Good. Grief.

When I used to hear the word 'grief,' my immediate thoughts were of someone having lost a person close to them. It meant someone had died, and it was not a word I wanted to know personally. There was also the 'Oh, good grief, Charlie Brown!' thing...but never before would I put 'good' and 'grief' together in a serious way. And I always assumed that grieving was something that happened to someone after something very bad had happened. I didn't see it as a process that one partakes in, that one must partake in at times in their life in order to move forward. I also used to assume that grief was linear, but no longer.

I was ignorant about grief years ago. My life wasn't easy, but it wasn't hard. And then in February 2001 I started going to the doctor for unexplained symptoms, and this went on until he diagnosed me with an auto-immune disorder more than a year later. Four days before my wedding. Casey and I thought, 'Well, if we can get through all of that hospital craziness (one week) and this diagnosis...we can get through anything!' I thought this was my grief. My valley.

Miles was born in April 2006. I was finally rid of the hospital on July 19. Celebration. Recovery. I thought I was moving on. It wasn't until September, when Miles was five months old, that I began to realize all that I had missed in his life. I remember breaking down in the shower one evening, sobbing uncontrollably because I hadn't been able to celebrate my first Mother's Day, hadn't carried him home for the first time, hadn't been able to breastfeed like I'd wanted, hadn't even taken one picture of him until he was four months old. I had dreamed of taking photos of him as a tiny, newborn baby. I had missed that.

Still ignorant about how my grief was working and how I had to be a part of it instead of just waiting for it to 'happen,' I thought that with full physical recovery would come full emotional healing. But the joy I felt after my final surgery in July 2007 was short-lived. Grief was upon me again, and I was just starting to get it. No one had warned me that the emotional pain can long outlive the physical pain. I thought that kind of pain only came with 'real' loss. I was still just beginning to grasp how much I'd lost, and I didn't even know the half of it until we started trying to have another baby in March 2008.

Fast forward to the present day. Grief is not linear. There can be ten steps forward and one hundred steps back. There can be two steps up and four steps down. There can be a valley after a valley -- it's not always valley-mountain-valley-mountain. Your pain is your pain, and it can be a lonely place if you let it -- sometimes even if you don't.

I have handled my grief in both good and bad ways. I don't know that anyone handles it perfectly. It frustrates me greatly sometimes that I can't press a pause button on life so I can have time to grieve and then be caught up with everyone else. I am almost always 'stuck' behind and I don't know that I will ever be able to catch up, but I am learning to accept that.

One thing I've learned, sometimes grudgingly, is that I will never be the exact same person I used to be. Life looks different to me now, but I believe that there are better parts of me that might not have been if I hadn't gone through what I did. And my joys...they are sweeter and dearer because of my sorrows. My pain is deep, but I hold the tiniest moments close to my heart. I don't think I would have done that had things been easier.

I write about all of this because of something that sounds extremely simple, but for me has been a thing of dread. And instead of continuing to avoid it, I decided to walk through my pain because I knew that there would be a bit of healing on the other side. Grief is not a friend of mine, but lately I'm seeing that I have to sit with it in order to heal. There is no other way. I could try to avoid it my entire life, but what kind of life would that be? I am tired of pain, and I know I will grieve certain things until I die, but the deep sadness is something I must be with so that I can move on.

Now, the simple thing I mentioned? I have recently decided to go through every bit of Miles' clothing since he was born in order to sell what I can at consignment next month. That's five years of my little boy's clothes. There were many pieces I set aside, unable to part with them either right now or ever. Ask me about that again next year. But that still left a lot of clothes that have to be washed, sorted, priced and tagged. Today I began washing the clothes and hanging them up until I can price them. But before washing them, I would inspect each piece of clothing to see if they had any kind of stain that needed treating.

I knew it would be tough. It had been emotional just going through them the first time. But today, holding up each onesie or tiny shirt or pair of pants, I felt my anxiety building. And building. And by the time I had started the first load of laundry, my heart was racing and I was finding it hard to breathe. There I stood in the laundry room, crying and asking God to be with me. When I recounted all of this to Casey later on, I cried even more, and as I sit here typing I am still not finished with washing those many tiny clothes.

But guess what? As painful as it has been, and as many memories as it has brought up (both good and bad), I have decided to let grief in my door today...and though I am not at the end of it, I have at least moved in a positive direction. Let's face it: when we're in the middle of it, grief is not where we want to be, right? But if we figure out that there is something good on the other side and we can walk through it, life doesn't seem as scary anymore. At least not to me.

That is good grief.

A Promise is a Promise

In my last post I promised that I would share the reason(s) why my posting had slowed so much. And so I will.

It's been nearly a year since I mentioned those three letters here on the blog that have greatly impacted our lives: IVF. Back then I had decided that I wouldn't share more on the subject until I had something good to share about it. I honestly didn't think I would have to wait very long, but as far as any baby news goes I am still waiting.

When I met with my doctor last October after our first cycle didn't work, we discussed the option of a salpingectomy, which is basically the removal of the fallopian tubes. When there is a hydrosalpinx, a tube that has fluid in it, the outcome of IVF can be affected because there is the possibility of inflammation in the tube(s) and that can cause the embryo(s) not to implant. It is still possible to get pregnant when you have a hydrosalpinx, but generally after one failed attempt the option for the salpingectomy is on the table. I was definitely open to this and as with all surgical decisions, once I've made up my mind I'm ready now. That was not possible this time, which was frustrating but I was willing to wait.

The day of the surgery was November 19, and it would take place in a hospital three hours from home. Our doctor actually brought in another surgeon to assist him, one who was going to try and make this a laparoscopic procedure (which it normally is) rather than having to, for a fourth time, open my abdominal scar. They were even going to see if they could untwist the left tube and give us any chance possible at natural pregnancy, but I was well aware going in that I might come out of this with no tubes and a reopened incision, and unfortunately that is what happened. The tubes were beyond saving, but now we had a new start with IVF. I was excited at first, but this surgery, for many reasons, was by far the most emotionally difficult one I'd had. I knew that if the next cycle didn't work it would be much harder to take, and I didn't know how I'd handle a bad outcome what with all we'd put on the line.

Because of the recovery time and circumstantial things, Casey and I weren't able to begin our second cycle of IVF until February of this year. I was eight days into the injections, which is a good deal into the process because everything starts a few weeks before that, when on March 8 I got the call that they were canceling the cycle. I remember the day well because I learned of our friends having just had their second child within minutes of that, and as happy as I was for them I was devastated for us. My body wasn't responding well to the meds, so we had no choice but to stop and wait to start all over again.

The third cycle, which I actually consider the second since the previous one wasn't completed, began in mid-April. I had been doing a lot of exercising since December (training to walk a half-marathon) and probably felt the best that I had in a long time. I was ready, and I just knew this would be our time. We were anxious but joyful to make it to the embryo transfer and have two 'gorgeous' embryos, as the doctor put it. We even had the option of transferring a third embryo, but there was such a fear in us of having all three implant that Casey and I looked at one another and said, "No, that's okay." I go back to that moment every now and then and have my 'what might have been' thoughts.

As had happened the first time around, we had no embryos make it to freeze. That is, none of the remaining few embryos did not progress far into the blastocyst stage, which would have made it possible to cryopreserve them for another cycle. The phone call with this news always comes during the nine days between the embryo transfer and the pregnancy test. In other words, The Longest Wait Ever. I've said many times that those nine days are more difficult than the tests, procedures, injections (close to 50 of them in less than two weeks, all done by me)...yeah, the waiting is the hardest part.

On May 20, I went in for my blood test and made the long drive home (the fertility clinic we visit is three hours away). It was an anxious time, full of uncontrollable foot-tapping and tear-filled prayers. I was literally one street away from home when the call came: the test was positive. We were pregnant! At first I was speechless, but couldn't stop smiling. I had waited more than two years for this news, had gone through two major surgeries and two in vitro cycles to hear what we'd been longing to hear and it was all worth it.

The next few days were surreal. Every hour, every moment, I was trying to grasp our new reality: this dream was coming true. Not only did I say to Casey more than once, "We're pregnant!" I would look at Miles and then say quietly, "He's going to be a big brother!" and I tried to picture it all. We quietly told family and a few friends. There were tears, celebrations, thanks to God...and yet we knew we needed to wait for that second blood test and first ultrasound to share our joy with the world. I couldn't wait -- and not just to tell people that I was pregnant, but to praise God in their presence for this blessing.

This is the hardest part to share. My heart actually hurts with each beat as I type this...even five months later it feels like yesterday down into my very bones. I went in for the second blood test on May 27, one week after the first test. Keep in mind that a week is a long time to be allowing happiness over a realized dream sink into your heart. I remember being on that final elevator ride up to the doctor's office: it's inside a large hospital, and you can't walk down the halls of this area of it without seeing several pregnant women. I think I recently counted 10 of them in just a few minutes.

I was on the elevator with four or five pregnant women, but in my mind I was thinking, "But they don't know there is one more pregnant woman here," and I smiled quietly at the silliness of myself. I arrived at my floor and -- this part will forever be etched in my mind -- I saw a woman leaving the doctor's office with who I'm assuming was her mother, and the woman was sobbing uncontrollably. It was no quiet grief, but open and raw, and it drew me in to the point that I wished I could go to her and comfort her. My only guess was that something had gone very wrong with her IVF cycle...possibly she'd had a miscarriage. My heart went out to her, and I felt a twinge of guilt at now being the woman in whom she would find no comfort.

The second blood test, I should explain, is like the first in that it is quantitative rather than qualitative. The qualitative blood test gives you a 'yes' or 'no' whereas the quantitative test measures the level of hcg (the 'pregnancy hormone') in a woman's blood. The general rule is that any number higher than five means there is a pregnancy, although four weeks into pregnancy it's good to have a higher number than that for it to remain viable. The number on my first blood test was 40 -- not a bad number, but not the best number. The doctor hadn't been too worried about it, just wanted to wait until that second test to make sure the numbers were doubling like they should.

The call came later that afternoon when I was at home. I felt a shock and a numbness as the nurse explained that my number had dropped and was below five. She said the words 'chemical pregnancy' and that she was very sorry, but I just kept nodding and answering and saying 'thank you' to her words until the conversation was over. It was at that point that I felt myself crumbling, falling apart. I was sobbing and calling Casey, who had been out on a walk but was on his way back, and I told him that I needed him to come home without telling him why. He arrived to find me crying on the floor, and I told him it was over...it was all over.

Though we could grasp that a chemical pregnancy is a very early miscarriage -- the embryo attempts but fails to implant, so the body begins producing the hormone that gives you a positive blood test -- our hearts were utterly confused. My first reaction, that night in fact, was to try talking Casey into diving back in to another IVF attempt right now. Well, of course that was a bad idea given my emotions and what I'd just been through physically, but I didn't care. Casey and our doctor did, though, and after talking with both of them and waiting a few days I realized that they were right. I didn't want to hear it, but I knew that a few months off was best, and for a little while I decided that taking an anti-depressant would be a wise choice for me as well.

There is still more to share. Casey and I spent a wonderful few days on a much-needed anniversary vacation in August, and by the middle of the month began a third in vitro attempt. With nearly a year having passed since our first try, I was blown away at how much had happened...and still no baby. One cycle, then major surgery, then a canceled cycle, then a chemical pregnancy. This one had to be it. Right? Just over a year before this, I was so averse to the idea of IVF and now here we were actually going for attempt number three.

So much was different this time, even too much to get into. A major difference was how well my body was responding to the meds, so well that I was told to back off on the injections. I only made two visits to the doctor's office before they said we were ready for the procedures. Our embryo numbers were slightly higher, giving us a better chance at having some make it to freeze. It was hard not to feel like this really could be it -- how could it not? But we'd thought that before, hadn't we, and then had been disappointed. Still...so many things pointed to this being our time. Finally.

The third time was far from charming, and when I got the call just five weeks ago yesterday I was of course crushed. Knowing that it was easier to take than having the rug pulled out from under us like it was in May didn't take much sting out of the disappointment, but I was relieved at not having to go through the highs and lows of that moment again. Still, there we were, grieving once again. And I do mean 'we' because Casey is in this just as much as me -- maybe not physically but certainly emotionally, and we were both crying out to God and sharing our anger with him at our deep disappointment.

I've learned so much, and each time I've learned something different. To be honest, I'd much rather have an easier way of learning...but I know that's usually not how God works. He does his best work in our brokenness. It's unfortunate that I've been so stubborn at times as to not allow his lessons into my heart, but I strive to be better and always will.

Now, there might be those of you who will want to bring up the subject of adoption. Let me assure you that I am well aware of that option. I have friends who were adopted, I have friends who have adopted and it is a most awesome thing in my opinion. But before you share with me your wonderful stories, please consider the idea that my heart might not be there. Wanting another baby does not necessarily mean that Casey and I are ready for adoption. We've certainly discussed it, I've researched it and asked questions...but I cannot force myself to do something I don't feel ready for. Just like deciding to have a baby of your own, adopting a baby is a huge and very personal decision. I won't say never, that would be foolish of me. But I do want to make others aware that just because something is good doesn't mean it would be everyone's choice.

I don't know why now, why today is the time I chose to share all of this. When it feels time to share, that's when I share. I have held back so much in the past year, but I did it partly to protect myself. Now I feel a bit stronger, and now I am ready for everyone to know what's been going on. I think it helps me to help everyone understand, which goes back to what I've said before: we all want to be understood. You have your own experiences, and part of the healing comes from those around you simply understanding where you've been. If you are able to take from this some kind of new understanding of our lives, then I've done what I set out to do.

Joy That Needs Sharing

Casey mentioned to me yesterday how much better I seem to be doing emotionally since 'the news'. I guess I had noticed as well, but if he's noticing then something really must be happening. It hasn't been a month yet and I feel I'm covering so much healing ground. Sure, at first I was taking one step forward and then five steps back...but slowly it was two steps forward and one step back, and so on.

After traveling down at least a couple different roads of grief this year regarding my infertility, and of course having had grief over several different things in the past few years stemming from one main source, I am finally learning that grief is neither seamless nor is it linear. It happens the way it happens, and it is different for all of us. And so I didn't know exactly how my grief over this would look, or how long it would last. Sometimes it looked...well, not very pretty. And as far as how long it will last? I still shed my tears over it, but those moments are much fewer and farther between.

But something...something has really happened inside me lately. And I hadn't looked at it closely until Casey's comment to me yesterday. I've not only had a sort of leveling out of my emotions, but I'm beginning to go beyond that and really do more. I'm getting back into exercising, which makes a huge difference in one's emotional state. I have more energy (that might partly be my hypothyroid medicine), and I have a real want to get out and live life instead of just being.

Today it really hit me. I took Miles to the park to pull his wagon around in the warm, gorgeous sunshine on this November day. We were both smiling, he was having his lunch and I was listening to my iPod...and I realized that God has not only brought me through something devastating, but he has worked in me to make me stronger than I have been and felt in a very long time. Tears of joy and gratitude welled up in my eyes, and I looked back at my sweet Miles and we laughed together over something silly. I begged God to let me hold on to that feeling, that glimpse of heaven and its pure perfection. Even as I share this now I can tell you that He has graciously filled my cup to overflowing.

Praise God for warm fall days, precious little boys, and brightness after a long, dark road.

Day By Day

I feel the need to thank so many who have reached out to us, who have prayed for us, who have shown us comfort and understanding. I will tell you now that I am one of those people who, when faced with heartache and disappointment, tends to sort of hide herself away from the world. It's a coping thing, a way to protect myself. There are ways in which this can be good and bad, just like most ways we all grieve. But we all do it differently. And I promise, I am extremely self-aware -- I know when my 'hiding' is an actual needed thing and when it's becoming a more negative thing. I also have a husband who coaxes me out of that hiding when he feels he should.

It hasn't been a week yet since we learned that the in vitro didn't work, so you can imagine that this is all still very raw. I feel like each day since has brought some different struggle, but mostly reality has been setting in and the numbness is all gone. We pray, we remind ourselves that we are not alone in this heartache, and we remember friends and family who have suffered greater things in their lives. But also, we laugh. Casey and I have managed to laugh through every new craziness that has come our way. Sometimes, really, that's all we can do. I don't think it's so much a making-lemonade-from-lemons mentality...it's our way of staying connected to one another, keeping that thing about us that makes us special. Our relationship began and grew because our senses of humor were so much alike, and so we laugh through both the good and the bad.

Like any other difficulty that comes along in our lives that we must face, I am looking to grow from this. I want to grow closer to God, because if I don't seek that growth Satan will seek to tear me from Him. I want to grow closer to Casey for the same reason just mentioned. These times are made more difficult by Satan wielding whatever power he thinks he has, trying to bring me down in any way possible. But...

"...I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." ~Romans 8:38-39

The News

Yesterday afternoon, Casey and I got the phone call that could have changed our family in a big way. Instead we were left grieving, knowing that the two embryos that were transferred less than two weeks ago had not implanted as we'd hoped. The test was negative.

I won't lie, this is an extremely tough time for both of us. There is so much invested in IVF besides money...so much time, physical and emotional energy. It has taken so much out of us, and to be told at the end that there will be nothing to show for your efforts is seriously gut-wrenching.

I wanted to thank everyone who supported us, prayed for us, encouraged us...it meant so much more than you know. As of now, we don't know where exactly we'll go from here. But because of the emotional toll this has taken, I might choose to share much less or nothing at all until we have some positive news at last.

What I know for sure is this: even though we don't understand why some things happen the way they do, we are convinced of Romans 8:28 which says, "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him..."

Where is the good in this pain? It's very hard to see right now, but I am asking God to show us and to work in it for good, for his glory.

Compromising

Since my last post a few days ago, I realized something: as much as I feel I shouldn't share too much about our IVF process, all the little details, it is very unlike me to not share. If there weren't so many emotions and possibly huge disappointments wrapped up in IVF, I would be giving up-to-the-minute newsflashes every day -- no, every hour.

If you take from that, as you should, that I am a sharer (maybe an over-sharer in some cases), then you should be somewhat impressed with how well I'm doing in holding back. This should also give you a small glimpse into how high the emotions can get with infertility issues. I have to say that I am loving reading blogs by women who suffer from infertility and are going through or have gone through IVF themselves. We don't all have the same exact issues, but I can tell you from reading their posts that they know how I feel. That is huge.

I really do have something to say, I promise.

Because I do want to share this experience with you but don't want it to be a 'real-time' sort of thing, I have come up with a compromise (which, if you watch The Office, is actually a win-lose situation!). I am going to keep a draft post updated with every new IVF visit, what I'm going through, how I'm feeling, and then hopefully some good news at the end. The entire post will cover the entire process, but I won't post it until much later, when I feel the time is right. Isn't that a great compromise? (This is the part where you nod your head.)

I have to hand it to those women who have enormous courage in sharing the details the day they happen. I might be that way in some circumstances, but I suppose after all is said and done I am feeling more protective over this than I thought I would. It's my heart...it has felt so heavy over so much recently concerning this one issue, and because of that I have to be cautious.

But the compromise -- this makes me happy! It will be so cathartic to write about what's going on, knowing that I'll actually be able to share it with you later.

Holding Back

I like Friday. Friday means that tomorrow is Saturday, and I like Saturday as well. But not as much as Friday. It just feels different. To quote Newman on Seinfeld, "Tuesday has no feel." And you have to admit, it doesn't -- not like Friday or Saturday anyway.

I keep going back and forth on how much I want to share about our IVF journey. I know it may not seem like a big deal, and I honestly would love to share a lot about it. But here's my biggest reservation concerning the sharing: Let's say I'm giving updates on everything, like "started my injections today!" or "egg retrieval is tomorrow!" At some point, because my readers would know every step of the process we're on, there would be a time to say 'it worked' or 'it didn't work.'

Now, if you are someone who has struggled with infertility, or just trying for a while to get pregnant without success, you understand how hard it is to tell people (who know you're trying) that you are not pregnant again. Finding out you're not pregnant is hard enough without the pressure of having to tell everyone who is waiting to know if you are or not. And while I very much want to share good news with everyone, I'm not so sure about having to share the bad. After a year and a half of this, my heart doesn't want to do that anymore.

I'll give you this much: the entire process -- from baseline tests (I had mine on Tuesday) to the blood pregnancy test that takes place two weeks after the embryo transfer -- can take up to about two months. So for those of you who thought I'd be making an announcement any day now just need to sit back and wait. And if we do have news to share at the end of two months, we will be first taking time to share with family and making sure everything is running smoothly before we make a blog announcement. Call me crazy, but I'm an old-fashioned gal who posts her pregnancy news on the blog a little later -- and that means possibly not letting the world know 'the news' until about three months have passed.

I will say that I'm totally fine with questions about anything -- about what happened in 2006, about my infertility issues, etc. And I will most likely answer any questions thrown my way. If I don't want to, I'll probably say that too. But I won't be offended, assuming the questions aren't meant to offend of course. I know there are people out there who don't know what we're going through -- but just asking about it means that you want to know, and that means a lot to me.

Wading Through the Uncertainty

There was never a blog post update on how our first IVF appointment went nearly a month ago. Here's the update: it went well...and it lasted four hours. Casey and I like our doctor very much, and the nursing staff and financial folks were all on our side from the beginning, which is always a good feeling.

Now for more updates. My procedure last Thursday went well, and actually two polyps were removed. There was some pain, but it only lasted a couple of minutes at the most. I was in a fairly drowsy state for the rest of the day. I was trying to knit when I came home, which I'm sure looked funny.

I mentioned on Facebook yesterday that Casey and I might need to be making more decisions before IVF can go forward. The hope was that things would get rolling in early September. Keep in mind that the entire IVF process can take about eight weeks. It's not just one appointment and you're done -- there are weeks of meds, injections, labs, tests...and that's all before you even do the embryo transfer thing. It's pretty complicated, but I was finally letting go of my anxiety and I was ready to go.

There is now still a possibility that I would have to have more surgery. For now I'm not going into detail. No need to do that until I know for sure if it is even necessary. I spent a lot of the weekend being upset about it, because I was 100% certain that I was headed toward another surgery -- and yes, this one would be more complicated than just an in-office procedure. But I feel slightly more hopeful today after talking with a nurse at the IVF clinic. Maybe it won't happen. I'm trying to put it out of my mind as much as possible.

But moments like this are what help restore the calm...

Someday

Casey shared this quote with me today. It's from a book called Surprised By Hope and the author is N. T. Wright.

Heaven and earth, it seems, are not after all poles apart, needing to be separated forever when all the children of heaven have been rescued from this wicked earth. They are different, radically different, but they are made for each other in the same way as male and female. And when they finally come together, that will be cause for rejoicing in the same way that a wedding is: a creational sign that God’s project is going forward; that opposite poles within creation are made for union, not competition; that love and not hate have the last word in the universe; that fruitfulness and not sterility is God’s will for creation.

Someday, things will be as they should. Someday, all of these struggles and heartaches will be redeemed. There are days when I long more for that 'someday' and days when I feel that God gives us glimpses of heaven right where we are.