Last night, Giuliana & Bill's baby boy arrived!!! So excited for them - their baby dreams have FINALLY come true. Can't imagine how they must be feeling. And lucky little Edward gets to share a birthday with our best man!! ;)
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Tonight we celebrated our anniversary with a segway tour around downtown Columbus! The weather forecast for today didn't look great - but the rain held out for us. I was a little nervous about maneuvering the Segway, but then I got the hang of it. It was such a beautiful night and fun to learn more about our new hometown together. We were the only ones, so it ended up being a private tour just for us. Highly recommend it for our Ohio friends, or anyone else when they come to visit. This past year wasn't exactly lucky number seven for us, but we will keep on keeping on with our heads up. I love you, Joseph William! And thanks to everyone for all of the anniversary well wishes!! :)
Welcome to Baby Corbin who arrived this morning!! He was so excited to meet his parents and other family members that he decided to arrive 3.5 weeks early. :) Congrats to the Hinson & Turner families in their newest addition!
In honor of Corbin's birthday, here is a photo of a little magnet and froggy earbuds that his Aunt Jessica gave us last weekend. I got a voicemail from McKenzie today with my test results. She said, "They came back negative, which is good!" Uh... no, that is not good. At this point getting an answer would be nice. Just sayin...
We went down to our alma mater on Saturday to meet up with a bunch of good friends. We had so much fun - great to be catching up in Athens. My friend found something special written on one of the bathroom walls at one of the bars that made us smile. I am pretty amazeballs!! ;) OU... Oh Yeah!!
Lucas, Jojo, Henry, & Keenan :) Well, we couldn't take it anymore - so we ended up kidnapping a few boys to call our own. Just kidding - of course! :) We invited 4 of our nephews over for a day of fun today. I've been referring to it as "Nephew Fun Day!" I picked them up on last night and we have been having non-stop fun ever since. Keenan (9), Henry (8), Lucas (7), and Josiah (5) are all sound asleep as I type.
We jammed in about as much fun as we possibly could today - one last hurrah before they all go back to school next week. We started off at Magic Mountain where they played miniature golf, drove/rode in go-karts, played laser tag, and played lots of arcade games. From there we headed over to Skyzone and signed the boys up for the 2:30pm jump time. Since we had an hour to kill, we went back home and had a nice lunch on our back patio. The boys loved jumping on the trampolines at Skyzone. I was wondering whether we should've gotten them the 1 hour ticket instead of the 30 minute jump ticket. But they jumped their hearts off in their 30 minute window and I don't know if they could've survived a full hour of it. They were SO sweaty when we left. ;) After that we headed back home for a quick change and headed to the Orange Township Pool for a few hours. Our brother-in-law joined us with two of our other nephews - Wendel (3) and Oliver (1). The pool wasn't crowded at all - so it was perfect. The big boys all had a great time - going down the slides and playing with Wendel in the water. We headed back to the house and they took a little break and watched some TV for a little bit. For dinner we had pizza - then my sister and I took the 6 boys to the park in our neighborhood. I was amazed at how much energy they still seemed to have. ;) When we got back my husband and my brother-in-law made milkshakes for all of us - delicious! We wound down our day o' fun by watching the movie "The Lorax." I was dozing off a little bit towards the end - but it seemed like a cute movie. I think we definitely wore them out today! The only people missing today were our 2 other nephews and niece. As I mentioned earlier this week, Jack (14) & Chloe (12) were recently traveling to Japan. They just got home very late last night- so that's why they weren't part of the day o' fun. And little Nicholas (7 months) is a little young for the activities we did today and lives in NC. We definitely look forward to someday getting to be parents - but until then we will just enjoy being able to be the best uncle and aunt that we can be. We are lucky to have these 9 kids in our lives and we love them very much! In closing, I'd like to wish Giuliana Rancic a very happy birthday! She turned 37 today and her new baby boy should be here really soon. So excited for her and Bill. :) Oh, and I did go in for my blood test on Wednesday morning, so I'll let you all know when the test results are back in. Good night!! Just wanted to check in and let everyone know that we're okay. :) Thanks for all your thoughts, prayers, and texts of support. You have no idea how much they meant to us.
The first night is always the hardest as you can probably imagine - dealing with the bad news that always seems to be so shocking each time. I called my sister on the way home from work that day and tried to squeak out a few words in-between the tears while she did a good job of coming up with things to say to me. When I got home, I went up to bed around 7:30pm. I ended up texting my dad the bad news - because I knew I would cry if I called him. But it didn't really matter because I ended up crying as I sent the text anyway. And then I cried more when he texted back and then again when he called me on his way home. I'm sure it's tough on him as a dad, wishing he could just fix it and make everything better. When my husband came home from work, we had a good cry together - listening to that song that I posted that night to the blog. He hasn't really broken down too many times - so I think it was a good release for him. So Thursday night was pretty horrible to say the least. When I woke up on Friday for work, I felt like my eyelids looked kinda puffy. But I listened to some upbeat songs on the way into work and made it to work tear-free. It was a nice day, so I took a break to walk with a friend outside and actually managed to have a pretty good day. My dad was in-town that night, so I had a nice steak dinner (that my hubby cooked on the grill) with my two favorite guys - and even had a friend stop by for a glass of wine or two! I did have a cute little conversation with my mom on Friday night over the phone. She was asking if we were okay and I said that we were. She asked a couple times to be sure and I told her that "We're okay, Mom." Then I asked if she was okay and she said, "No - I'm not okay!" And then she said she was sorry. So I asked why she was sorry and she said she was sorry that she didn't make me a perfect daughter. She said that I'm "almost perfect." ;) Some folks might take this the wrong way, but I knew what my mom was trying to say. I know that she's really struggling with the fact that Dr. Williams hasn't been able to find a reason for our infertility. At the end of the conversation she said she was worried about me getting sick. I assured her that I was okay that I wasn't going to get sick or go crazy over this. I'm one tough cookie - just like my mama! On Saturday, Elphie took me out to lunch and then we ran some errands together - just nice to hang out with her. That day I also got all of my scrapbooking supplies out and did a little scrapbooking. And at night we ended up going over to our buddy Will's house for dinner - lots of good times with great friends! Sunday we went to our nephews' baseball games in the afternoon and then cooked dinner for my sister and her family that were coming back from their beach vacation that night. Like in past treatment cycles, once we were able to get past the initial shock of the disappointment on that first night - we proved again to be quite good at being able to pick up the pieces and move on. I'm kinda getting teary-eyed as I blog about Thursday night - but really haven't had any break-downs since then. It's not that I'm not thinking about it - because I do think about it all the time. And I promise I'm not holding back - I got A LOT of tears out last Thursday - trust me. :) I'm not really one to cry a lot to begin with - so I think that's part of it. I haven't given up on us becoming parents by any means - but I do feel like I've given up on the thought of me getting pregnant. Which is kind of sad when you think about it. Growing up I just always that one day I would get married and have babies. I just kinda assumed that being the healthy female that I am, that I would be able to get pregnant. Throughout this past treatment cycle, I kept hoping and praying that it would work out because part of me felt like it was my last chance. I know that anything can happen - so maybe I shouldn't count myself out completely. But at this point, I think I need to kinda let go of the getting pregnant idea and focus more on other options that may allow us to be parents. A wise friend told me that at the end of the day, being a mother isn't really about the 9 months of carrying the baby - it's everything that you do after that which makes someone a mom. So now what? Well, I'm still accepting your WWYD input - thanks again to those that have shared their thoughts with us. I called Dr. Williams' nurses last Friday and left them a voicemail with the bad news and asked them to send me the lab order for the "allergic to sperm" blood test. It's a condition that a family friend and my mom mentioned to me back in June. Turns out that my doctor's office used to have it as part of the normal blood work - but nobody ever tested positive for it, so they stopped requiring the test. Even though this test wouldn't explain why the fertility treatments haven't worked - it would at least give us a reason as to why we haven't been able to get pregnant on our own. So tomorrow morning, I'm going to head back into my local LabCorp and have the anti-spermatozoa antibodies blood test done. I'll have to break the bad news to my LabCorp friend gently. ;) McKenzie said that it takes a week or two for the results to come back. Our plan is to wait until Nancy/McKenzie call with the results and then maybe at that time we'll set-up our follow-up meeting with Dr. Williams. In terms of fertility treatments, I think we're definitely leaning towards possibly doing a round of in-vitro and having my sister get the embryos transferred into her. I just don't know that I could bare the thought of putting more embryos in me and having more bad news. I kinda feel like putting any embryos in me is like wasting them! It will be interesting to see what Dr. Williams recommends. We are also going to look into the adoption process a little bit more. I have some friends that are familiar with the world of adoption - so I plan to reach out to them to get their input on maybe some good books for us to read and the best way to get the adoption ball rolling. In terms of second opinions, we are still thinking about that one. I would be open to meeting with a doctor to see what types of tests/treatments they would recommend. Based on their response, maybe it would give us a new perspective or give us validation regarding what we've already done. What I'm not interested in doing is starting all over with a new doctor by repeating any tests or treatments with them that we've already done with Dr Williams. As you can see, we're thinking about things from all different angles. At this point, we figure it's in our best interest to really explore all options! Tonight I'd like to shout-out a very Happy Anniversary to the Robbins! :) And safe travels home to our niece and nephew that are having a blast in Japan. In closing, here are a few lyrics from the song "Don't Give Up Hope" by Third Day that "Hi Puppy" put on my latest CD. Don't give up faith Don't give up hope There's always something better Waiting around the corner Don't give up now Please, don't let go What can seem like the ending Could just be the beginning Well, I was REALLY hoping that I wasn't going to have to share bad news on this blog this week. But here I go again... the hopes/dreams of this cycle came crashing down around 1:45pm this afternoon at work. It was that 3rd hurdle - like it always has been. I had to lead my weekly project status meeting at 2pm - so I had to keep it together. Elphie offered to go for a walk when I told her our bad news, but I told her that going for a walk would probably make it harder to stay composed. I was debating about whether to tell my husband then or just waiting until I got home. But he ended up texting me to check in - so I just told him via text. Texting him made me a little teary-eyed, but I stayed strong and make it through the rest of my workday. When I got in my car, that's when the tears started flowing. I didn't expect them to come on so strongly - when I got stopped at a light still relatively close to my office, I put my sunglasses on to try to hide it. The way we're feeling tonight is just a mixture of emotions - sadness, frustration, confusion, a little anger, disappointment, & helplessness. I know we have to be patient and keep the faith - but I'm feeling a little low on both right now. I'm sure we will dig deep and find some more though. But for now, we're going to have to let this one soak in and then figure out where we go from here. Thanks again for all of your support and prayers - we wouldn't be able to get through the tough times without each other or such an amazing support group full of our family and friends. Sorry that we're dragging you on our emotional roller coaster ride with us. In closing, I will leave you with this song - which pretty accurately describes how we're feeling tonight. Cleared 6 hurdles this morning before work... still no whammies!!! :)
Flowers from the Knott Bunnies Up until today, I haven't really been that afraid to go to the bathroom. Even this morning, I wasn't scared. But as the day went on - each time made me a little more nervous and anxious. This may be TMI for some of you so feel free to skip to the next paragraph... but there's 3 hurdles to cross with every trip to the bathroom. First, of course it's just checking the underwear (froggy panties, of course) to see if there's any evidence. This 2nd hurdle is probably just me being crazy - but I try to check in the toilet to see if there's any evidence. Then the last hurdle of course involves the toilet paper which is usually where the bad news shows up loud and clear.
There have been quite a few times today where I felt like I definitely must have started - but all day there was nothing. I worked from home, but had a ton of meetings and a lot to do - so the day actually flew by. A couple times when I went to the bathroom I was thinking, "I have a meeting in 2 minutes - so even if it's bad - I don't have time to be sad right now." When I sat down to watch TV after I logged off of work today, I felt some weird cramping. I'm hoping they are not indicative of any whammies to come. The amazing news is that as of just a few minutes ago (9:35pm EST) - still no whammies!! I'll be in the office on tomorrow and Friday. I know I'll be able to keep it together if anything does show up - but hope that I don't have to be put through that test. We went to the grocery store tonight for our big 20% off shopping spree and decided to pick up a box of pregnancy tests. (BTW - I think it's so ironic that they keep the pregnancy tests in the same aisle as the condoms and tampons.) It's been years since we've had any pregnancy tests in the house - so we thought that maybe buying them tonight will jinx us in a good way. Here's hoping that I get to open up that box on Saturday! Thanks again to everyone for thinking of us. I've appreciated all of the "No whammies?" or "No whammies!" messages from you. ;) Stay tuned... would love to have some good news to share in 3 days!! |