Growing Pains

The amount of growth that has been made this month is amazing!! The pain on the other hand that comes from these growing pains HURTS! The pains (literally) that come from the start of a new cycle are brutal. However, in all this I am in awe at how much my God has shown his love, care and concern for Nate and I along the way. This journey through infertility has been anything but fun, but through it all I am looking to God more than I ever have in my life and it is all so rewarding. I can honestly say this has been the hardest month to go through. By His grace, even with the all too familiar and devastating result, we have been at peace. The Lord brought me to a place that I have never charted before and he was right there with me along the way. So needless to say as another month is beginning and a new cycle is started we are excited to see what God has in store for us.

Week 1

This week was the start of a new treatment cycle for Nate and I. I am buckled in and ready for this roller coaster ride to come, hands raised up in the air and all. The beginning of a cycle brings a new hope and excitement that is indescribable however I try to remain calm since there are no guarantees. My Dr. still remains amazing and makes me feel like I am her only patient, except I know I am not. How else would she be able to give us donated meds from another patient. Totally a God thing I tell myself. The shots are no fun but I must say these are much better then the ones I did in February. I am feeling hopeful, excited, nervous and timid as to the process and outcome of all this. I am trusting God is in control and he knows the plans for this treatment and I am praying that Nate and I can remain calm and at peace throughout it all.

Lions and Tigers and Bears Oh my!

The weekend before last, Nate and I had the privilege to fully play out our Auntie and Uncle role as we watched Caleb and Katelyn. We had so much fun. We decided since it was a sunny spring day we would take the kids to the Oakland Zoo after lunch on Saturday. Caleb was so excited and Katelyn of coursed followed suite. They had a blast and Nate I loved watching their reactions to the animals and such. Each of them said there favorite was the giraffe's. We wished we would have caught Katelyn's reaction on video to the giraffe's as she was so excited she could barely stand it. She is quite the little ham and surely knows how to make us all laugh. Our weekend went by really fast and after we dropped them back off at their home on Sunday night, we missed them. They were too much fun!

So excited to get to the zoo.

Caleb loved having a map to the zoo.





Caleb loved the tree slide

and of course monkey see monkey do

Katelyn wasn't too sure about the monkeys

A yummy treat at the zoo

This is one of my favorites.... when Caleb was about Katelyn's age I started having him raise his hands up when we went over speed bumps and he has never forgotten. So of course at the zoo there were lots of speed bumps and both Caleb and Katelyn would raise both hands in the air and we would all say "bump, bump" when we went over them. They just thought it was the funniest thing and Katelyn was say "more" in hopes the fun was not over. Good times!!!

"Enough"

This last month and a half has been the most challenging to me both emotionally and spiritually. I have been challenged to trust more then ever and have seen God at work the most through all this. The Sunday before last in church I was reminded of how powerful the words to this song are. I was moved to tears. I am at a place right now where I feel I am just to be patient and wait. As hard as that is, I'm trying. In this waiting period Nate and I are in, our prayer is that we will be content in the sweet embrace and love of God, finding comfort in the truth that He truly is more than enough!

All of You is more than enough for all of me

For every thirst and every need

You satisfy me with Your love

And all I have in You is more than enough

You are my supply

My breath of life

And still more awesome than I know

You are my reward worth living for

And still more awesome than I know

All of You is more than enough for all of me

For every thirst and every need

You satisfy me with Your love

And all I have in You is more than enough

You're my sacrifice

Of greatest price

And still more awesome than I know

You're the coming King

You are everything

And still more awesome than I know

More than all I want

More than all I need

You are more than enough for me

More than all I know

More than all I can say

You are more than enough for me

Change is Good

At times change can be a hard thing to adjust to but in this case change has been very good. Nate and I decided it was time to update our master bathroom as it had not been touched since we moved in back in April 2005! We were holding out for being able to do a larger remodel project but realize that would be a ways out. So we rolled up our sleeves and went with a more frugal/quick approach. We had some left over paint from our bedroom face lift project and went to " the HD" (Home Depot, our favorite place) to buy some new vanity cabinet hardware, new white toilet seat, and spray paint to paint the gold shower door railings and oak bathroom vanity. I had a mirror already in the house so we replaced the oak medicine cabinet with a more simple mirror. We started out calling this our "free" bathroom remodel project but in the end decided to also splurge on a new light fixture and faucet. All in all it was a very inexpensive face lift and we are thrilled with the results. I can't take much credit for it as Nate put a lot of time and energy into this. THANKS Babe for always working so hard and taking so much pride in your work. I LOVE YOU!

Voila here is the final project. (I totally forgot to take a before pic but I know most of you saw the disaster it once was)

Happy Valentine's & Happy B-day Duke

Hope you all had a wonderful Valentine's day. I spent most of the day doing some baking, cleaning and painting! It was also Duke's 7th b-day. What a life that dog has had so far and we just hope the rest of his years are good ones. I was looking back at pictures of him as a puppy and he won Nate's heart from the day he picked him out. All I can say is it is a good thing that he is loved so much cause boy, as most of you know there are plenty of Duke stories. Happy b-day Duke we LOVE you. Duke enjoyed his day sleeping as always. Below are some pictures of the sleeping b-day dog and of my baking project.

Mini Chocolate cupcakes with Chocolate glaze

Duke's 2 favorite things... Sleep and Cardboard

The Low Down

This story begins at the end of 2005 when Nate and I decided that we would actively start trying to grow our family. We had been married for two and a half years, had purchased our first home together and were feeling like we were ready to add a bambino to the mix. I had already been off the pill for about a year as it did not agree with me, but as you all know there are many other methods to accomplish the same goal as the pill. wink, wink.

In Spring of 2006 was our first hopeful month but little did we know this would be the 1st of many unsuccessful attempts. So a little after a year (Summer 2007) of trying on our own we decided to contact our medical provider (Kaiser) to see what our next step would be. We had to attend a 1 hour class on infertility as well as each go through a round of tests before we could make an appointment to be seen by a Reproductive Endocrinologist. Once we met this criteria (Fall 2007) we sat down with the Dr who then proceeded to tell us, in about 10 minutes time, that everything was normal and that we were young and healthy so this shouldn't be hard. With that we proceeded with our 1st treatment on 100mg Clomid in November of 2007. Also during this time I was in transition with a new company as my previous employer had closed it's doors in October 2007. Can we say added stress is not so fun? Our 1st treatment was unsuccessful so we took a month off for the holidays.

We started our 2nd treatment of 100mg Clomid in Jan 2008. This time we were supposed to do an IUI (Intrauterine Insemination) but the ovulation window was missed and the IUI could not be performed and we were went home with Dr's orders to tyr the old fashion way. Needless to say this was also unsuccessful. At this point Nate and I were beginning to not only feel emotionally drained by this but also financially it was a struggle. We had NO infertility coverage (as they call it in the insurance world) so we were at our limit with the costs for those 2 treatments and decided it was time for a break. We proceed to try on our own for the months to follow, as well as save up some money in the event that we would need to do another treatment down the road.

The bell rang for round 3 in November 2008 and this time we were ready to try again. We went in to see the Dr and told her that we wanted to be a little more aggressive. We were given a very PC explanation that we had not gone through enough rounds of Clomid to do anything more aggressively but that she would up our Clomid dose to 150mg as well as adding in an IUI. We were very hopeful and excited that the IUI was timed correctly and could work, but the end result was all too familiar.

At this point we were kind of burnt out with Kaiser but yet knew nothing different. This also happened to be open enrollment time for Nate's insurance benefits and my sister had recommended that we contact her Dr for a second opinion. In looking at the new benefit packages offered we decided to switch medical providers and contact this new Dr.
We met with the new Dr and he was very informative and knowledgeable and told us just from the sounds of all we had gone thru already that my body does not respond well to Clomid and that he only performs treatments with Clomid. He proceeded to recommend us to an infertility specialist in his office who also happened to be his daughter and coincidentally shares my name and the same spelling. We then met with Dr Aimee on Jan 2nd 2009, what a breath of fresh air. She proceeded to explain to us so much that we had never really heard before and just really felt that she knew what she was talking about and had our best interest in mind. Nate and I left her office that morning grinning from ear to ear, we knew God was at work and felt that he had put us in the right place now. Dr. Aimee wanted us to do a couple more tests and we were so thankful both of those came back normal. So on we go with starting our next round of treatments this week and covet your prayers as we continue down this journey.