Hello everyone! I'm assuming that you've found your way here from my other little blog,
The Simple Life. If you have, hello friends! And if you have randomly stumbled across this, please go check out
The Simple Life. I am all about home stuff and recipes and money saving and movie, tv and book reviews, hacks, all sorts of good stuff.
Let me just quit chit-chatting and get the the "meat and potatoes" of this post.
I'm Missy. Hello! I'm a 25 year old housewife living in south central Kentucky. And I'm so sad to say that all that bouncy curly hair has all been chopped off thanks to damage. Oh well. Hair grows back ;)
I met my husband, Aaron, in January of 2008 and married in him December of 2009. My Dad passed away in November of 2007 from a 6 month battle with lung cancer. I'd been in a really one sided relationship during that time, and because of that I decided I was
done dating for a good long while. I was going to focus on family and schooling and some other things and just forget guys. A mutual acquaintance introduced us over the old relic called
MySpace. We talked for about a month and finally he asked to meet me. We went on a double date with out mutual friends and from that night on, there was never anything else in this world but us. I tell him that he melted my icy heart on contact. Our wedding was a Christmas wonderland, designed to be exactly what we wanted. It wasn't a typical cookie cutter wedding, and to this day people still talk about it. It was the greatest day of my life.
By 2013 we had gotten to a point in our marriage where I could afford to stop working, as it was costing me more money to work than I was bringing home. We had to seriously tighten our belts for the first few months, and there was some talk about me going back to work, but I've always felt that my heart was in my home. My husband liked coming home to a spotless house and a hot meal every night after work. I liked doing it. So the choice was made for me to be a stay at home wife full time. I did go to and graduate college, in case you were wondering. I have an associate's degree in Commercial Digital Photography, and I will occasionally do family portraits and weddings and the like, but in this day and age when everyone had a camera on their phone, the studio photographer is obsolete. When I started the
Simple Life blog I wanted to share my experiences at corner-cutting and making a household run on one income. It absolutely can be done. You can do it, if you want it badly enough.
I am a very artistic person. My father in law calls me "thoroughly right-brained." I live for creating and entertaining. The photograph to the left is a shot of me performing on-stage in a play called
Seeing Stars in Dixie. It was one of my favorites. I played a clumsy former beauty queen turned weather girl named Jo Beth. Poor Jo Beth was always walking into disasters. She had some hilarious lines and I got to wear fun costumes. I also love to write. From the time I was a little girl I've written stories. I've decided I want to try my hand at writing a novel, and because I want to do it well, it occupies most, if not all, of my free time. I love movies and books, and when I'm not writing, I'm either watching a good movie or elbow deep in a book. I love music too. I once was a classically trained pianist, but over time I've lost a lot of the knowledge of classical music. Now I play mainly "church" music. My husband and I have that in common. He is a 3rd generation Southern Gospel singer, and he leads singing at our little country church. His voice is like buttah. ;)
One of the biggest things in our life is our faith. We are - if you want to be specific - old fashioned United Baptists. We believe in a salvation experience. We believe in conviction, and repentance. Our church practices "feetwashing," in a service that we hold once a year. We do not believe in accepting Christ, or talking to the preacher or shaking his hand or reading a pre-written prayer. We believe in the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We believe that water baptism is simply an outward showing of your obedience to God's law, that it is not what "saves." I was saved at the age of 12 during a revival meeting on a Tuesday night in October. Since then I've trusted the Lord, prayed to him, and let him guide me in my path. I know the Lord in my soul, and he knows me. And I am thankful for that every day. If that isn't your thing, that's fine. I'm not trying to make you believe it. I'm just telling you what I believe. You believe something else, that's fine. I'm not going to condemn you for it. Don't condemn me for what I believe and practice.
When we married, we knew we wanted a family some day. But right away wasn't smart for us. My husband was a bank teller making very little and I worked part time in a bridal shop while still finishing up my degree. So we went on birth control.
In December of 2012, my husband's older sister gave birth to her second child, a sweet little boy that to this day you can't help but spoil silly. At the hospital that night, waiting on baby boy's arrival, my Aaron and I made a choice. "Let's do it." He said to me, holding my hand while standing in the hallway surrounded by our large family. "Let's throw away the birth control and let's have us a baby." So we did. We went home that night, and I threw away my last packet of birth control pills.
And that's where we were so naive.
Rewinding a bit. Fertility problems, reproductive
issues run in my family. My mother was an exceptionally tough case. She'd been diagnosed with a very very rare and unusual blood disease, in addition to having endometriosis. She also only had 3 eggs. 3. My existence is a miracle. But it took her and my father 10 years to finally conceive me. It took my aunt 8 years. One of my cousins waited 13 years for her only child. Another cousin had to deal with cervical cancer and miscarriages before finally having her family. It was there, that history, staring at me. And I was dumb enough to think that "that won't happen to us."
But it did.
About 8 months later, my period still hadn't gotten back on track from being on birth control. In fact, it had disappeared completely. So I made an appointment with an OBGYN. She was new in town, but she was the only one accepting patients at the time. And from what I was hearing from my nurse friends (most of my girlfriends from school are labor and delivery nurses) she was wonderful.
I went in, she gave me a thorough exam, talked to me, and finally lowered a diagnosis.
PCOS. PolyCystic Ovarian Syndrome. Ugh. Any woman wanting to have a child knows that without serious medical intervention PCOS is a death sentence to your desired motherhood. I was crushed. But she followed that up by saying that all things considered it was very mild, in fact I only had 3 cysts per ovary. What had tipped her off was other side effects, like sudden weight gain, which wasn't nearly as much as other people have gained, but it still shot up there quickly, too quickly, and a host of other things that are, frankly, too embarrassing for me to mention. She said at that point she wouldn't say that the PCOS was stopping me from getting pregnant, because my ovaries were functioning normally from what she could tell - and this was after a month and a half of non-stop tests. All she could say was that I had
unexplained infertility.
I have never felt such despair in my life. Losing my Dad to cancer at 18 hurt, and still hurts, but I can't even describe how helpless I felt leaving the doctors office that day. I felt like I wasn't even a woman. Here I am, built by God to grow tiny humans, and my body can't do it. I felt like a failure, and honestly I was ashamed of myself. I felt guilty that my husband, who wanted (and wants) children so badly, had wasted his chance on me. A barren woman.
We kept trying, but our hearts simply weren't in it. We were deflated, like a balloon that's met the sharp tip of a pin.
In early 2015, my husband became very interested in the foster care program. Let me pre-face this by saying that that is a wonderful, worth while program that is great...
if you can do it.
After 9 weeks of classes, I knew that I could not finish out the remaining 2 classes. I could not become a foster parent. There are a ton of reasons why it wouldn't have worked out for us. Our home is older, and has lots of plumbing problems, and for that reason alone I felt that we probably wouldn't pass the home inspection. (I won't go into the other reasons why I felt like it wasn't right, and if you have anything nasty to say about it, perhaps you want to call me selfish, keep it to yourself. I don't tell you what's wrong with your life, don't tell me about mine.) In the beginning I said alright to going because my husband was so excited about it. I began to pray "Lord, if this is your will, change my heart. If this is what is right for us, change my desire, change my heart, and allow me to dive in, feet first." And over 9 weeks, the overwhelming feeling of "this isn't right for us," kept growing. It was a hard choice, to finally tell Aaron that I didn't think it was something I could do. It lead to a huge blowup between us, but after a little bit, things cooled down and we decided to start trying again, full force.
And the months kept ticking by. Sometimes I would have a normal period, sometimes I wouldn't. But we kept trying, and praying.
It was Easter Sunday, 2015. We gathered at my husband's oldest sisters house after church for our annual Easter meal. This year we were blessed to have my Mother and my husband's 92 year old grandmother with us. Never was a more Godly lady on this earth than "Mamaw." Her parents were killed in train accident when she was a small girl, she married very young and had 5 wonderful children and raised them all in church. If Mamaw says she's praying for you, she means it. Well, my sister-in-law called us all in to the dining room to eat, but Mamaw said she wanted to talk with me and Aaron first. So we gathered around her chair, and listened. She told us that she'd been praying for us to have a baby. That some nights she prayed all night long. And I'll never forget the peace that swept over me when she took my hand and said "The Lord told me to tell you to hold onto it, and keep praying for it." She said that in her heart she believed it wouldn't be too much longer, if we kept working towards it. She told us to get as close together as we could, to pray for it, to work for it, and she believed it would happen. By the end of that conversation I was a sobbing mess, Aaron was a sobbing mess, Mamaw was a sobbing mess, my mother and Aaron's sister who'd been listening from the doorway were a sobbing mess. I left that dinner feeling more encouraged than ever, feeling that all my prayers weren't in vain.
Fast forward to July 2015. One night, while Aaron and I were out on one of those rare married people dates, I suddenly realize that my period, which had been perfectly on track for months, was late. Combine that with house sick I'd been lately - even that night I could barely eat, the sight of food made me so sick - I just
knew I was pregnant. We stopped at a drug store on the way home and I bought a pregnancy test. As soon as we got home, I took it.
And it was
positive. At first glance, immediately after taking it, it looked negative, so I sat it down on the counter and walked away. When I went back in the room a few minutes later it was for sure positive. We were so excited.
We talked for hours about baby names, plans for the baby's room, my plan to stay frugal throughout the pregnancy and early years, and we were even discussing how to surprise our families with the news, especially since everyone was wanting us to have a child so badly.
The next morning I decided I wanted to take another test. It was a Saturday morning and Aaron had to work until noon that day, so I wanted to take it before he left for work. I was up at 5 am. I couldn't sleep. I was so anxious to see two more lines.
It was
negative. Three more tests were negative. You want to talk about the highest high to the lowest low? We experienced that all within a matter of hours. Gone were those cute baby names we chose. Gone was the idea of a cute, frugal DIY nursery. Gone was the "oh by the way, we're pregnant" plan to tell the family. Gone was my hope. We had just experience the ultra-rare, heart breaking, trick on you playing FALSE POSITIVE.
So, I made another doctors appointment. It had been a few years since I'd seen my OBGYN and so when I called, I told the receptionist everything and told her I needed some infertility counseling.
My Mom is always so great to come with me to these types of things. After my Dad passed away I started developing a nasty anxiety and depression problem that I just can't shake. She knows that hospital/doctor/lots of people situations make me nervy, and since Aaron couldn't take off work to go with me, she came along. Turns out it was a good thing. I saw three friends, two pregnant, one with her newborn, in the waiting room, and shamefully I tried to hide from them. I don't know how people who don't have fertility problems look at people that do. I don't want to be judged. I don't want people looking at me funny, so in my real, normal, non-internet life I don't tell people about our problems. Just family and a few close close friends. I don't ever talk about it. It's personal. It's difficult. It's shameful to me, sometimes. I said it before, being infertile makes me feel like less of a woman, and it's hard feeling like a failure every time you see your friends with their new babies or their proudly swollen bellies.
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When my doctor came in, my heart sank. She was pregnant. I tried to just throw that fact to the back of my mind and focus on myself getting pregnant. She explained that since we were 3 years into trying with no luck, we needed to take some serious action. She sent me downstairs for blood work and ultrasounds and then called me back in for another sit down. She had been afraid that perhaps one of my ovarian cysts had grown in size, or that perhaps my fallopian tubes were blocked for some reason or another. According to the ultrasound, all that was good. She could see from the blood work that my insulin levels were too high. Which is typical for women with PCOS. When she said that, my diabetic mother sat straight up and asked "does that mean she's diabetic?" My doctor assured us that no, I wasn't a diabetic. However with this condition, it put me at a higher risk for diabetes in the future (even higher than my chances of inheriting it) and for gestational diabetes while pregnant. So, she put me on 1500mg of the magical drug that all us PCOS sufferers take "Metformin." Oh my my my the Metformin. I loved this meme of Oprah. Cause, yep, it's almost just like that apparently. "Have PCOS? Here's some Metformin." According to my doctor it should help with the insulin problem, as well as maybe help me lose a little weight. Some girls I've talked to said they didn't lose a pound. Oh well. Frankly I don't care. It made sense when she told me, because since my Mom has been a diabetic I've become hyper aware of blood sugar. I know when mine is high or low. It made sense. Since I've been on it, when the side effects weren't sequestering me to the bathroom or keeping me locked in stillness in my bed, I've felt
good for the first time in
years. Anyway, my doctor also put me on a 5 day round of Provera to start my period and then once that's over I have a round of magical Clomid to take. My sweet Aaron has heard so many success stories about people on Clomid that I was afraid if I didn't come home with some he might send me back! That's a joke people. But really, we've heard a lot of personal success stories from friends and neighbors about their time on Clomid, so we are hoping to add ourselves to that list. As of this writing I'm still taking my round of Provera, waiting on my little visitor to come hang out with me for a while. Can't say I'm looking forward to that at all.
So now you are all caught up. I've not even wanted to keep a diary of this whole experience because it's so hard for me to even wrap my head around. But you know what? I believe in miracles. I believe in the power of prayer. I wish on stars, wishbones, 11:11, birthday candles, and eyelashes. I get down in my prayer spot and beg for strength to endure what we are going through, I beg for a child if it is His will, and I beg for the safety and health of all my friends and acquaintances that are expecting. In the beginning it was "Lord, please bless us with children." Then it turned to "Lord,please bless us with just a couple of children." Now our prayer is "Lord, if it is your will, we only ask for one child." I find myself reading a lot in the Bible about Sarah, who laughed when she heard that she would have a child. About Hannah, about Rachel. I look at my mother's face and know that for ten long years, she went through this very same thing. I look at my cousins and their healthy children. I see my brother and his wife, who were told they could never have children, with their two perfect babies. I think about Mamaw's words, and the peace I've felt in prayer, and I believe that my Impossible Dream of Being a Mama isn't too far away. Whether I get pregnant this cycle, or whether it takes a few more, I hold onto that feeling and I look all around me for the evidence of God's love for me. I see it everywhere. I see it in my marriage, I see how the Lord brought Aaron to me, and I know that God loves me, and that when it is HIS TIME he will bless us with what we have longed for for so long.
If you pray, would you please pray for us? I know the power of prayer, I am the very evidence of it. Thank you for taking the time to read my little story today and I hope you will come back and keep up to speed with our journey toward parenthood and follow along whenever we finally have a for real positive test.
"Delight thyself also in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart."
