My desire is to spread hope and encouragement to those of you who are facing infertility. I was in your shoes back in 2006 but have crossed over to the other side of wanting and wishing to love my 3 sons.
The darkest day of my life was the day that our endocrinologist told me that I would never bear my own biological children. When my mind wanders back to his office (where there was no tissue, BTW) that big lump comes right back up in my throat and the tears well up in my eyes as though I just received the blow for which I was so unbelievably unprepared. The memory is so clear that I can vividly see my doctor’s sympathy-ridden eyes that should only be shown to someone who is mourning the very recent loss of a beloved family member. Now where are the tissues in my office, damn it? Please hold…OK, I’m back. The reason I chose to write this blog is because I am on the other side of wondering if I will ever be a mom. And believe me, I had thousands of panic-stricken moments in which I feared that I would never be. But today, I have 3 boys under the age of 3.5 years old.
My offering to you is one of hope and support. I know your heart has been broken so many times—either through struggling to become pregnant, losing pregnancies or for the mourning of children who could have been or even were.
Personally, I learned after I lost my first pregnancy in the 2nd trimester that our child was Triploid. Shortly thereafter, I suffered a second miscarriage after 14 weeks. I felt an enormous amount of anger because I couldn’t figure out why these sick jokes kept being played on me. Once I learned that I was infertile, my husband and I decided to pursue private domestic adoption and an anonymous egg donor cycle to increase our odds of having children. We struck gold on both fronts.
On October 9, 2008, our eldest son was born. We began the adoption process in December of 2007, met our birth mother in June of 2008 and Brandon was born that October. We were present for his birth and I even cut his umbilical cord. It was the happiest day of my life!
Fast forward to October 5, 2009 when our identical twin sons, Logan and Trevor were born at 33 weeks gestational. Their birth was quite different than Brandon’s, however. I will share more details in future posts but that day I crossed over and was brought back to life by a group of amazing doctors. I had 7 blood transfusions and a full emergency hysterectomy but survived to raise my 3 gorgeous sons. (The gorgeous part is fact and not opinion, just so we are clear on that point.) Thankfully, Logan and Trevor were pretty darn healthy. They weighed 4 lbs.7 oz. and 5 lbs. 1 oz. and only stayed in the NICU for 3 weeks to learn how to suck/swallow/breath.
So yes, if you are doing the math, I had 3 children in less than a year. I now have Irish triplets! Another fact is that exhausted 100% of the time but happily so!
In my future posts I plan to:
- Touch upon some of the very personal/sensitive/difficult topics surrounding infertility.
- Share my personal experiences on my path to becoming a mom.
- Encourage you to continually say to yourself, "WHEN I am a mom/dad..." This will not be a place of IFs but only WHENs.
- Stress the importance of advocating for yourself and encouraging you to choose the path that feels best for you.
You should know that I was an extremely intense and goal-driven person during my infertility struggle/journey. In the end, I think that intensity and drive served our family well. For the record, I still am an extremely intense and goal-driven. Looking back, when I didn’t get the answers that I wanted, I had a tendency to take out my desperation on those who were doing their best to try to help me. While I will definitely cringe at the retelling of some of those outbursts, I am sure you will be able to relate to my anxiety filled episodes. I hope you will gather the important take-away from these tales and navigate in a more gracious fashion than did I. Honestly; I can only really come up of a couple individuals who deserved the wrath upon which I cast. For those of you who did not, I sincerely apologize.
Even though more is being learned about infertility, there are still a lot of unknowns. During my quest to become a mom, I felt that the majority of my family, friends and sometimes even my husband lacked the ability to show and express their support in a way that was helpful and constructive. Frankly, my peeps made me insanely angry and let me down at times. On the other hand, most of those closest to me had never faced anything like infertility and were doing their very best to offer love while walking on eggshells (no pun intended of course).
When you visit my blog, please know that I have felt your deep and relentless pain. I REALLY want you to be a mom and am rooting for you 100%. My prayer for you is that your road to becoming a mom is relatively short, your (or your birth mother's or surrogate's) future pregnancy is safe and complete, and your yet-to-be-born beloved children are extremely healthy.
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