One Huge Step Back

Today we took one huge step back in our journey to getting our baby. It all started at 4am when I was abruptly woke up by very sharp pains in my left back and my abdomen. I proceeded to walk around the house and got some water and curled up on the couch. By about 6:30 the pain became absolutely unbearable. I haven't felt something so painful since my ectopic and miscarriages. I woke Taylor up as tears were rolling down my cheeks, and he gave me a blessing. The blessing told us very specific instructions of what to do and at the end of the blessing it said after we did what we were told, I would be prompted to go a certain direction.

I walked on the treadmill for 15 minutes and then start massaging my abdomen and back. Taylor decided to try and get me some toast for breakfast even though I had no appetite at all. While Taylor was doing that, I started vomiting. This really scared me. That is when I realized it wasn't just some cramping or something super minor.

I broke down crying again. Not because I was in so much pain, but instead because I knew I needed to go to the hospital. I had a distinct feeling I needed to go. It wasn't just having to go to the hospital that was so heartbreaking, it was knowing that going to the hospital would financially delay our treatments. We have been planning to start treatments in August. It was so close. Only six weeks away we would be trying to bring our miracle to this earth. I could see that dream and goal slipping away right in front of me. However, Heavenly Father has taken care of us and if he needed me to go to the hospital, then I would go. He has never let us down. He has promised a way will be made and we know that will happen, so I called my mom and we made plans to go to the hospital.

We got checked in at the ER and all of the staff was really nice. I was worried about the IV because I was so dehydrated but the tech was able to get it in first try without a hassle. The doctor told me that it could be a lot of things so I would need to get a CT scan done. They needed to decide if it was appendix, gall bladder, kidney stones, or something else. They were able to give me some great pain meds that gave me some relief for a while and the CT scan was painless. The results soon came back that I had a kidney stone. Now it is just a waiting game. I get to wait and endure the experience until the stone decides to pass.

Tonight my dad and brother came over and they helped Taylor give me another blessing. We learned a lot from the blessing. I had previously had some similar pain attacks and they passed without much of a thought. They weren't as severe in pain level as this attack was. I was told in the blessing that those were also kidney stones. I was also told that one of the main reasons for this experience was a test. Taylor and I were being tested to see if we would follow our promptings even when we really didn't necessarily want to. We both had our breakdowns about having to go to the ER. It has been a rough day thinking about how our dreams just took a huge step backward and is slipping farther away when it was so close. We are not giving up though. We will keep going. A way will be provided and our miracle will come. We will do whatever Heavenly Father needs us to do and we know we will be blessed for doing so.

So even though we have this huge step back we are moving forward with faith. We are going to try to be discouraged the least amount possible and look at the positive sides of this experience. We look forward to our race that is coming up in two months and we look forward to all the great things to come. We don't know how long treatments will be postponed but it could be as late as next year. We are not giving up and we will get there someday.

Redefine Vs. Refine

When we went to the infertility awareness event, they had had breakout sessions that we were able to choose from. One of the sessions that we attended talked about things that change when you are facing infertility. That session made us think a lot about our situation.

When people hear the word “redefine”, it usually has a negative connotation to it. Usually it implies that the first plan didn’t work so it is on to plan B or plan C, no matter what the circumstance is. When someone is faced with something like infertility, are they really redefining things? Plan A was to start our family. That plan has not changed. Our plan is to still start a family. If you look at it more detailed though, our goal was to start a family without medical help. That has changed, but is it really a negative? Definitely not. We are grateful for the available medical help that we can access to help start our family. We did not have to redefine what we were doing, we just refined it. Infertility has helped us refine a lot of different things in our life, rather than redefine it.

One big thing that infertility has helped us to refine, and we have thought a lot about lately, is our definition of family. When you ask most people they will say their definition of family includes parents and children. They may also extend their definition to include grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. However, most people’s definition of a family includes children.

There was one couple in the session that said they were told at church that they were not a family because they didn’t have children. Even though many people view it that way, Taylor and I have never thought that. After our wedding our sealer was talking to us and he stated then that we were a new family that had just been formed. We agree with him. We have always thought of our marriage as a little family. We have never thought otherwise, even though some people have a different definition of family. So if we have always thought that, then how has our definition of family been refined?

When we were dating and as we started our marriage we would often talk about how many kids we wanted. We never had an exact number but we knew we wanted a large family. I always joked with Taylor and said 100. We wanted a large family though, with 5 or 6 being the minimum. As we look at it now in the present time, we still want a lot of kids. At the rate it is looking though, it’s looking like it will only be one or two. Looking at the future, we want as many as Heavenly Father will bless us with. That is one way our definition of family has been refined. Our views on our family and how our family will be has changed from the past, to the present, and looking to the future.

Not only has our definition of family been refined in terms of how our own family will look in terms of size, but it has been refined in terms of who is included. If you would have asked us before we were facing infertility, who was included in our family we would have said it was us, parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. However, if you ask us now, it would still be those people, but our definition has been refined to include a lot more people.

We have an infertility family. Through this journey we have met a lot more people in the situation and they have become a huge part of our support system and our family. We have ward members and friends that we also consider family. They are a huge support to us. We consider our nursery children family. They bring us so much joy and we look forward to the time we get to spend with them each week. Our definition of family has not been redefined, it has only been refined. We like our new refined definition better than our previous one. It has been made better.

This is just one small example of how our trials are for our own good. We have them to make us better people. They are making us better than what we were before. There are many other things that have been refined through our infertility journey, and we are grateful for it all. It is not always easy to see how you are being refined when going through trials but it gives so much hope when you are able to see small glimpses how things are changing for the better. We look forward to the day when a promise is fulfilled and are able to refine our definition of family once again, and we have a miracle child in our arms.