this Christmas turns out, it will never be worse than the year we bailed the sewer! At least you won't be bailing sewage on Christmas!" I had not thought about that Christmas in YEARS and had to laugh about the terrible, but now a little humorous memory!

My mom is absolutely right....I won't be bailing sewage this year. I will be celebrating our Savior's birth with my beautiful babies, my amazing husband and his family. If I keep my attitude in check, it should be a lovely, clean smelling Christmas!

Boys and creativity?

One of the things that, I must admit, I was a bit sad about when I realized I was now the mom of two little boys and no girls, was the thought of missing out on the fun, creative things that girls like to do. You know, crafts, dressing up, etc. Well, I had no idea that boys could be so stinkin' creative too! Here's a little glimpse into my 5 year old's creativity:

He absolutely LOVES to dress up. Before we started getting him superhero costumes, he would come up with the craziest outfits and call them costumes. One of his favorites was his snow boots, jeans, Lightning McQueen fleece hoodie and his bike helmet. Don't ask me why, but this was his absolute favorite "costume" to play in....even if it was 110 degrees outside! He now has an array of costumes that range from store bought action heroes but continues to make his own as well. Rarely do we leave the house without a costume, mask or prop of some sort. Depending on where we go, who we are with or what how he happens to be behaving that day, I am sometimes accompanied on my errands by Bumblebee (the transformer), Iron Man, Batman or Buzz Lightyear. Occasionally it is a fabulous combination of many of the above. I'll let you in on another little secret...it took me some time to be comfortable with letting Caleb traipse around town wearing his superhero protection helmet (aka his bike helmet) or in his sundry of other costumes before I finally realized that it doesn't matter what other people think of my kid! I love it, he loves it so who cares! I have been pleasantly surprised to discover that many people kindly indulge him and comment on how cool he looks or ask what he is (since it's not always obvious!). If there have been any critical people, they've at least had the decency to be quiet about it!

Caleb also loves to make things. For my birthday this year, he decided he wanted to make me a card. Not just a paper card, mind you. He concocted this whole idea to make me a WOOD card. His daddy helped him cut out a piece of wood which he then drew a picture of our family on then a base to stand it on. He even specified that he wanted a groove in the top so that I could put pictures or other cards. It blew me away. It was one of those things that I will never get rid of. See, it may be a 2 by 4 with Sharpie ink on it to most people, but it is a labor of love that made my little dude beam with pride over.

He also loves to make things out of playdough. Most recently, he made an entire "batch" of cookies complete with little individual chocolate chips in them. They are actually still in my refrigerator and I have no idea if I'll ever convince him that he can use the play dough for anything else.

So, even though this only scratches the surface of my little guy's creativity, I won't bore ya'll with all the crazy things he comes up with. I'm going to try to figure out next how to put pictures in my posts to show you some of these fabulous creations.