Our Journey This Far
Hello! First things first - thank you for taking the time to read this and for being invested in our family! We love and appreciate you! This first post is going to be pretty info-heavy, because I find that when I'm not detailed, it leaves people with more questions. So may as well lay it all out there! May 7th is the start of Canada Infertility Awareness Week, so in the spirit of raising awareness, I thought I would start a blog about our journey. Secondly, bare with me as I get this blog sorted out! It's not exactly how I want it yet, but I am working on the formatting! There may be changes as we go.
Let me catch you up on our life in the past 3 years. After 18+ (we can't quite remember the exact number) months of trying to get pregnant, our daughter who is made of firecrackers and sparkles, made her entrance into the world in August 2013. At that time, we didn't put much too much thought into why it took us so long to conceive - we were happy with it just happening when it happened, and not putting too stock into it (it helped that once we really did get "serious" about trying, we got a positive test just three months later). After her first birthday, we decided to start trying again. I had dreams of a baby coming the following summer - two perfect years apart, just like everyone says. When six months had passed, I started to get concerned. Once 11 months passed, I booked an appointment with my doctor. That appointment ended up getting cancelled because we found out after 12 months that we were pregnant! Yay! I immediately went into planning mode, as I always do. We were just moving into our new house, which was perfect! New home, new baby, so much to be excited about. We went for an ultrasound at 12 weeks and right away knew something was wrong from the look on the technicians face. She wouldn't tell us any information (laying there, knowing something awful is happening and not having any details is the most frustrating situation I have ever been in), but she did bring us kleenex. Let me mention that I was NOT crying at this point, so the kleenex totally threw me off, and that was the moment I knew for sure.
On November 24th, 2015, we miscarried around 13 weeks, and it was the most awful time of my entire life. Dreams that we had about our growing family, our babies, our life, were shattered. After a year of hoping and trying, it just felt so devastating. I spent a lot of time looking around our new house, which all of a sudden felt way too big for just three people. In the new year, I re-booked that appointment to see our family doctor. After relaying our history, she gave me a side eye look that clearly told me she thought I should have come in sooner, and she referred us to the local OB/GYN. Here is the awesome (not) part of living on an island - wait times SUCK because there is such a high demand. Four months later, we saw her and she sent us for preliminary tests. One of which was an HSG x-ray. They essentially push dye into the woman's tubes and uterus to check for blockages. Awful. Uncomfortable. Awkward. The start of what would be many awful, uncomfortable and awkward moments. The tests were more or less inconclusive, and she decided to send us to Reproductive Endocrinologist at the Victoria Fertility Clinic. This was August 2016, and we were told that the wait list was six months to a year. I cried a lot that week, and we prayed a lot! My sister-in-law Shelby is the most incredible human being, and listened to a LOT of my tears, and gave me a lot of advice (she works in a medical office, so she has some good insight). I am so thankful for her! Much to our surprise, we got a phone call in late September saying that our file has been pulled to the front, and that the doctor wanted to see us in early October! Thank you, Lord.
We had our initial consultation, ran some more tests, and came up with a plan. I was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, which in a nutshell means I don't ovulate regularly (amongst other things, like weight gain due to not being able to regulate insulin, which has been super fun) and makes it very hard to get pregnant naturally (Quinnlyn is our little miracle baby who we are beyond thankful for). We learned that the symptoms for PCOS get worse as time goes on, so that pretty much sent my internal clock into overdrive, resulting in a pretty desperate feeling. They started us on Clomid and we had our first IUI (Intrauterine Insemination) in late November, and found out in early December that it had failed. The second round of Clomid didn't result in ovulation, so in February they started me on Letrozole (Femara) but once again it didn't result in ovulation. When I don't ovulate, they give me Progesterone to jump start my next cycle. This give me major headaches and makes me feel sluggish and grumpy (bleh!). In March they upped the dosage of the Letrozole (which also gives me major headaches) and we got the green light to do IUI #2.
Let me walk you through this. We take the medication for a week, wait a few days, go in for an ultrasound, then come back every day or every other day for 7-10 days until my ovaries have produced a follicle that is big enough, and my bloodwork shows an LH surge, and we can do the procedure. The clinic is over an hour away from our home, so we have to drive down and back for each appointment, which takes both a lot of time and money, not to mention trying to arrange childcare (we have the greatest friends imaginable! They have stepped in and helped in so many ways! Our friend Lisa has come over at 6am numerous times so that we can get down for an early appointment, and get back in time for her and Jon to get to work. Life-giving kind of friendship). Then after the IUI, it's two weeks of waiting before I can take a blood test and see if it was successful or not. Two weeks of getting our hopes up, dreaming of our future with two babies, thinking that this time might be "the" time, only to get the news that it did indeed fail. Our second failed IUI hit me pretty hard, and I just felt so sad. We decided to go for round three and had another IUI in April, with the results still pending. (Please, try to not ask me about this. I am sharing my heart with you because we want to bring you into what we are going through, but I need to be able to share info as I feel ready, both if its positive or negative. I love you, and you are important to us, but please do not ask me about the result of this IUI).
The hardest part of this journey is the ache we feel to grow our family, and being unable to. Our daughter loves babies SO much, she vibrates whenever she sees one, and always wants to hold all the babies. She begs us to "let her be a big sister" and she wants a baby so bad. She sees her friends becoming big brothers and big sisters, and she can't understand why she isn't one. Everytime she asks, my heart breaks a little. We love our people, and rejoice with them when new little ones are born, but our hearts feel the void in our own family where a baby would be. But we also trust that our family is in God's hands and we need to rest in that. We have hope that one day our family will be complete with the arrival of another child, another little Lampard to love dearly.
Let me catch you up on our life in the past 3 years. After 18+ (we can't quite remember the exact number) months of trying to get pregnant, our daughter who is made of firecrackers and sparkles, made her entrance into the world in August 2013. At that time, we didn't put much too much thought into why it took us so long to conceive - we were happy with it just happening when it happened, and not putting too stock into it (it helped that once we really did get "serious" about trying, we got a positive test just three months later). After her first birthday, we decided to start trying again. I had dreams of a baby coming the following summer - two perfect years apart, just like everyone says. When six months had passed, I started to get concerned. Once 11 months passed, I booked an appointment with my doctor. That appointment ended up getting cancelled because we found out after 12 months that we were pregnant! Yay! I immediately went into planning mode, as I always do. We were just moving into our new house, which was perfect! New home, new baby, so much to be excited about. We went for an ultrasound at 12 weeks and right away knew something was wrong from the look on the technicians face. She wouldn't tell us any information (laying there, knowing something awful is happening and not having any details is the most frustrating situation I have ever been in), but she did bring us kleenex. Let me mention that I was NOT crying at this point, so the kleenex totally threw me off, and that was the moment I knew for sure.
On November 24th, 2015, we miscarried around 13 weeks, and it was the most awful time of my entire life. Dreams that we had about our growing family, our babies, our life, were shattered. After a year of hoping and trying, it just felt so devastating. I spent a lot of time looking around our new house, which all of a sudden felt way too big for just three people. In the new year, I re-booked that appointment to see our family doctor. After relaying our history, she gave me a side eye look that clearly told me she thought I should have come in sooner, and she referred us to the local OB/GYN. Here is the awesome (not) part of living on an island - wait times SUCK because there is such a high demand. Four months later, we saw her and she sent us for preliminary tests. One of which was an HSG x-ray. They essentially push dye into the woman's tubes and uterus to check for blockages. Awful. Uncomfortable. Awkward. The start of what would be many awful, uncomfortable and awkward moments. The tests were more or less inconclusive, and she decided to send us to Reproductive Endocrinologist at the Victoria Fertility Clinic. This was August 2016, and we were told that the wait list was six months to a year. I cried a lot that week, and we prayed a lot! My sister-in-law Shelby is the most incredible human being, and listened to a LOT of my tears, and gave me a lot of advice (she works in a medical office, so she has some good insight). I am so thankful for her! Much to our surprise, we got a phone call in late September saying that our file has been pulled to the front, and that the doctor wanted to see us in early October! Thank you, Lord.
We had our initial consultation, ran some more tests, and came up with a plan. I was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, which in a nutshell means I don't ovulate regularly (amongst other things, like weight gain due to not being able to regulate insulin, which has been super fun) and makes it very hard to get pregnant naturally (Quinnlyn is our little miracle baby who we are beyond thankful for). We learned that the symptoms for PCOS get worse as time goes on, so that pretty much sent my internal clock into overdrive, resulting in a pretty desperate feeling. They started us on Clomid and we had our first IUI (Intrauterine Insemination) in late November, and found out in early December that it had failed. The second round of Clomid didn't result in ovulation, so in February they started me on Letrozole (Femara) but once again it didn't result in ovulation. When I don't ovulate, they give me Progesterone to jump start my next cycle. This give me major headaches and makes me feel sluggish and grumpy (bleh!). In March they upped the dosage of the Letrozole (which also gives me major headaches) and we got the green light to do IUI #2.
Let me walk you through this. We take the medication for a week, wait a few days, go in for an ultrasound, then come back every day or every other day for 7-10 days until my ovaries have produced a follicle that is big enough, and my bloodwork shows an LH surge, and we can do the procedure. The clinic is over an hour away from our home, so we have to drive down and back for each appointment, which takes both a lot of time and money, not to mention trying to arrange childcare (we have the greatest friends imaginable! They have stepped in and helped in so many ways! Our friend Lisa has come over at 6am numerous times so that we can get down for an early appointment, and get back in time for her and Jon to get to work. Life-giving kind of friendship). Then after the IUI, it's two weeks of waiting before I can take a blood test and see if it was successful or not. Two weeks of getting our hopes up, dreaming of our future with two babies, thinking that this time might be "the" time, only to get the news that it did indeed fail. Our second failed IUI hit me pretty hard, and I just felt so sad. We decided to go for round three and had another IUI in April, with the results still pending. (Please, try to not ask me about this. I am sharing my heart with you because we want to bring you into what we are going through, but I need to be able to share info as I feel ready, both if its positive or negative. I love you, and you are important to us, but please do not ask me about the result of this IUI).
The hardest part of this journey is the ache we feel to grow our family, and being unable to. Our daughter loves babies SO much, she vibrates whenever she sees one, and always wants to hold all the babies. She begs us to "let her be a big sister" and she wants a baby so bad. She sees her friends becoming big brothers and big sisters, and she can't understand why she isn't one. Everytime she asks, my heart breaks a little. We love our people, and rejoice with them when new little ones are born, but our hearts feel the void in our own family where a baby would be. But we also trust that our family is in God's hands and we need to rest in that. We have hope that one day our family will be complete with the arrival of another child, another little Lampard to love dearly.
Love you guys!
ReplyDeleteWe'd love to share some of our story with you! We know how painful the months of waiting can be!! As you know we have a son and a daughter on earth and 7 in heaven!!
Praying for you!!