Keeping Secrets and How To Be a 2nd Time Momma

Last time we had IVF, we involved everyone we love. It was new territory, we were nervous and we needed financial assistance and moral support. When we learned that it was a possibility that we could conceive again, I was really excited to potentially be able to surprise people with the fact that I was pregnant this time.  We decided not to tell.

Now, if you read my other blog you know I have a hard time keeping things to myself, so I decided that I could tell a few friends who live here on the East Coast, and my best friend who lives in China right now. Our families will still be totally surprised if it happens, and I just can't wait for that moment! It seems silly, but it will be like a dream come true. I also broke down and told my baby brother because he is having a hard time in life right now, and I wanted to give him something to think about (aka, a new niece or nephew) that would cheer him up and give him some hope. He is, however, sworn to secrecy. :)

I always wanted more than a couple kids, so when this trial became the one that I would face, I was forced to mentally and emotionally tear down that hope and content myself with simply being able to experience pregnancy and birth and motherhood, even once. It has been the most joyful opportunity of my life. The chance to bear and birth and raise a tiny person is indescribable and unparalleled in the human journey.

But now that I have demolished my earlier dream of lots of littles, I find myself a bit too content. The sweet, slow days with my toddler, reading books and taking walks and exploring and loving, one-on-one. They'll be gone when a new tiny enters our lives. The time I have with him is so, so brief. How can I give it away? How do second-time mommas cope with taking half their heart back from this baby who has so completely overtaken their lives, and give it to another little baby?

"Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet I will not forget thee." -Isaiah 49:15

My only answer is that God has asked me to do this. I might not love the timing- we were planning on waiting until at least the fall when E turned 2 -but it is His timing.

"I can do all things through Christ, which strengtheneth me" -Phillippians 4:13

Why Are We Here? Or, The Family Building Act

The day after I asked Garrett what on earth we thought we were doing moving across the country with a tiny boy who would miss all the special family events and trips to Grandma's house, incurring debt through our move that was not paid for by the new job, just to come to the East Coast to drown in trees and humidity and loneliness, we made a discovery.

We were perusing our new health insurance benefits when we found this:

Other Covered Services:

• Infertility treatment - Diagnosis & treatment of 

underlying medical condition covered with no lifetime 

maximum. Other infertility treatment limited to $20,000 

lifetime maximum. Artificial insemination and ovulation 

induction limited to 6 attempts per lifetime. Advanced 

Reproductive Technology limited to 3 attempts for 

lifetime. 

As I did more research I learned that New Jersey had recently passed The Family Building Act, which requires plans who insure more than 50 people to offer plans that provide coverage for fertility treatment. 

Suddenly, I knew why we were here. 

The Background

We got married when we were 21. Yes, it is young. We hadn't traveled the world, earned our college degrees, or even tried sushi. (wha!?) But we'd known each other since we were 16, been in love since we were 17, and what's the point messing around when you've found the love of your life? We were both raised to understand how important strong marriages and families are to the world, and we were eager to start our own. To be a wife and momma was all I had ever really wanted.

We got The News when we were 23.  After a long year, plus some, of two-week waits, disappointment, confusion, blame and guilt. We would probably never be able to conceive children on our own.

(If you want to read more about this part of our journey, you can read my old blog here. Keep in mind, it's an OLD blog, they've changed blogger since I started it, and I was using a dinosaur of a computer. Don't judge. The beginning of the blog in April 2009 is the beginning of the journey, starting with the year of TTC)

To sum up, we waited another year and a half  to pursue any treatments. We were too young, too poor, and too still-in-our-undergrads to think about it just then. We made some "maybe instead" plans and didn't do any of them. I was depressed. I cried. My husband was a little bewildered and not nearly as emotional as I wanted him to be at the time. I cried a lot. I talked to everyone I could think of, read some books, questioned my understanding of God's love for me, got angry, buried it in books and movies, gained 15 pounds, and forgot to live in the moment as I floundered to keep my head above the vicious water that is infertility.

In May of 2011, God spoke to me in a peaceful moment that it was time to look into fertility treatments. We were on our way to grad school that fall, and I searched for treatment centers in our new area. I found a little practice that offered an incredibly low cost and minimal stimulation IVF cycle, and after months of preparation which included regulating my thyroid hormone, a pixie haircut, a loan from the parents and one from the University, we were finally OK-ed for a cycle in February 2012. The cycle was stressful in every possible way. I won't go into it here. We were dismayed to only retrieve one egg cell, and relieved when that egg fertilized and grew beautifully, and elated when a few weeks later, we discovered we were pregnant! It was truly a miraculous time in my life, so filled with doubt but overwhelmed by faith and miracles and prayers and love. In November of that year I gave birth, two weeks overdue and via unplanned c-section, to our amazing, sweet, perfect little boy. I guess he just had to get one more two-week wait out of me before I finally got to snuggle him in my arms.

That sweet little man turned 1 a few months ago. When he was 9 months old, we had just moved to New Jersey and being here, away from everyone we love, with his cousins back in Utah, I couldn't help thinking that my mom was pregnant with my younger brother when I was that age, and how we may never be able to give him any siblings at all, and he would just always be ALONE. Many of those crushing, depressing sadnesses that were so familiar from the years before came bubbling to the surface. I wondered why we had left our families behind and moved across the country at a time when loneliness was exactly what I didn't need. Why were we here?

I asked my husband that question just as the blackness was about to swallow me up again.  The next day we found something miraculous.