6/17/10 IVF in our future? Video Blog

Intro via Video Blog

OK, so I know many many months have gone by and I haven't done a good job at all of keeping up with my blog but I'm jumping back in now and hoping to do better. Plus I'm going to combine video blogs in which should help keep me better on track...

The start of the long infertility haul

After being married for a year my husband and I decided we were ready for a child and to start trying to conceive. Looking back that seems like a life time ago. I wasn't quite 21 and was young and naive. Month after month would pass and I wouldn't be pregnant. After a year, I was discouraged and frustrated yet also felt I couldn't talk to anyone about it. I was 22 and having problems getting pregnant. My doctor didn't even acknowledge my concerns much at all. He assumed like everyone else that it would just happen. He ordered a few blood tests and a semen analysis but was satisfied with the results. I was young and had plenty of time. So I struggled with infertility alone for another year. I didn't talk about it and internalized all my fears, concerns and frustration. This caused me to be very unhappy about pretty much everything. I found myself unhappy in my marriage and regretting getting married so young. I started going out with my best friend to bars and wanted to be home as little as possible. It was a rough time in my life and I simply denied the effect my infertility problems were having on my marriage. I became tired of the party life after a few months and found myself longing to become a parent still. I started talking about it more to those I was close with. I also worked on my marriage and becoming whole again. Things were back on track but I was still young in most people's eyes. We started looking into IVF online and adoption. The more we thought about it, the more adoption sounded like the path for us. We started the process in January of 2007. I was 23 soon to be 24 so I was concerned about age requirements but luckily we met those for domestic adoption. Adoption in itself is such a long and tiring journey that I'll share that story another day.

Introduction

I've never had a blog page before but decided it would be something good to do for the new year. I want to share my husband and my's journey to creating our family. It has been long and rough and still is a struggle. I figure I'd spend the first few days telling a bit about my past and what led us to here.

My name is Adrienne and I live in Michigan.

I grew up the youngest of 8 kids. My family was blended with both my parents bringing kids into the relationship. My dad had 5 girls with his first wife and my mom had a girl and a boy with her first husband. They married and had me. Even though I had so many siblings, they were quite a bit older (ranging 8 years older on up to 18) so many times I felt alone and like an only child. I was an aunt at the age of 6 so I was around kids from a young age and babysitting many as a teenager. I always knew I wanted kids and when someone asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, my first reaction was to say a mother. Of course growing up nowadays it's not the most accepted answer so I said other "career" options but what I really wanted was to find a good guy in high school, date him, marry him and have kids young. My parents were older, my mom being 35 and my dad 39 when I was born so I vowed to have kids young and be done having them at 30.

Like many people, I've had an intuition about certain things. Like one of my co workers became pregnant with her third child, having 2 boys already and as soon as I found out, I knew it would be a girl. Another coworker who had struggled with infertility and had 1 boy got pregnant with twins. Again right away I got a feeling. I just felt like something wasn't right and it would end sadly. Unfortunately, it did and the twins were born premature and passed soon after. I don't know when I'll get that intuition about something; it just seems to happen. In high school, I dreamed about the day I'd marry and have kids yet that nagging intuition was at it even then. I always had regular cycles and never had a reason to think I wouldn't be able to conceive yet I just had that feeling that I wouldn't be able to. I even came to the conclusion that no matter what, I wanted to adopt regardless of biological children. I wanted to adopt at least once. Being young and having no reason to believe I couldn't have kids, I brushed off the intuition of not getting pregnant.

My dream of marrying my high school sweetheart and having kids young also didn't work out quite that way. I did however meet my husband only 6 months after graduating. We were engaged the next year and married a year later. I turned 20 and then 2 weeks later married my husband. Looking back, I was very young and naive but even so I married a wonderful guy who was 4-1/2 years my senior and very grown up for his age. I grew up to over time and my ideals began to change as I did.

I'll wrap things up here and continue more tomorrow. I just wanted to introduce myself and give some history.