Let's Get Real

When writing this blog, I want to make sure I stay real with you guys. I don't want to be an emotional burden, but I also don't want to be fake and pretend that everything is hunky dory all the time and we're doing just super in the midst of our infertility. I have good days and I have bad days, and the last couple of weeks have all been amazing days actually! But this morning I felt the overwhelming desire to write out how we've really been feeling.

The following is an excerpt from an email sent to one of my friends. I want to share this with all of you because I want to stay completely transparent, but most importantly because we desperately need your prayers. Please read on if you'd like. Thanks for being incredible friends, and for your understanding and patience with me on those bad days I mentioned!

So just in case I haven't explained where exactly we're at in the process right now, I'll give you an update. Obviously the IUI didn't work in August. We were pretty broken up about it, and not really in an emotional place to jump right back into another IUI, so we took the month off. I had read somewhere that going through infertility is very similar to the grieving process, and I think that might be fairly accurate. I've never been literally too sad to function, but I was for a few days after we found out. I couldn't go to work, couldn't sleep, had no appetite. I let the sadness just overtake me. Thankfully our vacation to San Francisco was perfect timing. It really allowed us to escape from life and rediscover how much we enjoy just being together, just the two of us. It helped me remember all the things in my life that are so wonderful, and how blessed I am to be where I am, right now.

At the beginning of this month, I wasn't sure I'd ever have the strength to go through another IUI, ever again. Day by day, I'm gaining confidence that I'll be able to do it come October. However, there is still a big part of me that just wants to quit trying. As I explained to Adam, I know I'll be over the moon when we finally get pregnant, but I am just a wreck when we're trying, and I can be pretty content with life when we're not trying (like this month). I'm not sure what to think about these feelings: are they God's way of telling me that we shouldn't be trying so hard? Or are they just my fear of being vulnerable and feeling pain?

Also, there is the issue of In-Vitro welling up on the horizon. This may very well end up being our only option, and there are some pretty weighty moral issues associated with the procedure. How many eggs do we harvest? What do we do with all the fertilized embryos? Implant them all and hope we don't get 8 babies? Implant only a few, but then what do we do with the rest? Freeze them forever? Then what happens when we die one day? These are the kind of questions buzzing around our brains.

Really, I think that all of our questions come down to one big issue: what does God want us to do, and how can we know? I feel like every apparent sign we get can be interpreted in a number of ways, and we are both totally confused. Is my sense of dread related to IUI a sign from God not to do it, or temptation from satan because he knows our baby will be a great man or woman of God one day? Are we perhaps meant to never conceive because there's some baby out there who will desperately need us as adoptive parents? And if we are meant to never conceive, is it still possible to conceive a baby out of God's plan, perhaps through IVF? The story of Abraham and Ishmael versus Isaac jumps to mind. I could go on and on.

I'm sorry for the ridiculously long note! Basically I just want to say thanks for praying, because we desperately need a word from God right now. We are dying to hear from Him and get direction.