Society stinks.

Junior high and high school kids are a bunch of nuts. (seriously sit down and have a conversation with a few one day, I promise you will leave not really knowing what just happened) But I love every one of them.

Josh and I are super blessed with our jobs. He teaches at a Christian school and we both coach almost every sport at the school! While I find so many blessings that come from coaching, one of the biggest blessings comes from the parents and kids themselves. All 3 of our miscarriages have been while we have been at the school. Most parents and kids knew as we experienced every single one of them. I have had more support from moms walking me through what they went through and letting us know that they are praying for us, than almost anywhere else.

Not to mention, we have about 50 kids that we get to love on daily during the school year. It is hard to focus on what we do not have, when we have the blessings of excitement on their faces when we see them and encourage them in athletics. It is honestly one of my favorite things that we have done together, ever.

Sometimes what our society doesn’t realize is the pressure we place upon women to have children and be a mom. I mean think about it. If you are a single woman, how many times do you get asked when you are getting married? Or engaged when the wedding is? Or married…. When the babies are coming? We have almost been married 3 years, we get asked all the time when we are in one person’s words “going to take the jump over married life as free spirits into being married parents?”  Hmm. You just made that sound so simple. Praise the Lord if your jump was as easy as that last sentence sounded.  Josh and I are trying to build our own parachutes from scratch, while some are just making the jump.

Naturally if you don’t have children or can’t have them, you will feel like a failure in our society. The same way those of you feel once you have kids, that everyone has an opinion, we all on the other side of the jump feel the same. I can’t tell you how to parent your children because I haven’t been there. I don’t know. One year as a nanny doesn’t qualify me to tell you how make a decision to bottle feed or breastfeed your child. The same way you carrying a pregnancy to full term doesn’t qualify you to tell someone going through a miscarriage how they should feel.

One thing I have learned this miscarriage is that the shame and guilt I put on myself hurts more than any words from the “society”.  I turned to josh and several occasions during this last miscarriage apologizing to him that this time didn’t work either. I don’t know why I was apologizing. He certainly doesn’t blame me and I have never felt like he did. I just had this overwhelming feeling like I needed to apologize to someone. I watched as my husband went out (a lot) to get me food I was craving or helped around the house tons, all because that was his way to serve me during this time. I saw the disappointed look on his face when we were told there was no baby developing. I wanted more than anything else to take that pain and disappointment away from his heart. But I couldn’t.

But why do we do this? Why is there the need to apologize to your husband or family or other kids in your family?  Why do we carry the shame and guilt? For me, it was a little bit society and where we fit in it. I felt terrible that when we were asked again from random stranger when we want to have kids, we had to say some awkward excuse as to where we are at in life. A little were the plans that we made, that yet again, were thrown away. A little were the diapers and wipes I got for free (couponing! whoo!) that I just knew they were too early to buy. A little was the story. Seriously I wanted to come on here and give every woman looking for a light at the end of the tunnel hope. I wanted to be the I DID IT YOU CAN TOO woman.

I feel the pressure from society to get moving on the baby making. (ha.) But I refuse to let society win. I am going to allow God to work in my life, regardless if it is EXACTLY what I want. I am finally thankful that I am NOT in control. Let me encourage you through your journey and lets stand up to not allowing society to put pressure on us. No story is the same. Otherwise we would all be really boring. Blogs would be lame because we had all been through the same thing.

Society will mean nothing to you if you truly allow God to work in your life.  In the moments where my heart hurts and I want nothing more than to break down, I get a blessing. I laid in bed one night, knowing that I had to explain to a 15 year old girl, that we coach, that I was no longer pregnant, how in the world do I do that? She told me that she had taken it upon herself to pray every day for me until I am holding my baby (tears...) a few weeks before I miscarried. I decided to explain to her that I wasn’t giving up and that we were going to lean on God during such a hard time. She texted me back with something I will never forget.  She told me that she promised me to pray every day until I held my baby and that she didn’t just say through this pregnancy. She told me that she was determined to be a prayer warrior for Josh and I. Wow. What a blessing during such a hard time. She isn’t giving up, so I can’t either! Kids, sorry teens, can teach us so much!

What if all along she (and possibly you) have been praying for our child…. And that child is currently in someone else’s womb. Wow. Isn’t that an incredible thought? Forget society’s plan, I want to be a part of what God has planned if that is what we have all been praying for!

Our adoption road has started. We meet next Friday with a lawyer to discuss our options. (in fact it is the lawyer that helped mikki’s mom many years ago. If you have no idea what I am talking about read my previous post) In our new, but equally as rewarding, journey we will be posting a blog entirely dedicated to josh and I. It sounds weird I know. But we would like to place a blog out there that could be easy for you to share with others. It is our hope to get the word out that we are looking to adopt and pray that someone knows someone who knows someone! Ha! That way they have all of our information at their fingertips and it is easy for people to share the link with others.

Remember to love on others today, you don’t know what they may be going through. <3

Updates and Decisions

Remember when you were in high school and you refused to believe that you wouldn’t be best friends with those people for the rest of your life? Yea I was totally one of those people.  Not that I don’t still keep in contact with a few people (a good friend and her husband live just a few miles away from us!) but it was nothing like seeing each other every day for years. High school relationships are special to each of us. Even if you hated high school, you still have friends that you love and miss seeing every day.

For me though it was in my first few years of college that I made one of my best and lasting friendships. My best friend Mikki and I had a few years of seeing each other multiple times a week (if not every day) and were there for each other through break ups, ministry ups and downs and a lot of laughter. If you looked at us we have little in common. She is this gorgeous 6’0 (err… 5’11 ½) light brown, straight hair woman who high jumped for the University of Toledo with one of the biggest hearts you have ever seen.  I am 5’4 dark brown, curly hair and couldn’t jump over something 4’0. (Seriously I tried I coach track)

Our sophomore year of college, I was hanging out at her house with her parents like I did often and the topic of adoption came up. How have I totally missed in the last six months that, yep, Mikki is adopted. Huh. I don’t know why I didn’t put it together when she is super tall and her parents aren’t at all. Then at the young age of 19 it hit me. This is what adoption should look like.  They love her so much (seriously you should see the Mikki shrine in this house of pictures and sports trophies) and you would NEVER be able to tell by the way her parents and grandparents love her that she was adopted.

We are now 25 (lies, she just turned 26 a few days ago!) and my heart is so very open to adoption because I have seen it done right. If you asked her mom (and someone I call mom too) she could never imagine not being Mikki’s mom. 

Just to catch you all up, these last few days I have experienced my 3^rd miscarriage.  We went to 3 different ultrasounds, all of which showed that a gestational sac and yolk sac developed but a fetal pole/baby never did. It was a really tough pill to swallow since for the last 6 weeks I have had more pregnancy symptoms than I did with the first 2 pregnancies combined. So we are now looking at miscarriages at 10, 11 and 8 weeks along.

When each of these have happened especially the last 2, we have thrown around ideas of what are our next steps. Do we get tested? Do we start possibly looking at adoption?  Or foster care? For those of you who have had successful pregnancies each time or maybe have had one miscarriage and then went on to have children, it is hard to explain the place I am in right now.

Having 2 miscarriages leaves you in the place where everyone says it was probably just “bad luck twice” (which is a term I hate by the way) and you have hope that the 3^rd time it will work out. THEN you have 3 miscarriages and our world has turned a little. We now have a 50% chance of each pregnancy being successful (compared to most at 70-80%) and there is a good chance that there is something physical wrong with one or both of us.  Ow. It hurts and is a lot to take in.

Before I jump into what I feel like is defending our decisions, I want to put some perspective in your eyes and maybe allow you to see a little of what a friend or family member who has had a miscarriage goes through. When you miscarry, it is literally your body expelling everything from the pregnancy, similar to birth. There is no other real way to explain it. Your body, while yes it isn’t pushing a full term child out, is going through contractions and pain similar to going through labor. I am not saying it’s the same because I haven’t experienced labor, but several women I know who have experienced both have said they were either the same or the miscarriage was worse.

*the next few paragraphs are descriptive, so if you don’t want to read please don’t*

I mean think about it. A week ago I had to take medicine to help my miscarriage start, because for some reason my body thinks it’s a good time to hold onto pregnancies when there is no baby or the precious baby stopped growing. Within 2 hours I was bleeding and within 4 I had period like cramps. Then by hour 6 I had to take the medicine again. Once I took it the real pain started. I had to sit on our toilet pushing, like you would during labor (like my body was actually telling me to do it) for close to 6 hours. Finally once I felt strong enough to get up, I feel asleep on our couch sitting up because that was the only comfortable position. My doctor gave me this prescription and no pain meds, so I took Tylenol. Let’s be honest, I could have taken tic tacs and it would have had the same effect as the Tylenol did to mask these pains.

For me, I knew it was something that I had to do to prevent infection for my body so I pushed through with the cramps for over 12 hours total. (And I am still having them on and off today) But I had to do it knowing that I wasn’t going to be holding my baby in the end. I have now gone through this exact thing twice and one D&C, where I was waking up knowing I was no longer pregnant. I am not telling you this to make you feel bad for me. I want you to have the knowledge and understanding about the pain mentally and physically a woman goes through during a miscarriage.

In the last 18 months, we have gone through this 3 times. That is a lot on anyone mentally, physically and spiritually. So naturally, when we get to this place of deciding our future, please understand to our option to adopt. Several people have said “don’t give up” or “keep trying on your own”. It isn’t that we are throwing that option out completely, but adoption is an actual option for us and was way before we ever had our first miscarriage.

Josh put it this way, “it isn’t giving up considering adoption, it’s like foul shots in basketball. If I miss 10 consecutive foul shots, I am not going to give up but I am going to change my approach to them”

(I am also supposed to tell you that he has never missed 10 consecutive foul shots in his life.  Ha)

We have been through a lot but we aren’t giving up. I am not sure why we think something like adoption is “us giving up”.  Sure I don’t want to go through a miscarriage and the pain ever again.  However, I want to have that super cute baby bump at some point in my life. But what I really want is to be a mom. How rewarding of an experience even if the child is not our biological child. I don’t care. It is not giving up. Mikki’s mom doesn’t care that she didn’t give birth to Mikki. She is still her mom.  She sat up with her at night while she was sick; she was at every volleyball, basketball and track meet. She cried as she watched her daughter walk down the aisle to get married. She cried as she moved away and like any mom she can’t wait to be a grandma. THAT is a mom.

I have witnessed adoption done correctly. Josh and I are currently looking at our options adoption wise. Yes it is super expensive, but so is all of the testing we would have to have done.  Just please understand that miscarriages are such a tough thing to go through, that no women who wants to be a mom WANTS to experience it. But when you decide to take another route to being a parent because one thing may not be working, there is no need to judge.  We need to throw out of our mind, similar to miscarriages, that adoption makes you less of a parent. Raising a child is a blessing however you get there.

I have my best friend because her parents didn’t give up.

Here are the facts

I know I have had so many supportive people sending messages and texts about my ultrasound on Friday, so I wanted to write a short(er) blog letting you know how things went!

As nervous as I was on Friday, I just had this tiny feeling of all of this freaking out is going to be over in just a few minutes because everything is going to be ok. Boy was I wrong.

We got there and had to wait for quite a bit and to be honest when you make someone drink all of that water before hand, what a terrible idea to make them wait. I was dying. When we got called a young girl came and got us, and I was super surprised she was going to do my ultrasound. I mean listen I look like I am in high school still, but if I look in high school she looked in Junior High. I have no problem with younger people doing things like this, as long as they are qualified. I politely, as I could, informed her that my bladder was full and needed to go to the bathroom. She smiled and said that she would go get the actual ultrasound tech because she would be much faster. I had no idea she wasn’t the ultrasound tech!

Once the ultrasound tech came in, she measured whatever she needed too, but informed me that my bladder was quite full (yeah no kidding) and that they would have to measure everything else internally. FINALLY I got to go to the bathroom. When I got back the actual ultrasound tech said “this is so and so, she is a student at Owens and is going to be performing your ultrasound today.” I now realize after others have told me that I can request not to have a student, but I had no idea. Plus the way she worded it didn’t really give us an option.

I informed them that I was pretty nervous since we didn’t see the baby the last time. So she had the student look and after about 30 seconds said “well we see the gestational sac and yolk sac but no fetal … wait maybe that is the fetal pole… no never mind we see no fetal pole.” They then proceeded for over 30 minutes to pull and tug to find my ovaries etc. Looking for the baby lasted 30 seconds.

I have had several of the internal ultrasounds because of the last 2 miscarriages, so I am aware of how they are suppose to feel and how long they are suppose to last. I was in actual physical pain, enough to cause tears, during this ultrasound that lasted about 15 minutes too long. I have never been in physical pain during one of these before. Ever. I had enough pulling and tugging that when I got home, I was actually physically torn and it burned to pee. (TMI I know but it explains how crazy this ultrasound was)

When we got out to the car, I obviously started crying and Josh just said “we are not judging ANYTHING off of that ultrasound.” I realized in that moment that the ultrasound was not typical, even my husband who has been to every ultrasound, knew that what we just went through was weird.

So here are the facts:

I should have been about 7weeks 3days, based on when we are pretty sure I ovulated.

The Gestational sac was measuring like I was 6weeks 5days. (Assuming it was measured correctly, so not far behind at all)

I have had no bleeding or cramping. (Some spotting in the last few days, but they aren’t sure if that is from the painful ultrasound, and has stopped.)

My OB wants me to have another ultrasound anyways, because she didn’t feel like the pictures were clear enough.

Hopefully we will have another ultrasound on Friday and that will give us a better idea of what is going on.

All of my pregnancy symptoms (which are 3x as much as the last 2 pregnancies combined) are all still very present.

Thank you again to all of the supportive people who have contacted us. I am sorry if I wasn’t able to get back to you. We had some family things this weekend but also were taking some time to process.

We realize not seeing a fetal pole at 7w 3d, means there is probably a problem. But with all of the circumstances we are praying even for that small chance of a miracle. My God is big; we believe that it can happen.

Either way, we praise him regardless of the outcome. :)

(if you have any questions that I didn’t answer, please do not hesitate to ask!)