Calling It Quits...

After much prayer and discernment JJ and I have decided to stop NaPro treatments at the end of the year. We are going to give it six more months and then we are going to move on to pursuing adoption full force or not pursue anything. It is a tiring journey to go through medical treatments to have a family. We feel like we have been at this much longer than we have and I feel much older than I am. We were originally thinking that the surgery would be the last thing we would do but after talking we decided that we still want to hold onto having more biological children.

I went to confession the other day which then turned into a private Mass that JJ and I got to go to with one of our favorite priests. Well I turned confession into a little bit of spiritual direction because I was so desperate for some spiritual counsel. I brought up the confusion on whether to continue with NaPro or to give it up. The priest, who knows our story very well, said "I don't think you are ready to give it up just yet. From what I know of you and JJ you really want to live out your vocation with children. The fact that you were able to conceive before shows that there is hope for more biological children.  There is no harm or sin in stopping NaPro but maybe you should give it to the end of the year." His words were confirmation on what we have been thinking! Then we had Mass which we were one of the intentions and he prayed that God would bless us with children. It was such a blessed time and exactly what we needed to get us through the next 6 months of treatments and hoping to have more biological children.

So that is our plan and hopefully by our 6 year anniversary in Dec. we will be pregnant or have some direction on what God wants from us. We are going to not take anything to help me ovulate for 2 cycles to see if the wedge resection helps me to ovulate on my own, then we are going to try Fe.mara again for 2 cycles and then our last resort will be 2 cycles of the dreaded clomid. I figure I am willing to go all in for the next six months knowing that there will be an end in sight. I will not do endless cycles of drugs, it is just too hard on me and my body. We will also still be doing a gluten and dairy free as well as low sugar diet plus our supplements and exercise.

I don't know if after the six months we will stop NaPro forever or just take a break for a year or more but God will let us know in time and it is nice to know that we can pick it back up again if we feel inclined to.

Please pray for us! This is a very trying journey. We are both feeling tired and weary probably more so me than JJ as I am the one whose body is going through all of this. I feel like I am on the last leg of a marathon and I need to dig deep within me to find the strength to finish strong. I was never an athlete but I know what endurance is and I feel like I need some of that right now. I will be stepping it up in my prayer life or at least trying to because His grace is what is going to get me through. We are praying for a miracle this next six months and above all we pray God's will be done in our lives!

Dream a Little Dream

There have been a couple of times in my life where I have had dreams of my future children and most of the time when I woke up I payed no attention to them afterwards. Since the miscarriage I have had three dreams where we had a child. The first dream was about a month or so after the miscarriage and the baby was a girl who was about a year old. I got to hold her and I remember saying in my dream "mommy loves you." When I woke up from that dream I wept and wanted to go back to sleep to that dream to continue holding my baby girl. I did not like having that dream because I knew that it was just a dream and the reality was that there was not a baby in the next room. I know this is probably sad to read but hey I never promised a happy all the time blog. Infertility and miscarriage is a tough topic that is often sad or frustrating.

The second dream was a couple of months ago. Again the child was a little girl about 2yrs. old and we were getting ready to go to Mass. We had a tough time getting her dressed and we were going to be late to Mass. We rushed out of the house and when we got to church she wanted to be carried because she was sleepy, so my husband carried her up the stairs of the church and then she wanted me to hold her. As we were walking in the church, not late btw, everyone was looking at us like they did not know we had a kid. Which made me think that this child was probably adopted and it was our first time taking her to Mass. This dream I did not mind so much, anything is better than nothing I guess.   

The third dream happened this weekend. This time I knew for sure the children were adopted because it looked like we were at an orphanage. This time there were two children, one was a boy about 2-3yrs. old and a baby boy. We were in the process of adopting the older boy and wanting to adopt the baby as well.  The older boy hugged my husband and called him daddy as I was holding the baby boy. When I woke up from this dream I was so serious and my husband asked if I was ok. I told him about the dream and he hugged me and said ok let's do it, let's adopt. I was very focused and contemplative when I woke up from this dream but I also felt a sense of urgency, like our child was out there and I needed to find them. Then when we were more conscious and not so groggy we talked about it more in depth.

Before the miscarriage, well before we found out we were pregnant we started to look more into adoption. I had contacted a couple of agencies and we were going to get more info. and go to an informational meeting. After the miscarriage we put everything on hold for obvious reasons but also because my body was not bouncing back to normal at all. Since then we have not looked into it further, though I have not forgotten about the desire to adopt. When I think about adoption my heart fills with joy, I don't know how to explain it. I always have to examine my motives because I don't want to adopt just to fill this selfish need of mine for children. If and when we adopt I want us to do it for the child's best interest.

So after a lengthy conversation my husband and I decided to pick up where we left off. We are going to look into more information about adoption and just get to know the process a bit more. We gave ourselves a time limit so that we don't just stay in a state of doing nothing. At this point from the little we know about the adoption process we know that it is expensive. We are not rich but we try to be as thrifty as possible. I am hoping this latest dream is also a motivation for us to save more because I know we could be saving a lot more of our income. We do not have any debt so we could be saving more than we currently are. Any suggestions on adoption agencies? Any tips about the adoption process? Helpful ways to save money?