Grateful

*Disclaimer: This is a really long post, feel free to read in little slices at a time :)

Whit and I are so grateful for this little precious baby growing in my tummy. We feel so blessed with this gift from the Lord and trust that His timing is perfect in every moment. The more I study scripture and read books about pregnancy and being a mommy, the more convinced I am how important this role (being parents!) is to the Lord. I just pray that Whit and I would continue to be able to trust the Lord, His perfect plan for our lives and the life of this baby.

This has not been the easiest season in life :) As I mentioned before in a post, Whit and I had some trouble getting pregnant. And I have a new and lasting empathy for any family that has to struggle with infertility. There are so many doubts and frustrations and I really believe Satan can use these fears to make you doubt God's love for you and your trust in Him. I truly had to be on my knees about that everyday. I remember after one particularly hard week, I was talking with my friend Erin (in my bible study here in DC!), and I told her, "Its just so HARD for me to trust the Lord with this, it seems so personal and acute." Her words to me were so true, and they have stuck with me ever since. She said, "Oh Meredith, that doesn't change once you get pregnant, then its just, 'What if I have a miscarriage', 'What if there is something wrong medically with the baby', 'What if I can't get pregnant again.'" It doesn't stop with getting pregnant! You just move on to the next worry or fear! Holy Cow has that been true for me!

Literally I have come home from the doctor and looked at Whit (pointing to my tummy) and said, "do you really think there is a baby in there"? And he will gently point out that I have already have three sonograms, heard a heart beat and have just been to the doctors where they were able to pick up the heart beat with the doppler! So, yes he says, I think there is a baby in there. :) Right now, I am 16 weeks and my current "freak out" is that I don't think I am showing at all and I can still wear normal clothes! I have read this can be normal and that some women don't really start showing until the middle or end of their 2nd trimesters in 1st pregnancies, but I am still having to come to the Lord with this fear everyday!

Anyways, back to the original intention of this post. Whit and I are both really open people. Many of you walked through every step of this journey with us, others didn't! We are happy to share our story, in hopes that it brings God glory and encouragement to others.

Back in March of 08 Whit and I started "trying", i.e. I went off the pill in February and we started to try in March. In the meantime, I had been reading this book called "Taking Charge of Your Fertility" by Toni Weschler. I was really interested in learning more about my cycle and understanding the natural signs of fertility, etc. It is a thorough lesson on basal body temperature and charting as well as tracking cervical fluid and cervical position (Sorry if that is too much information!!!). For the first three months, I started charting my temperature each morning, for those of you unaware with this method, you take your temp each morning at the exact same time and record it on this graph. Right after you ovulate you will see a "spike" in your temperature. This helps you see a pattern in your ovulation cycles. I was also charting cervical fluid and while this was very easy...i was having a really hard time reading my basal body temperatures. Based on my charts, I really couldn't tell when I was ovulating.

About this time, I went into my OB for a "pre-conception visit" I told her that I had been trying about three months. She said Great, here is a prescription for prenatals, take these and lets set up another appointment in another three months, if you are not pregnant then, we will talk about next steps, but I expect that you will be back before then and pregnant! That was encouraging and we kept trying. Some of you know what it feels like to be at the end of the month every month wondering if you are pregnant, and then BAM your friendly mestrual cycle appears :) It stiiiiiiiiiiinkkkkks.

So, during the next three months we kept trying, and it kept not happening. I was reading more about fertility and signs of infertility online and in my Taking Charge book. I knew that the normal cycle length was anywhere from 22-36 days. Mine were not REALLY long, around 38-41 days....so a little longer than normal. I also had read that longer cycles could mean that I might be having trouble ovulating. So, at the recommendation of a friend and after reading this info, I decided to invest in ovulation predictor kits (OPKs). These can be purchased at any drug store or target they are usually about $40-$50 for a pack of 7, but since I had NO IDEA when I was ovulating, I had to buy enough for the whole cycle. The ones that I got were daily pregnancy test looking things, you peed on them every day and if the window came up with two lines then you were about to ovulate. OPKs measure the luetenizing hormone that is released about 12-36 hours before ovulation, so the idea is if you have a positive you would "try" the next 1-3 days and hope to get preggers. I did these for two months and according to the OPKs I never ovulated.

So, I came to the next meeting with my OB with some more information. Whit came too, and we explained that over the last three months since I had seen her I had also took OPKs and they all came up negative (basically meaning that I wasn't ovulating). After listening to our story, she was wonderful and encouraging and very proactive. She said that she thinks that I have something called Polycyctic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), which is a disease where a couple of the hormones in a women can be out of whack, and as a result the correct hormones are never sent to the brain to tell the ovaries to release an egg....therefore you don't ovulate. It can present itself in a few ways....none of which I had really, except for the anovulation part: skin tags, acne, excess hair, anovulation. Dr. Cobbs (my OB) wanted to run some blood tests and send me to a specialist for a transvaginal ultrasound to confirm that I had PCOS. She was very encouraging and told me many women have this and there are several ways of treating it and evetually getting my body to ovulate. I remember her exact words at the end of the meeting, I was crying of course, she said " I feel very confident that you can get pregnant, Meredith." And Whit immediately told her "You don't know how much those words mean to us!"

I did the blood test which confirmed my hormone levels were out of whack and then went to the specialist for him to do the ultrasounds to look at my ovaries. One of them looked very PCOS, it was enlarged with many bump/cysts on the outside and the other ovary was borderline, not too large, not many cysts.

Dr. Cobbs plan of action was to start me out on 50mg of Clomid which is a drug that helps level out the hormones and signal to your brain to release an egg, in combination with HGC hormone shots to really get the egg to "pop" out as Dr. Cobbs said :) This was the begining of the marathon of doctors appointments and here is how it went:
-On day 5-9 of my cycle I would take a Clomid pill at the same time each day
-On day 12 I would come into the office, Dr. Cobbs would do a sonogram to look at my ovaries to see if there were any follicles forming (the egg pops out of the follicle that grows out of the ovary)
-If follicle (s) were present, she would give me 10K injections of the HCG hormone into my rear to "really get the egg to pop out" as she said :)
-Then I would come back in a week later she would do another sonogram to look and make sure that the follicles had burst or ruptured (i.e. egg popped through)
-Then I would come back into the office on day 25 to get my blood drawn to check my progestrone level (they can tell from your progestrone level if you have ovulated).

The first round of clomid/hgc shots did not work. Dr. Cobbs still had lots of hope for us, but wanted us to meet with Dr. Gordon from Domion Fertility (he is an edocrinologist and fertility doctor and his practice does all kinds of things for families struggling with infertility) to get some other opinons and have him run some tests.

Dr. Gordon, confimed that I probably had PCOS and as a first step had Whit and Me do several other tests to rule out any other problems that we had. I had to go get a hysterosalpingogram, where they push this liquid through your fallopian tubes to make sure that they aren't blocked. Yes, it was painful, but thankfully no problem for me. I also had to go get a Glucose tolerance test (this is also the same test they make you do around 28 weeks preggers to make sure you don't have gestational diabetes), Dr. Gordon said there was a link for some people to have diabetes and PCOS. Thankfully, I passed with flying colors and we didn't have to worry about it. Whit had to go to Dominion to get a semenalysis (can't imagine anything worse for a guy!), and while his number were off the charts, they did have some minor concerns about the speed at which they could travel. (I guess they measure amount, shape and motility in semenalysis).

*Side Note: yes, I do feel like I could teach a course on reproductive health after all the books and doctors we have met with :)

Dr. Gordon thought a good first step for Whit and me would be to have the same Clomid/HCG injection procudure run out of his office in combination with Intrauterine Insemination. Basically it would be the same thing I had done at Dr. Cobbs office, but they would inseminate me when they knew I was ovulating. Of course this wasn't yet invitro, but it stil costs thousands of dollars. I immediately thought we couldn't do this, due to the cost. Whit was great, he said right away, if that is what they want us to do, we will do it! So, he went ahead and set up an appointment with the finance office and we got the first appointment/procedure scheduled.

In the meantime, we had told Dr. Cobbs we would do one more round of clomid/injections with her, but since we were told by Dr. Gordon that this really wouldn't work for us, we didnt have a lot of hope, and had our mind set on the first procedure at Dominion.

I will never forget the last appointment I had with Dr. Cobbs, I had had my second ultrasound and she was able to see that the follicle had popped. When she left and I was waiting for the nurse to come back in to give me the injections. I was so emotional, I got down on my knees face down on the office floor (gross, I know!) and just started praying to the Lord. I was asking God, that if this is what he wanted us to do (the expensive procedure at Dominion) we would do it, but if he could help me get pregnant with this cycle, I would be so grateful! As I was praying the nurse walked in, and just stopped and laid her hand on my shoulder and said "we are just all hoping and praying that this works for you Meredith." Ahhh, it was amazing and so sweet to hear those words from my nurse.

Well weeks came and went, and on day 35 i just couldn't bring myself to go into the Dr. office to do a blood test, I still hadn't started my period, but I was so nervous that they would tell me I am not pregnant. Finally on the next day, day 36, Whit convinced me to go. I went up to Dr. Cobbs (this was a Monday) they did a quick blood test and told me I would find out on Wednesday. Wednesday, WHAT!?!?! I wanted to know today! SOOOO, I called after work about 5pm, and they looked up my results (panicked, racing heart while I waited) and when she came back she said, Oh, I am so sorry ma'am, we ran the wrong test on you, instead of running the Beta blood test for pregnancy, we ran a progestrone test. I was so dissapointed! They said that they would try to re-run it and call me back later. But before I got off, she said, but your progestrone looks really high, have you taken a home pregnanct test? No, I said. She told me maybe I should. Since I had a stockpile of those upstairs, and with Whit's encouragement we went upstairs and took a clear blue test :)

After those long three minutes we couldn't have been happier to know I was pregnant, lots of tears. Whit went to read it first and after what seemed like forever I ran in there and he said, "we're pregnant!!!!" And the funny thing is the doctor's office called us back right after that and said, "you're pregnant" I said we know! The Lord's timing is so perfect, we found out on a Monday and we have our first appointment at Dominion scheduled for that Friday, so glad we didn't have to go through that other procedure!

At our 8 week sono, Dr. Cobbs was so happy for us, as we looked at the little "blob" in the middle of the screen with a heartbeat, Whit and I were overcome with this miracle in me. In fact, we were both saying out loud, "Its a miracle", Dr. Cobbs, who is on Washingtonian's list of 100 best doctors in DC, and who had delivered three babies that very day, was able to look at us, and say "Yes, it is such a miracle". Right after that, we were just chatting with Dr. Cobbs and learned that she has three boys, two clomid babies and one supirse 5 years later, no wonder she was so pro-active with us! Also, she shared that she was on the board of this ministry at our church called "Birth Mothers", which helps women who have decided to keep their babies, either put them up for adoption or provide them resources and training to help raise and care for their new little ones. Dr. Cobbs doesn't acutally go to our church (but goes to another great one in the area) but this particular ministry is located and run out of our church....we thought that was such a cool thing, and are so thankful she is a believer!

"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future"