National Infertility Awareness Week

Many of you who read this blog are on my Facebook. You have seen my numerous posts regarding National Infertility Awareness Week. For those of you in other parts of the nation or even in another country, this is so extremely important to me for so many different reasons.

There are 7.4 Million women in the United States  alone, that suffer from Infertility currently. This doesn't include the men who are diagnosed with being infertile or having fertility issues that are being treated.

This means that there are 7.4 Million "Mommy's at heart" who are waiting not so patiently for their dreams to come true and their miracle to be given! Myself included!!

This also means, that there are 7.4 Million women suffering from Infertility and may or may not ever become a Mommy through giving birth to their own baby.

Being infertile is NOT easy!! It is NOT something that us women use as a crutch or a way to get pity from others. Usually the ones who have smart mouthed comments about us women who are struggling with infertility, are those that have no idea what being infertile is about or what it feels like. It is mostly women who have children of their own. As I have said numerous times, ignorance is one of the hardest things to try to deal with while trying to handle being infertile. Which is a lot of the reason I started this blog....To bring awareness to what someone who is experiencing infertility actually goes through. To bring light to this dark situation. To make the ignorant ones more knowledgeable of what infertility is and why it is difficult to struggle with. To put all of the bull crap comments aside and to bring forth facts. Facts that will one day, change the way people think about Infertility. Facts that will one day, hopefully and prayerfully, bring insurance companies to see that infertility is a medical diagnosis, a disease of the reproductive system, so they will start covering diagnostic testing, treatments such as IUI or timed intercourse cycles with medications and Invitro Fertilization treatments! Not just one or 2 cycles like some companies cover today, but as many as needed for those that have had failed cycles and still have the desire to be parents and no funds to cover the costs.

Not one person should be turned down from having a baby because they do not have thousands of dollars to pay for the treatments to make their dreams come true. Its just not fair! 

I pray on a daily basis, more than once a day for God to bless Brandon and I with a positive HcG pregnancy test. I have prayed for many years for this positive test and it has not been in God's perfect plan for us, yet. That doesn't not mean I will give up. It means, I will continue to pray through the terrible storm we are in. I will continue to share my story in hopes that others will feel more comfortable to share their stories. This is how you raise awareness folks!!

On my Facebook page earlier today I posted about the costs of treatments. Just from estimating, in the last 16 months, Brandon and I have invested close to $27,000 in our journey. This doesn't include lab work and other less major things we have had to pay out of pocket for. This also doesn't include the gas it takes to drive to the appointments that are over an hour and half from home. During a cycle, we go to our Doctor's office 3 times a week (or more) depending on how well things progress. That is $60 for that week, just in gas to go to and from the Doctor. So we have a small fortune invested in gas over the past 16 months with our current Doctor. None of these figures include the prior 3 years we spent with a Doctor at Shands who didn't help us at all...Only wanted to do biopsies and lab tests and medications, none of which found anything or helped anything at all...Anyways, my point of sharing this is not to complain because I can tell you every single penny of what we have invested will be more than worth it in the end. I share this simply to "bring awareness" into what it takes to pursue infertility treatments! It is not cheap!!! And like I said, insurance companies just do not offer coverage for infertility treatments. Some will cover diagnostics, medications and lab work, but most all insurance companies do not cover the actual procedures such as IUI and IVF.

I will leave you with this...SHARE YOUR STORY!!!!

You never know when God will be using YOUR story to help others!! There have been times when I didn't want to put our personal business out there for the whole world to view. Then, I felt in my heart that this is about God and not about me. This journey of Infertility is about God, not about me! No matter what happens, God will get all of the glory and praise!! God does not owe us nothing! We owe him our lives. After all, Jesus gave his life for us! So no matter what, we have to remember that every single aspect of my story, your story, EVERYONE'S STORY, is all about God and not about us!

Ecclesiastes 7:14 "When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider; God has made the one as well as the other."

No matter your situation right now, no matter your story or your journey...Praise God for being with you during it! Imagine how bad it could really be, without God as your comforter! WOW. I do not ever want to imagine that! Stay faithful, stay strong! To my fellow infertile friends who are on this journey with us....Heads up, pray without ceasing, praise God for the light he has given you in the darkest of your days, praise God for not giving you anything but his greatest blessings. Stand strong my friend! Our days are coming! God will give us the desires of our hearts! And if he doesn't plan on it, I pray that he remove that desire from our hearts!

Stay tuned guys...Brandon and I are currently going to take a little bit of a break to find ourselves again. During treatment, you get caught up in the calendar....You forget the romance and the love and the passion of being with just each other. We lost that over the past 4 years and really lost it over the past 16 months. So it is time for us to recollect ourselves. It is time for me to let my body have a break from all of the harsh medications. We are going to start back into treatment in July hopefully, after our anniversary. In the mean time, I will start sharing my testimony with everyone. I haven't forgot about it. I am praying for God to give me the right words to say when I decide to type up the posts. So bare with me. I know there are a lot of you who only know our infertility story, but do not know about my Christ journey and how I got to where I am today in my faith.

Sometimes, the answer is "Not yet"

The title of this post says it all...Sometimes God's answer is "no" or "not yet"....Its hard to swallow but it is just how it goes.

This morning at 7am I was up getting ready to go have my blood drawn. As I was getting dressed, doing my makeup and fixing this mess of hair I have on my head, all I could think about was how today may be the day our lives will change forever, in such a fantastic way! Then, in the back of my mind I always have that little voice telling me to "learn from past disappointments and do not get your hopes up, Kristie". So then the excitement of what the day may bring, turns to fear and nervousness. As always....

After going to breakfast with my loving husband, going to Walmart and getting a new bedspread I have had my eye on for while now and coming home to do the usual sit and wait routine, we finally got a call from our nurse. I could tell by her voice, as I always have been able to from past cycles....It was negative. N-E-G-A-T-I-V-E

God's answer for this cycle was N-O!

Of course I was totally devastated....Completely and utterly devastated. My heart IS broken...again. But it will heal, in God's time. I just wish some people could see the pain we experience going through this type of aggressive treatment. Its NO joke, that is for sure.

All blood work came back normal, ovulation was successful...The only explanation was (in the words of our nurse) "It just didn't take".  My HcG level was 4 and anything less than 5 means "NOT PREGNANT". I have eggs, beautiful eggs that mature on command with the medication and Brandon has sperm, it may not be ten million plus, but there is sperm there. This is a perfect example of "IT JUST ISN'T GOD'S PERFECT TIMING".

Of course stress is always a factor and I happen to be the most stressed out person on the planet right now. I pray daily for God to take away the stress, but I feel like unless I move to another state or another country...I will still be stressed. The problem now is that unless I can learn to control it, I will probably never get pregnant or maintain pregnancy. I have tried the "stress management" therapy and it was not successful. I will just continue to pursue God, because He is the only way to be stress free!

God doesn't always give us the answers we want in life. For 6 years now, I have gotten a big fat "NO" every month. As long as I dwell on the "NO", I cannot see all of the "Yes" answers we have gotten from God. So with that said, I am starting a prayer box. Both Brandon and I are going to write our prayers and put them in the box. At the end of each week, we are going to go through the box and see everything God has answered. I really believe this will open my eyes to everything I am so blessed by. I am pretty excited about it.

Right now, the only thing I can do is pray for strength and peace. I know in my heart that I will be a Mother one day. I just don't know when that day will come. In the mean time, I pray for the financial means to continue this treatment as we all know it is very expensive. I pray for strength to be able to emotionally handle it and to continue on this journey. I pray for peace and understanding of what is going on. I pray that whatever the reason, God will be glorified in all of this and every single step of the way in this journey we are on.

Thank you all so much for your prayers. Please continue to keep us in your prayers as we continue on this journey. We are not giving up. Right now we wait to find out what our doctor wants to do as far as treatment for this next cycle. I am sure, more meds and stronger meds. I know that at some point, God will open my womb and bless us with a baby! Until then, I will continue to praise Him!

Stay tuned for the next post. I will be sharing my testimony in my next post and you do not want to miss what God has done in my life. I love you all!! Thank you again for all of the prayers and for supporting us in this journey. It is still not over and we can definitely still use your prayers. Prayer works as it is the direct connection to our Lord and Savior! Keep them going up specifically for a positive pregnancy test and a healthy pregnancy (when that time comes).