Light in the tunnel!

Have you been to the eye doctor when they sit you behind that black apparatus and make you lean your head against it to look through the impossibly small holes? Then they hook up the "reading" bar with a little card and slide it closer to your eyes obstructing everything else in view but bringing those tiny little letters into your whole range of focus. That exactly explains where my life has been for the last few weeks. Those tiny letters on that little card have been the miscarriage - obstructing my ENTIRE LIFE. I haven't been able to see anything past that.

Why now? It's 6 months past when it actually happened, so why now? Let's think about that....At the time of the miscarriage, DH was getting ready to deploy, he was away at training, the house was in the final stages of selling, packing, apartment hunting, DH departing to CA, moving, back and forth to CA to visit him, moving again, finally DH going overseas.....then I came home to quiet. I was left with my DH deployed, I wasn't 6 months pregnant. I was in an apartment alone. I was dredging through life. I was finally facing the fact that here I was, in a non-ordinary life, alone - no husband and no baby. Not only that, but we didn't even really have another chance to try for a baby after the miscarriage because of the timing.

So we miscarried and I've just been kind of sitting with the disappointment. No hope to try again for a year. Now don't get me wrong. I know God has a plan. I know that things happened the way that they did for a reason. I know that it also took me a good 3 weeks to get in touch with what exactly my problem was! Guys, I was in  HUGE FUNK!

I finally identified the problem. I finally began talking about it. Working through it. I'm definitely not through it. But I've found a candle in my tunnel. I can at least see where I'm going now. It's a dim light, but it's helping me keep my balance, and step over the obstacles in the way. I feel much more in control since I've identified what it is that was weighing me down.

So I feel ready to move forward a little at a time. The first step is going forward with the surgeries I have scheduled with my NaPro doctor. I see him next Thursday and I have a list of questions. I'm scheduled for three surgeries. One to remove the endometriosis (endo as most people shorten it to), a selective HSG, and an ovarian wedge resection. The hope is to get in, get cleaned up and get healed and hopefully ready and ovulating on my own (without meds!) so when DH is back, we can start trying again for the family we want so badly.

It's funny the way life works out sometimes. In this season of Easter, I feel that I have been given new hope, new life and a new chance. I hope that I can hold onto this feeling of newness as I watch the flowers start to poke their heads up, trees start to slowly turn green and the sun stay a little higher in the sky a few minutes longer every day. It's such a hopeful time of year. I hope that the hope extends to you and your family too.

Weightlifting Life

I feel like I have just about a 500lb boulder on my back! Life right now if VERY HEAVY!!

St. Anne pray for me! I don't know that St. Anne is the patron saint of STRESSED OUT, but I love her and she has been so good to me.

So I have been absent from this blog - not sure at this point if anyone is reading it though. I think it's more of a help to me to just get my thoughts on track. Plus a lot has happened over the last few weeks.

I'm back in SoCal for my last trip to see my DH before he deploys. If that wasn't enough stress, I met with the surgeon last week, and he wants me to go for a trifecta - three procedures in one! One would be just a scouting mission to make sure everything is good with my uterus. Then one would be an endometriosis removal surgery with the final one being an ovarian wedge. AHHH!!!

I'm not even sure where to start, so let's just jump in with what I'm most nervous about - the ovarian wedge. So when I met with my NaPro surgeon my husband was able to video chat with us during the consult. What an unexpected blessing! I had a hard time concentrating on what the Doctor was saying due to the images he was showing. I realized I have a weak stomach when it comes to surgical images.

Luckily for me, WebMD had this link. Basically my body should be able to ovulate on it's own after this surgery. We will have roughly 8 months before DH returns, so that gives me plenty of time to have the surgery and heal.

Since I'm out in SoCal with him, I arrived on P+1. Having met with the surgeon before I came out here, I know I had a nice follicle that was ready to burst the day before I came out to SoCal. Fingers crossed! I will be able to take a HPT before he goes, so we will atleast know where we stand. If I end up staring a new cycle, we already decided I would go forward with the endo and wedge surgery. There is some other irons in the fire, but I'm not really ready to talk about that yet! That will have to come in the next blog. Exciting hook - right?

Unintentional sting

So, I'm back from the left coast. Kinda depressing being back in the snow covered NJ. The winter is such a low time for everything, but the low temperatures are the worst. To add insult to injury, after leaving sunny California I landed back in NJ and had to de-ice, de-snow and somehow break through the massive encrustation of muck to get into my car. I managed to cut my hand on the ice - ouch!

My husband was VERY happy to see me! Hooray! We even got to spend one whole day together! A day off has been rare for him. Sunday was his first day off in three weeks! We went to mass, breakfast, a beautiful hike in Torrey Pines...it was an absolutely perfect day....

I managed to make it home with no problems. I grabbed some soup out of the freezer and stuck it in the microwave while I quickly unpacked some of my stuff - comprising of several bottles of medication. Progesterone, glumetza, and letrozole (just in case I got stuck in CA longer than planned!) It's funny how things like medication start to make you feel defined, or forced into some crazy hole. I had to have my progesterone called into a pharmacy in CA. When the pharmacist asked if I was on any other medication so she could make sure there wouldn't be any conflict, I told her glumetza.....she then proceeded to talk to me for 5 minutes about how diabetes can be handled with diet and exercise. Thanks, lady......I already have a no carb diet and I work out 5 days a week....my A1C also is in fine shape - so thanks......I'm not diabetic. I'm trying to make a baby, yo!

Once I finally made it to the couch, I saw I had an e-mail from my NaPro Doctor....I had gone for blood work while I was in California since my flight was delayed...twice! I called the office and they sent me over a script for the blood work, and off I charged with two different scrips in hand. Coincidentally I have my endo this week also, so it lined up to have that, plus my P+7 bloodwork done (I should do a post on what the lingo I've learned so far actually means when it comes to NaPro and Creighton Model)

Anyway, I opened the e-mail from my Doc, and it said "labs negative for pregnancy - see attached"...I didn't even realize HCG was on the lab slip e-mailed to me, but it was. I didn't even think I was pregnant....I wasn't even with my husband to try during the fertile window. But it stung reading those words. In my head it was coming across as "FAILURE FOR PREGNANCY!" which I know is completely unreasonable. It may have been just because I was exhausted from a day of travel and running through the airport to catch a connection home, but my heart hurt getting that e-mail.

I guess this is kind of par for the course when it comes to IF....we want so badly to be parents. Under normal circumstances, I'm stalking my chart and just waiting for the first day I can take a home pregnancy test (HPT) just to get a negative. This time, it wasn't even on my radar since my DH and I haven't even been together since New Years! It kind of stung....I don't know that it will ever be OK hearing that I'm not pregnant....but this time was weird, because we weren't even available to try!

Time vortex - A miscarriage story

I've become so aware of time. How quickly it's been going by and how much everyone seems to be craving extra hours in the day. Some people want that time to work, or clean, or exercise, or just to jam in a few extra minutes of sleep. Where does the time go? I went to have blood drawn this morning, and after a quick stop at Whole Foods (yum!) I got back to the hotel and realized I had been running around for 3 hours. It didn't seem possible, but clearly it was. Ha ha

I'm so fortunate to get to spend a little extra time with my hunnie before he deploys. As I mentioned in other posts, we have been trying since we were married to conceive. One of the plus sides of regulating my cycles with NaPro Creighton Model charting is kind of being able to guesstimate when our chances to try for pregnancy will fall for the next month. Sadly, it won't line up for us to have another try before he leaves. At first I was really sad about that fact. Then after lots of time to reflect and work through my self-imposed "must be pregnant ASAP" pressure, I realize that my state in life has me being a wife. Why not totally embrace that? Obviously it's not our time to be parents, especially for us to become first time parents while we are worlds apart. 

I'm getting emotional even typing this. I feel so so so lucky to have the husband that I have. I can't imagine enduring the miscarriage that we did without him by my side. He is so wonderful, supportive, understanding and can always lighten my spirits when I'm feeling down. We work very hard to have open communication in our relationship and be totally honest with each other. It's one of the things that  took me some time to get used to! Since the miscarriage really has catapulted me onto a different (overly) emotional level, I thought I would force myself to talk about it, so here it goes.

In October DH and I were in Florida visiting his parents. Things felt so different in my cycle. We had hit our peak time to try for a pregnancy, I had been doing acupuncture for pregnancy, I had a huge change in the way my appetite was, I was soooooo tired and I was having a lot of cramping on one side of my belly. I would break into sweat, my heart was racing a lot of the time...just weird. So my SIL who is a nurse, handed me a pregnancy test. I took the test the next morning, ran into the kitchen where she was, and she confirmed, there were two lines. I couldn't believe it was real. I showed DH and he was just as shocked. "Are you serious, babe?" As his eyes lit up. I felt like I could take on anything in the whole world. We flew back to NJ, I called my NaPro doctors office and they sent me right away for blood work. The blood work confirmed, I was pregnant. I couldn't believe it! DH would be able to hear the heartbeat before he left, we would have a baby in June 2015 and suddenly our whole world was changed. They said I was 5 weeks at the point we found out. Apparently that is early.  

So I went for blood work again a few days later and when my NaPro practitioner called me, she sounded apologetic. She said my HCG numbers weren't doubling. They wanted me to start a special progesterone injection compound right away and told me to stay off my feet for a few days. With DH in NYC training, I did just that. The injection progesterone came, and we started on that as quickly as we could. We started getting comfortable with the idea we were going to be parents! After a few days, they sent me for more blood work. My HCG numbers had increased, but weren't doubling, which is what they are supposed to do early on in pregnancy. I started reading everything known to man on the entire internet about early pregnancy HCG numbers. There were women who had successful pregnancies after low numbers, as well as women who had successful pregnancies after first tirmester bleeding (which I was having). I would call the doctor every day to make sure every little pain or twang that I felt was normal. I started worrying that everything was wrong. 

I went to have blood work done again in the middle of week 6 of the pregnancy. I stalked the doctors office to find out what the bloodwork said! Finally my Doctor called me back, not the NaPro practitioner. Her voice was calm and very very somber. My low HCG numbers had fallen. She said that this was the tell tale sign of a miscarriage. I kept myself together and I asked her several questions about what to expect over the next few weeks and what were the "normal" parameters. I called my husband and told him what the doctor said. He was away for training and I asked him to please come home that night. Not totally unreasonable since he as about 1.5 hours away and could make that happen. Then I called my mom and I lost it. I cried and cried.

To try to explain the loss I felt is very hard. I felt like I let down our baby, I felt like I let down my husband, and even thought it was 6.5 weeks into the pregnancy, I felt like I let myself down. The doctor assured me several times that it wasn't my fault. There is nothing I personally could have done to change the outcome, but my heart felt so incredibly hollow. I really felt like a disappointment as a wife... I mean what's the root of being a wife? I think it's to segway to a Mom...  if I can't carry our first baby to term, what am I supposed to do? That feeling took some time to kind of figure out. My DH never once said anything other then how proud he was. He told me he married me because he loved me, not because I could maybe one day mother his children. 

Miscarriage is such a hit to a lot of areas of life. I feel like I'm still stuck in this time vortex. I can't quite get my head back into the game of life. Granted, a lot has changed in the last 3 months. We sold our house, we miscarried, we moved into an apt and probably most importantly, DH moved across the country to continue training. Life has taken some unexpected turns. Sometimes you just have to hold on and pray that God will get you through!

Great to meetcha....

So I found myself with some extra time - I have a lot of that these days. I thought I would introduce you a little more to my life.

There are two big parts of my life as it currently rolls, and that's being a wife and a military spouse. Both are big changes from what I was used to! Might as well introduce you to the man who changed my whole life, right? DH and I met on September 11, 2012 on none other than match.com. There were A LOT of bad dates I had to endure before I finally met the one. Both from online dating and just regular life (you know, blind dates, speed dating, etc...) I knew things with him were different pretty early on - we endured hurricane Sandy together and the way he treated me, took care of me, was so aware and in tune to my fears and really went over and above what I would expect out of a new relationship. No wonder he is still around! He treats me with the same respect, genuine concern and love that he did when we first met and started dating.

So the story he tells of when he "fell in love"with me was Christmas 2012. He was working ovenights at his job at the time and had to work Christmas eve AND Christmas day! How awful...he claims the money was worth it, but the jury is still out on that one. Since he was working (he worked at the airport) all night, I wasn't going to miss my chance to have a Christmas dinner with my new beau. So I cooked up pounds and pounds of chicken legs, vegetables and baked easily 4 dozen cookies of all variety types and sizes. I packed up place settings of glass dishes, silverware and placemats and headed to meet him for dinner. There we sat, in baggage claim outside Dunkin Donuts, having our Christmas dinner. That is when he said he knew I was a keeper!

We had only been dating 3 months at that point, but in January 2013 he bought a ring. He worked millions of hours and I had no idea why. He set a goal to pay the ring off before he talked to my Dad. How sweet! So March 8, 2013 he proposed to me! The timing was crazy because at about 9am March 9th I headed to a 10 day vacation in Hawaii I had booked with one of my girlfriends. (Side note: the trip was booked because we weren't going to wait for Mr. Right......I booked it 3 weeks before I met DH).

Once back from Hawaii, we went high gear planning for the wedding! We did precana and all our marriage prep and managed to pull of an October wedding. What a whirlwind! We knew eachother for 13 months on the day of our wedding. And here we are, in year 2 of our marriage. I always wanted to be a wife and mother. So far, the wife part is going great! I miss him a lot more then I thought was imaginable. I am so immensely proud of him serving our country and keeping us safe so I can sit here and blog while he is working in some desert.

We started NaPro and Creighton Model charting before we were married. It's been an up and down roller coaster going through trying to conceive, and now even adding the deployment. We tried up until the last minute that we could. We were almost there....In the fall we found we had a positive home pregnancy test. For 6 weeks I was a mom to a perfect little angel. Just as the idea of being parents (and the baby being born during his deployment) started feeling more real, we miscarried. It was COMPLETELY heart wrenching. Looking for the positive became so hard, but looking back, I feel so lucky that DH was home while we went through that emotional torture. My DH was there to support me, hold me, tell me it would be ok and shower me with unyielding love. I never was happier to have someone to be there solely for me. It was selfish, but he really helped me carry that cross. It was what I always yearned for as a single woman and my heart is just so full now even thinking about that painful journey.

This is longer than I thought......I will earmark until a later date!

Starting out

Making a first post is the best way to start a blog, I guess? Things in my life are crazy, but I figure as I write, something will always bubble to the top to talk about.

A little about me, so you know whose blog you are reading. My present life lends me to being a military wife. My wonderful husband and I have been married for just over a year. While he presently is serving our country, I find myself lost mostly in how much my heart aches to be in his arms! He is a reservist, which means he has been home with me aside from drill weekends and the all too often schools, training and qualification achievements. This will be our first deployment together, and my first one all together! It is definitely an adjustment to go back to a "single" mindset when it comes to taking care of things around the house.

When I'm not missing my DH I am left to ponder our ongoing fertility issues. We want so badly to be parents, and it just didn't seem to happen (yet?). We found out we were pregnant just at our first anniversary, but we lost the baby at just 6 weeks. We thought we would have another chance to try over Christmas when I saw him for a few days. A very large part of who I am is a Roman Catholic. Some will think it's old fashioned or there are too many rules, but I find there is so much that it offers to me. It has helped me through some rough times! So I have praying like a mad-woman that we will have our own "Miracle".

We weren't successful over Christmas, which just broke my heart. Who knows if we will have another chance before he actually deploys out of the country....

I think this is a good place to start, I hope this ends up being a positive thing for me, and maybe even someone else!