Not a Fertile Myrtle

Friday Fun

2012-01-27T10:23:00.002-06:00

1. My favorite place I've ever traveled to is Italy. Mostly because we get to spend time with our family there so that makes it more enjoyable. But my favorite place in the states is going to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Not the cheesy party, but the mountains. I love the mountains.

2. Ireland is somewhere I'd love to go someday. I hear there are no snakes there.

3. I pass the time on a plane (or bus, or car ride or train) by knitting. But I really love doing word search puzzles. It makes the time go faster.

4. My three must-haves when I travel are my phone, peanut M&M's, and someone fun to talk to.

5. My favorite travel companion is my hubby.

6. The craziest thing that ever happened to me while traveling was hen we were traveling overseas and my camera was stolen from my sweater pocket. We were in the train station in Prague in the Czech Repulic. I couldn't believe someone got it out of my pocket and I didn't know it. I was mostly sad that I wouldn't get the pictures off that we had taken.

7. The most exotic food I've ever tried while traveling tripe soup. I don't recommend it. I had to try it so I wouldn't offend our Italian Mom. It was so gross.

8. If I could live anywhere else, I'd in Virginia near my Mom.

9. I have been to 22 states in the U.S.

And here's a little laugh for you.

Happy Friday!

Always Thankful

2012-01-24T15:25:00.004-06:00

Do you remember yesterday how I told you someone donated 1800 units of follistim to us and is a complete stranger? We have a mutual friend, but I don't know the person who donated the meds. I didn't want you to think I got them from some random person off the street.

Today was our injectables class at the RE's office. As I sat there with four other women (and one guy who was with his wife) as we went over the three FSH drugs that we could consider using: Follistim, Gonal-F, and Bravelle. We had a sample of each to try. Follistim is the drug that was donated to us, so I knew which one I wanted to use. Thankfully the injectible pen for it seemed easier to me.

After practicing using the pen to see which we liked best, the nurse moved on to the cost. As I sat there it just hit me hard that someone donated these drugs to us. Someone we don't even know. Someone we may never meet. My heart swelled up with so many emotions.

Gratitude. It would be a real stretch for us to pay out of pocket for the drugs on top of the cost of donor sperm.

Thankfulness. We are going to get to do something we have never tried before to get pregnant. Even with our last RE we only did Clomid. Yay for something new.

Hope. Hope that this just might work for us.

Sadness. The person who donated the medicine did it because she had to cancel her IVF (her second one) due to medical reasons.

Sorrow. This sweet woman has decided not to pursue infertility treatments again.

All of these emotions were swirling around in my head and heart so quickly that I had to fight back the tears. What a blessing for us to be able to have this opportunity, but I am also aware that someone else isn't getting hers.

I didn't have to search for very long to find something to be thankful for today.

A Perfect Infertile Weekend

2012-01-23T12:10:00.000-06:00

Lori at Write Mind, Open Heart hosts Perfect Moment Monday once a month. The PMM blog prompt couldn't come at a better time for me. Because this weekend has two perfect moments and I really feel like I need to share them both with you.

First of all, if you're visitng from ICLW, welcome! I have our full history on the sidebar for you. We are preparing for our second donor IUI, but using injectable FSH meds for the first time. Hoping this will happen mid February.

My heart so full today because a friend was a real gift to me this weekend and I was able to be a gift to a friend too.

Perfect Moment #1
I've talked on my blog a lot about my friend Courtney who is the founder of Chance to Hope. She really is one of my dearest friends. Even before I told her that Ike and I may be doing injectibles for our next IUI she approached me with something. Someone had donated some FSH drugs (follistim) to her to give away to someone who could use them. She immediately thought of us. I was, and am, so touched that a stranger would give away their fertility medicine they didn't need to help someone else--ME!

Courtney and I made plans to meet up Saturday for lunch. She lives two states away from me (only 2 hours) so we decided to meet half way, still in another state, to have lunch together and so she could give us the meds. What a fun time we had together! Ike went went me and we had a fun time together as always.

Here we are making our trade before Ike and I cross state lines w/free drugs! LOL

I love that a complete stranger is helping us toward our dreams of having a baby. And that my friend Courtney was willing to take so much time out of her day to meet us and give us the drugs!

Perfect Moment #2

Through the world of twitter I discovered that my town has a peer led Resolve Infertility Support Group. I decided to start going last May. I can't even begin to tell you how much of a blessing this has been to Ike and I both. I have twitter and blogging as an outlet, and he doesn't really have anything. There are several other male factor infertility couples there, so that has been great! Through this group I have made some great friendships.

This past Friday night five of us got together and we had a "girls night in." Money is tight for several of us and we decided to make pizza, drink wine, and hang out. It was so much fun!!!! We learned a great lesson right off....don't drink wine and then make pizza! Our first pizza was incredibly misshaped, but oh so tasty.

This is the wine and champagne aftermath. I promise we didn't drink all of this before we started making pizzas.

During the night we talked about anything and everything. Seriously. We talked about all kinds of crazy stuff that you would never, and could never, talk about with your fertile friends.

We had every part of the infertile community represented between the five of us. Adoption, IVF, Donor Sperm, Donor Egg/Embryo, and IUI. The best thing was that even though we were on different types of journeys, we all deal with infertility so we get it.

Around 10:30 we were getting ready to wrap up and my friend J asked our friend R (who is adopting and waiting for a match) if we could all come to her baby shower. Well R just burst into tears. We all thought "how sweet, she's so moved we want to come to a baby shower for her."

Then she had a confession.......they had been chosen by a birth mother!!!!!!!! We screamed, we laughed, and we cried. And we asked why in the heck did she wait so long to tell us. LOL!

We got all the details. The baby has was born on January 1 and they were going to be able to bring him home on January 30. As in TEN days! We asked her what she had bought and she said just a picture frame since they had just been approved in December. R was mostly freaking out that her house wasn't clean enough.

So we did what any good friends would do for someone who would be bringing their baby home in 10 days. We had a cleaning party! We completely deep cleaned her entire house yesterday.

Now her house is absolutely spotless and in perfect condition for their beautiful baby boy to come home to next week!!!

There were so many perfect moments with these gals over the weekend. Our time together Friday. Being able to have a champagne toast when R told us the exciting news. Feeling nothing but pure joy for them. Cleaning, laughing, and being goofy together yesterday.

But mostly knowing that we are blessed to be a part of someone else's journey towards parenthood. What a perfect moment that R shared their exciting news with us, and that we were all able to do something tangible for them to help them prepare for their sweet baby boy's arrival.

I know you girls are gonna read this and I want you all to know what a memorable, perfect weekend it was. I'm so thankful for each one of you!

If you'd like to go congratulate my friend R, you can go over to her blog at An Adopted Life and hear how it all happened and celebrate with them.

I'm so thankful for a weekend full of perfect moments. It's made this Monday a good one. And my heart is overflowing and full today.

And you know what? I wouldn't have known any of these gals if it hadn't been for our infertility. I guess it's good for something every now and then.

PS: Ike wrote his first blog post ever for Bloggers for Hope and it's up today. It's titled: Am I a Man or a Muppet and is about male factor infertility. I'm really proud of him.