December | 2011 | I don't ever want to forget….

So, where to pick back up? We were just about to begin IVF try # 2 and I think it should also be known that at this same time, 2 other major things were happening in our lives.

I quit my job and I was starting a business. It had been a lifelong dream of mine to own my own business and Em and I decided that now was as good a time as any to pursue it. I had been in the mortgage industry for several years, worked my way up and gained experience at a senior level management position. I leveraged this knowledge and started a small brokerage shop and hired one person, Bryan. He was a co-worker that I had trained and a very loyal friend. The company was called Family First Mortgage Group, ironic only in the fact that the “group” consisted of me and one other person and our “assistant” Emily.I had higher aspirations than a two man and one lady operation so we went with “group”, however I learned very quickly that my timing might have been off in the decision to start the business.

Nuts to bolts it only took us about 3 months to get the business off the ground and running. In that short period of time, though, the entire industry had started to shift.

The wholesale lenders that we had signed on as partners we would broker loans to were starting to cease lending or tightening standards making it difficult to qualify anyone. The good news in the mortgage industry is that plenty of people still wanted to buy or refinance homes. The bad news in the mortgage industry was that no one could qualify for a loan anymore.

With a failing business and tightening finances we needed to dramatically cut overhead. We had the house on the market, but, were not as aggressive as we probably should have been. We soon came to realize that we were not going to be able to sell the house for what we paid for it. We hired a short sale specialist, Chuck Rollins. This guy knew how to market and sell in these situations at a time before anyone even knew what a short sale was. I was optimistic about our chances of unloading what was starting to become a crushing monthly payment. We would certainly miss the house and though it was beautiful, it was, after all, just a house. The basement was something to be missed 🙂

Yes 100 inches HD

Bar and Poker room

Ok, so maybe the concession stand was over the top, but in my defense, it was there when we bought the house.

The short sale was extremely stressful, but eventually, the house sold and we rented a home nearby. We also made the difficult decision to suspend business operations & I joined another mortgage company.

So, to set the scene, life was stressful! I digressed a bit, but I couldn’t resist, writing is turning out to be as much as a therapy session for a very difficult time as a celebration of our life today with our girls.

To recap, from start to finish during the course of nine months ending in September of 2008, we lost our home, lost our business and source of income and had already had 1 failed cycle of IVF.

That was all happening as we were working on cycle #2 (Thank goodness for COBRA because we were able keep our amazing infertility coverage). At the beginning of May 2008, just a few days after moving into our rental, we transferred two very strong embryos back to Emily and were still very optimistic about the possibilities of our future children. While they were selecting the 1 sperm to inject in each egg, I was having a little fun joking with the Embryologist and Emily. I said that while I certainly wasn’t picky, if they could grab the sperm holding a hockey stick it wouldn’t be a bad thing! Yes, optimism at its finest.

These were the actual embryos prior to transfer. Proof right in front of our eyes that ALL things were possible, “The hand of God meeting the hand of science”, as Emily liked to say.

Now, would begin the 2 week waiting period before we would find out if this cycle worked or not. Emily had met several people on online support boards and had become friends with several of them. A couple of them actually started a cycle just days before ours so Em had some people to talk to who could really relate.

Hey where's my hockey stick?

Emily has always said one of the hardest thing to go through was the waiting period or “the 2ww” 2 week wait. She was always looking for early symptoms, searching for reasons to be hopeful. If she felt a twinge it was “maybe that was implantation”. If she felt a shooting pain in her breast it surely must have been an early symptom. A craving or hot flash must have meant it worked, not that she was packed full of hormones from all of the shots. Even for me though the not knowing was the worst, did it work or didn’t it, it was all you could think about…………

Just a few days before Em’s birthday, we got a false positive on a home test. It may have been remnants of the hcg trigger shot or what’s known as a chemical pregnancy, either way, it was soon abundantly clear that we were not pregnant. I think we both knew, never really wanting to admit to each other that it was hopeless, this cycle had failed too. I don’t think we wanted to admit it because that meant admitting that we were going to have to go through all of this again. To drown our sorrows we booked a last minute trip to Vegas using some frequent flyer miles and marriott rewards points. We were feeling pretty bitter…

The God question:

This was the 39th straight month in which Emily did not become pregnant since we started trying. 37 the old fashioned way and 2 with the help of the latest that medical technology had to offer. What did this latest failure mean? If you believe in God, you might say this was his plan, that there were other ways to help children into and through the world. I said to that “horseshit,” it just wasn’t our time. Already struggling with my faith, this only added fuel to that fire to question God or at least his motives. How could you look and see him “reward” crack addicts and terrible, violent parents with the gift of life while Emily and I struggled so much?

I decided to let the higher power off the hook though and just kept saying “whatever is meant to be will be meant to be” ,but, we weren’t going to give up, at least not yet.

Fast Forward to August 2008– it was discovered a while back that part of my “Male factor” issue could have been caused by a varicocele vein in my nether regions. It was causing pain and making me generally uncomfortable after sitting for long periods of time. We did decide to have it repaired through a less invasive method called embolization . The process includes actually loading the vein with platinum coils to cut off blood circulation, the body then compensates by rerouting blood flow.After a couple of consults we decided to go to the head of urology at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore

Not my Doctor

I wasn’t about to mess around with some no name doctor, these were my testicles after all! The Dr. had said with out the surgery there was a ZERO % chance of natural pregnancy. He also said that with the surgery it would still be unlikely to have a natural pregnancy, but, that it might push us out of IVF and into IUI territory, which from a financial perspective was about an 85% savings. A short time later we found out the the surgery a success from a surgical standpoint, but it would be 6 months or more before we found out if it impacted my sperm counts. So “Platinum balls” in tow, what to do next?

Second opinions were in order and we ultimately decided to give a new clinic a shot for our 3rd and final attempt (last one covered by insurance).

Shortly before our 3rd attempt (because we didn’t have enough on our plate), we found out the my dad was diagnosed with early stage (though aggressive) prostate cancer. To me, my dad was superhuman, so this really threw me for a loop.

Superman with my two brothers, Paul and Owen. December 2011

Up to this diagnosis dad had never even been so much as IN a hospital other than to visit a friend or family member. To be honest with you, until this diagnosis, I had never even given my dad’s mortality a second thought. It was sobering and scary. Dad went to Roswell and was treated very successfully for the cancer, unfortunately it wasn’t the end of my dad’s health issues as I’ll share in a later post.

We started our 3rd attempt the day after Halloween. I only even mention this for one reason, the kids. Everywhere we went, almost everyday marked some sort of event that had to do with children.I don’t think your ever quite as sensitive to children and especially multiples as when they are the only thing you really want, yet you can’t have them.

1st day of school, State Fairs, Halloween, vacations, walking through the mall or grocery store, all became a constant reminder of what we apparently couldn’t have.

Mind you we were only happy for all of those people we saw celebrating life with their children. We also had great disdain for people we saw “mistreating” or berating their children, didn’t they realize how lucky they were?

In early November, President Obama won in a historic election. It dawned on me that in fact our struggle to have children had now elapsed an entire presidential term. A new beginning for the country would surely usher in a change in our luck as well. We did take one of future president Obama’s campaign posters to heart…….

and so we did.

3 embryos transferred & a new drug protocol. Can we be pregnant this time? YES WE CAN! If having children was only as easy as a campaign slogan, we would have been fine, but this cycle was nearing the moment of truth and we would soon find out the results.

All we could do was wait and hope to be blessed, in fact here is Emily’s favorite song during the darkest times :

Em and I had been discussing whether or not to test or not during “hell week” and I didn’t really want her to. The false positive last cycle had been crushing. Looking back, I think it might have been for selfish reasons that i didn’t want her to test early. If it was a BFN (big fat negative) that meant a crushing waterfall of emotions that I had to help her through and it was getting harder and harder to do.

Every failed cycle only meant it was harder to say “don’t worry, next one will work for sure” and “it’s going to be ok”. The truth was that this was our last cycle that insurance was going to cover if it wasn’t successful. If we had a live birth they would allow us more down the road, but if it failed they would cut us off.

Doubt had really begin to creep into my mind for the 1st time, I was truly scared that if it didn’t work again we were totally screwed. The business and house had eaten up a tremendous amount of our savings and we wouldn’t be able to pay for a “fresh” cycle anytime soon. I wasn’t ready to start thinking of life without children and neither of us were ready for any of the alternatives such as adoption or fostering, etc.

That being said Emily wanted to test and I couldn’t talk her out of it. Her thinking was that if she tested on Thanksgiving that we could have good news to share with the whole family since we were visiting for the holiday. I love her so much, she is an eternal optimist and I draw strength from her and that everyday.

Devastation. One word to describe a thousand feelings. That’s what happened on Thanksgiving day 2008. 3 failed IVFs, 7 lifeless embryos, countless injections, several surgeries & 2 very broken hearts is what we had to show for all of the pain.

Knowing that the holidays were coming made it that much worse. Another Christmas, our 5th, while trying to conceive. This process to a certain extent over those few years had sucked the life out of the holidays for us. A joyous time to share in love and family had somehow turned into another horrific reminder that we might never have those memories with children of our own.

I am not going to lie its almost like I am reliving the pain while writing all of this. It’s harder than I thought it would be, emotions I haven’t felt in a long time are surfacing.

At least I know now what I didn’t know then -that there is joy; amazing blissful joy at the end of this story.

to be continued………….

I don't ever want to forget….

A parenting blog dedicated to my children, and to me never forgetting the small things

Monthly Archives: December 2011

I can’t believe you are two Eliza Caroline.

Aside

I think its only fair you know about the dark days too (part 2)

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