Day One

March 7th, 2015. That is the day that we would start a process we thought would be easy. That was the day we thought we would be parents within 10-11 months. And that was the day where every thought I had was so very wrong from the reality.  We started IVF (In Vitro Fertilization) because we were not able to conceive on our own after 9-10 months of trying and found out that we were both carriers for cystic fibrosis after some test done at our fertility clinic. If we were actually able to conceive on our own the fetus would have a 25% chance of having cystic fibrosis and a 50% chance of the the fetus being a carrier. Being a carrier is not a problem, but the thought of having a child with cystic fibrosis and the pain they would go through was unbearable. I wish we had been wiser and done more research on every single thing to do with IVF. Our doctor was very informative of what would happen in each step of the process, which we appreciated. I can honestly say that about 50 people have seen me basically naked in the last 5 years. I used to be shy about "bottoms off, there is a sheet to cover up. The nurse will be in soon". I didn't even walk naked around the house with Randall, so why would I feel great about a nurse seeing everything week after week? And not the same nurse. You start to not think about it after awhile and then you just don't even mind or care in the end. I've had 9 surgeries in 5 years and two beautiful kids to show for it. These nurses, techs, doctors and receptionist are all pulling for you to get your dream. It takes a village to make a baby sometimes. March 7th, 2015 you ask? Yes, so a box arrived to my door a few days prior to this day containing about $7,000 of medications to last about 10-12 days. I studied as an engineer in school, not a nurse so this was so new to me. The nurses, thankfully, went through a little presentation of how to prepare and inject yourself with the medications each day. Thank goodness for nurses, seriously. Before this the closest I'd gotten to needles was the annual influenza vaccine. Ouch, but nothing compared to what I was about to experience. To be fair, it's not super painful, but I was being injected in the abdomen twice each night and once in the morning, bruises going in a line of a smiley face actually made me laugh at times because Randall has a sense of humor. To be clear, these 10-12 days of injections are stimulating the ovaries to produce eggs to be harvested. And thank goodness for Randall who injected most of the medications. When I started I would stand in front of the mirror and try to stab myself with the needle. Took me about 5 minutes to get the courage. Can anyone relate? Maybe, maybe not, but I was not ashamed of the fact that I was terrified of this. Anyways, once the eggs were large enough we were instructed to take a trigger shot and egg retrieval would be 36 hours from the time of injection. Thinking back, it was so much easier to plan these things when we didn't already have kids. No babysitter needed! Ah, those were the good old days before diapers and continuous amounts of toddler fluids ended up on my shirt throughout the day. We arrived to the clinic about an hour and a half before the surgery would be preformed, me feeling very bloated and not sexy in anyway at all. I was a 120 lb 21 year old who looked about 5 months pregnant. So why was I trying to have kids so quickly at 21? I met my amazing husband in July of 2013 and we married in January of 2014 in the Kansas City Temple. Randall was 33 and I was 20. We thought we would wait at least two years before we thought about kids as it would give us time to get to know each other and finish school. Alas, while attending the temple about 3 or 4 months into our marriage we both felt impressed to start our family now and after a lot of thought and prayer we got to work on it. But with no results, we turned to a fertility clinic after 9-10 months of trying, knowing we shouldn't worry just yet but wanted to be on top of our game.  After we were called back to the procedure area, which is a door to the side of the waiting room that is locked off from the exam rooms in the rest of the clinic like a secret hidden lab, I had to get completely undressed and into a hospital gown and non slip socks. The IV line is placed in my hand and nurses and anesthesiologist come in and do consents and inform us about what is going to happen. After that, a warm blanket is placed around me and we walk to the room where surgery will happen and Randall is taken to another room so he can leave a sample to be joined with the eggs. Men get the easy fun job in all methods of baby making! I woke up to hear that we had something like 11 eggs retrieved. I had no idea if that was a good number or not, but we did it! They would be sent to a lab for testing for several weeks and then we would get test results back to know if anything was usable. Waiting is hard. Hard to sit there and wonder if all that money was wasted or not. But even a chance to have kids with my best friend was worth it. In the end I would still have Randall. And one thing was for sure; I was waiting on God's time.