Injection Free

This post originally appeared on Annery at Home in November 2011.

A couple more days and I'll be at the 11-week mark.  Last week I went to my nurse appointment. After running the blood tests, I got the call that I could stop taking the progesterone injections.

After a month of 3x a week shots, I was overly ready to be done.  As I said before, I really did try not to be a weanie about my shots., although this toughing it out came to a whole new level while I was out of town working.  Without my husband with me to give me the shots, it fell to me to give myself the injections. 

The first night I needed to give myself the injection, a close friend who lives near where I was working came over to my hotel and supervised me to make sure I was able to do it.  With her moral support, I gave myself the shot and it didn't seem so bad.  She actually took a picture of me injecting myself, but I'll spare you all, since not everyone is a fan of medical-type pictures.  The next time I had to give myself a shot, I really missed her help, it is huge to have someone telling you, "you're almost done!" 

As my friend termed it, I was "hardcore" about giving myself the injections, but I was relieved to be home and having my husband do the shots again!  I was even more relieved when I got the call that I could stop the shots altogether.

Now that I'm back home and life is settling into it's normal rhythm, I'm starting to feel a little of that first trimester exhaustion, last week is kind of a blur in fact.  I'm starting to worry a little about where we're going to live next year, with a new baby on the way and our foster daughter with us, our 2 bedroom house will soon be a really tight squeeze.  But I'm trying not to let those worries take over.

My husband is in his second week at a new job, and while I worry about how it will work out after all the ups and downs of the last six months, I have to have faith that everything will work out.

Every time I worry about where we're going to put all the kids, I take a breath and say a prayer that God give us the resources to care for the children He wants us to have.  I have to have confidence that Providence will be there.  My husband is a hard worker and if anyone can succeed in a new career of sales, it's him, although I may have to read this to remind myself of that when his income moves to straight commission in a couple months. 

God has been with us every step of the way and I have no evidence to the contrary that He will not continue to be, I'll just have to remind myself of that as I struggle against my natural anxiety-prone ways. 

God is faithful beyond my understanding.

Hope Grows

This post originally appeared on Annery at Home in October 2011.

I've been pretty open about our struggles to conceive and the heart-wrenching loss of an ectopic pregnancy last year.  We have been open and waiting for children since L was about a year old.  She turned 6 this past July.  Doctors couldn't really find any problems that should prevent babies, but it was still five years and no babies.

About three months after I lost the ectopic pregnancy, my husband and I signed up to become foster parents.  I strongly felt like a baby of our own wasn't part of God's plan for us at that time.  We remained open, but it was a hard thing.  The licensing for foster parenting took about 9 months.  About halfway through, I started taking Clomid in hopes of having a baby.  I wanted to feel like I'd given everything I could to trying so that I would have no regrets.

I took Clomid for 9 months before discontinuing.  Sweet Baby was brought home from the hospital as our foster daughter shortly after I completed my ninth round of hormones.  It did feel like a little bit of God's sense of humor that I went through nine hormonal months and then brought a baby home from the hospital.

Sweet Baby will be 3 months old this weekend.  She's been a delight in our home.  Her goal is reunification, but we'll enjoy her every day we have her.

A couple weeks back, I had suspicions I was expecting.  Once a test confirmed those suspicions, the real battery of tests began.  Because of my history with the ectopic, my first step was blood testing.

A series of blood tests revealed that my hcg doubled as it should, but my progesterone levels were on the low side for supporting the baby's development.  I went in the next week to the doctor's office to get an injection of progesterone and for the nurse to show my husband how to give the injections (if you ever want a trust building exercise - this will truly test your limits!).  I'm on injections 3 times a week until week 10, when hopefully, the placenta will take over and I'll be in the clear. 

Due to the low progesterone and medical history, I went in for an ultrasound to confirm that the baby was growing in the right place.  It was nerve-wracking waiting for the ultrasound.  When the ultrasound confirmed that the baby was growing in the right location, it was the first moment I let myself hope that this pregnancy will be successful and I'll be holding a baby next summer.

That hope continues to grow; every day that goes by is one more closer to a healthy new baby. 

This pregnancy is totally different than L.  I was so oblivious to everything that could go wrong; now I find myself being much more careful and not taking this baby as a given. 

This pregnancy is a miracle and I'm so looking forward to growing Hope.

Praying for Patience

This post originally appeared on Annery at Home in February 2011

It seems to be that when you pray for patience or hope or any virtue, God answers that prayer with plenty of opportunities to exercise and grow that virtue in your life. 

 Waiting for the gift of another child in our family has been perhaps the most notable area of growth in patience.  There are also, of course, the daily opportunities with a strong-willed 5 year old to practice patience.

I recently read a Kimberly Hahn book called Life-Giving Love. The beautiful take-away was that God calls us to openness and will bless us with fruitfulness, it may be the physical manifestation of fruitfulness in children, or it may be a spiritual fruitfulness, but openness ALWAYS leads to fruitfulness.

This book really mirrored and reinforced a lot of the thoughts I've had regarding the difficulty to have more children.  First, gifts are truly unmerited blessings. 

L was a blessing that I was not fully prepared to embrace; I had many things to do on my own time-table and took for granted that children would come when we planned them, not a moment sooner.  Retrospectively, I thank God that our marriage included NFP and an openness to children through it that allowed the gift of L.  God knew that this child at that time would lead us to where we are now.  She has also been a great consolation in not having additional children. 

In looking back at the last 4-5 years of openness, willingness and eagerness for additional children, I see lessons and growth that I wouldn't have chosen for myself.  Like a child taking a bitter medicine, I never would have chosen this path; although as I look back on it, I see the benefit. 

I never would have chosen to be so obedient and open to the will of God in my life - that has been a lesson painfully and tearfully acquired.  Perhaps the thicker the skull, the bigger the lesson needs to be.

I reflect a lot on my ruptured ectopic on March 1, 2010 - nearly a year ago.  On that day, we lost a child and my family nearly lost me.  The grief of that time was extreme.  There still remains a residual sadness and occasionally I think about how old that baby would be now (4 months this week), but through the suffering, I can see the path and the purpose. 

I have called the time around that loss my crucible.  My compassion was deepened, my appreciation for the blessing of life was increased and my willingness to be obedient to God's plan was tested and strengthened. 

My path to salvation is undoubtedly linked to this suffering and growth.  As a part of grieving, we named the child we lost Mara Celand.  Mara means "wished for daughter" and Celand means "destined for heaven"; together it fully encompasses that child's life with us and for eternity in heaven. 

I carried a saint inside me and now our family has an intercessor at the throne of God.  I pray for her intercession for her future siblings yet to be born.  Yet I humbly submit my fertility and the plans for our family to God's will.  Mara brought us one step closer to heaven and God, in His infinite wisdom, may see that we need more steps to fully reach Him. 

The pursuit of God's plan has led us to the process of foster parenting.  Yet again, prayers for patience have led to waiting, waiting, waiting.  We have been pursuing foster parenting since June 2010. 

In November, we turned in the myriad of paperwork and began classes.  Late January we finished courses.  Still not done yet, still praying that God's will be done, but starting to wonder if this is the path we are still supposed to take - or if there was another reason we were led to this path.  The meetings being canceled and pushed back, the paperwork still not cleared by the state;are these signs that God's will doesn't lead in this direction, or that God knows our patience could use the workout? 

The answer probably won't come today, so I'll focus on the tasks of today and not borrow tomorrow's troubles. 

St. Mara, pray for us.