How Much to Share?

The last blog I wrote on here was when I was pregnant, which is why I feel called to provide an update.  The purpose of this blog is to document my journey and it is only fitting to share about my loss. Most of you did not know I blogged a couple of entries while I was in my last pregnancy journey, so feel free to catch up!

I keep going back and forth in my mind with how much information I should share on social media/blogging.  Every time I decide to keep things private and that people are probably sick of hearing my story, I see how much other people's blogs benefit me.  Sooooo.... I decided that even if my blog benefits ONE person, than I will do it. 

If I could say one thing that most people struggling with infertility want you to know, is that we deal with our pain/fears/depression EVERY SINGLE DAY.  Multiple times a day. We figure out how far along we should be at this point in our pregnancy (that was lost) or how old our eldest child should be at this point.  It is something that takes over your life and can easily consume your identity. 

I have realized that there is a battle I fight every day to reclaim my identity and be grateful for living my life.  I don't want to look back in a year or more and realize how much of my life was wasted.  I already feel like the past year has been consumed with four different surgeries and recovery times, waiting to see if I am pregnant in a two week wait, or focused on injecting my medication at the same time every day. I have had three miscarriages and lost more than ten other embryos before they had a chance to transfer into my body. I probably have had more than 100 doctor visits this last year at least. 

The previous miscarriage was the hardest of them all as my pregnancy was looking great and I felt confident in it.  It has taken quite a bit out of me to recover from it. I will be honest that I spent way too many days in bed physically and mentally bound by the grief.  However, I have more days that I am able to get up and face the day now.  I want to fully recover before trying again. We also still have an envelope containing the gender of our miscarriage and need to figure out if we are able to open it and process that.  

Most of you are probably wondering how I even got pregnant or how it is possible to try again if my IVF failed?  I hope one day to share that side of the story with you, but since God has not revealed how private to keep those details, we will not be sharing them with you.  All I can say is that the Lord offered a different path than I ever thought was possible. He has brought wonderful people into our lives that I feel have become family. Such a blessing!!!

We WILL be trying again and will not give up on having a family.  However, I will give up on wasting my life away in the waiting.

One other comment--- please please please do not ask someone struggling with infertility if they are going to adopt or will use a surrogate. That is ignoring the battle they are facing and is something that should only be brought up by the person themselves. Adoption and surrogacy are both extremely expensive (around $45k) and are super difficult to deal with themselves.