My computer is giving me some grief about loading up pictures to the blog and not letting me do what I want it to do. In the meanwhile, please feel free to check out our other blogs as well as our Facebook pages!
Liz:
http://granolaliz.wordpress.com/
http://granolaliz.blogspot.com/ (the original before the blog was moved)
https://www.facebook.com/macylee36
Shane:
https://www.facebook.com/zepp157
http://shanelivingston.blogspot.com/
Monday, March 24, 2014
Sunday, March 23, 2014
The road that led us to adoption
Infertility.
Unexpected, unexplained, secondary infertility - for the last 7 years.
Our little family lives in Utah. There's LOTS of kids in Utah. Growing up, I was not aware of any indicators that would suggest I'd have trouble making babies. I was completely unaware of the world of infertility. Like most people, I assumed the simplest solution to not being able to have kids is to just adopt - duh. How hard could that be?
Pretty darn hard. It's not just the adoption. It's the path you end up on before you get to that point. We have been on this road of infertility for 7 years.
After being married for 9 months, my husband and I caught the "baby fever" that came from being surrounded by so many new babies in the young neighborhood we lived in. We didn't take things too seriously at first. We figured, if we got pregnant - cool! If not, no worries - I still had some school to finish before getting my bachelor's. All it took was 3 months and BAM! Baby was on the way. He was so eager to get here, he even came three weeks early!
Then when he was about 10 months old, I started to feel the baby fever again. My husband said we should wait another month or two before trying again. Once we did, I figured it would take at least three months, maybe even six since that is how long it took some of our friends.
Three months came and went and I put a tiny guard up. I was just a little concerned. Then six months came. Still nothing. I mentioned this to my doctor and he sounded a bit more concerned . He felt I shouldn't be having any trouble. Not too long after that, I began to have troublesome cysts. I was diagnosed with a complex ovarian cyst that would require surgery to remove. The doctors told me that was most likely the cause of my inability to conceive and that I should be able to get pregnant pretty quickly after the surgery.
Well, that didn't happen.
Month after month after month passed. I dealt with cysts for awhile, thinking that if I could get them under control then I would be able to get pregnant. I had my hormones tested frequently and was told the levels were perfectly normal. I had a normal cycle each month. I began taking herbs to make me more fertile. I tested my temperature and other symptoms EVERY SINGLE DAY. I knew exactly what phase of my cycle I was in, which hormones dominated, whether they were raising or dropping, and what PMS symptoms were normal for me. I became obsessed with symptoms. Turns out every single pregnancy symptom is also a PMS symptom.
After living life literally two weeks at a time for 5 years, I decided I couldn't take it anymore. We had spent a lot of time moving, which made it hard to go see a specialist. The closest specialist is over an hour away. We started with our local ob-gyn. He got me started on this fabulous make-women-crazy drug called clomid. It definitely made me crazy and I did my best to contain it. I took it for 6 months. Had plenty of eggs. Everything was perfect....except I still wasn't getting pregnant.
We decided to up our game and began doing Intrauterine Insemination - IUI. It's not a comfortable procedure. It hurt 3 out of the 5 times I did it.
The first IUI, the doctor also wanted my progesterone checked. When I got the results back, he said it was so high, I was most likely pregnant. I immediately went to get a blood test to confirm and (no shocker to me) it was negative. I kept my hopes up until the fourth time.
After that we went to a specialist. They did all the same tests. I laid on the table during one of the visits while they told me how perfect my woman parts looked. Everything was functioning exactly how it is supposed to and how glad I should be. At that point, laying there in an undignified position, I began crying and told them that's not great news! How could it be great news if I still didn't know what was wrong with me?! If there was something wrong, at least we could try to treat it. I was tired of doctors telling me I shouldn't be having any problems and that this would be the month for it to happen - and it still didn't happen.
We decided to do one final IUI with the specialist. They told me I could do shots with my other medication to try to increase my fertility. So that month I put a total of four shots into my stomach at home.
It didn't work.
I've come to the point where I can finally accept that my body just won't make another baby. Dennis is our first miracle child. There is no explanation for why I was able to have him and not able to have another. After all these months - more than 90 of them, my body just won't produce a positive on a test stick. We've accepted that at this point, if we want to grow our family, our only options are IVF, foster care, and adoption.
IVF means taking more crazy lady pills and more shots. more trips to over an hour away and most likely, it won't work. There's no explanation for why an IUI won't work, so why would IVF?
We are in the process of becoming licensed for foster care. We are keeping our options open, knowing that we could receive our next child through either foster care or adoption - or maybe even both!
The road of infertility is not an easy one. It is heart breaking each month. We feel we have a great deal of love to give and our family is not complete. Our only child asks frequently when he can have a brother or sister. We tell him that Heavenly Father has just decided it isn't time yet. It kills me to watch him on Christmas morning, excited to play with his new toys and games and not have any siblings to play it with. His experience is so different than ours when we were growing up.
We know our family is not yet complete and it is time to reach out and find our next child.
Unexpected, unexplained, secondary infertility - for the last 7 years.
Our little family lives in Utah. There's LOTS of kids in Utah. Growing up, I was not aware of any indicators that would suggest I'd have trouble making babies. I was completely unaware of the world of infertility. Like most people, I assumed the simplest solution to not being able to have kids is to just adopt - duh. How hard could that be?
Pretty darn hard. It's not just the adoption. It's the path you end up on before you get to that point. We have been on this road of infertility for 7 years.
After being married for 9 months, my husband and I caught the "baby fever" that came from being surrounded by so many new babies in the young neighborhood we lived in. We didn't take things too seriously at first. We figured, if we got pregnant - cool! If not, no worries - I still had some school to finish before getting my bachelor's. All it took was 3 months and BAM! Baby was on the way. He was so eager to get here, he even came three weeks early!
Then when he was about 10 months old, I started to feel the baby fever again. My husband said we should wait another month or two before trying again. Once we did, I figured it would take at least three months, maybe even six since that is how long it took some of our friends.
Three months came and went and I put a tiny guard up. I was just a little concerned. Then six months came. Still nothing. I mentioned this to my doctor and he sounded a bit more concerned . He felt I shouldn't be having any trouble. Not too long after that, I began to have troublesome cysts. I was diagnosed with a complex ovarian cyst that would require surgery to remove. The doctors told me that was most likely the cause of my inability to conceive and that I should be able to get pregnant pretty quickly after the surgery.
Well, that didn't happen.
Month after month after month passed. I dealt with cysts for awhile, thinking that if I could get them under control then I would be able to get pregnant. I had my hormones tested frequently and was told the levels were perfectly normal. I had a normal cycle each month. I began taking herbs to make me more fertile. I tested my temperature and other symptoms EVERY SINGLE DAY. I knew exactly what phase of my cycle I was in, which hormones dominated, whether they were raising or dropping, and what PMS symptoms were normal for me. I became obsessed with symptoms. Turns out every single pregnancy symptom is also a PMS symptom.
After living life literally two weeks at a time for 5 years, I decided I couldn't take it anymore. We had spent a lot of time moving, which made it hard to go see a specialist. The closest specialist is over an hour away. We started with our local ob-gyn. He got me started on this fabulous make-women-crazy drug called clomid. It definitely made me crazy and I did my best to contain it. I took it for 6 months. Had plenty of eggs. Everything was perfect....except I still wasn't getting pregnant.
We decided to up our game and began doing Intrauterine Insemination - IUI. It's not a comfortable procedure. It hurt 3 out of the 5 times I did it.
The first IUI, the doctor also wanted my progesterone checked. When I got the results back, he said it was so high, I was most likely pregnant. I immediately went to get a blood test to confirm and (no shocker to me) it was negative. I kept my hopes up until the fourth time.
After that we went to a specialist. They did all the same tests. I laid on the table during one of the visits while they told me how perfect my woman parts looked. Everything was functioning exactly how it is supposed to and how glad I should be. At that point, laying there in an undignified position, I began crying and told them that's not great news! How could it be great news if I still didn't know what was wrong with me?! If there was something wrong, at least we could try to treat it. I was tired of doctors telling me I shouldn't be having any problems and that this would be the month for it to happen - and it still didn't happen.
We decided to do one final IUI with the specialist. They told me I could do shots with my other medication to try to increase my fertility. So that month I put a total of four shots into my stomach at home.
It didn't work.
I've come to the point where I can finally accept that my body just won't make another baby. Dennis is our first miracle child. There is no explanation for why I was able to have him and not able to have another. After all these months - more than 90 of them, my body just won't produce a positive on a test stick. We've accepted that at this point, if we want to grow our family, our only options are IVF, foster care, and adoption.
IVF means taking more crazy lady pills and more shots. more trips to over an hour away and most likely, it won't work. There's no explanation for why an IUI won't work, so why would IVF?
We are in the process of becoming licensed for foster care. We are keeping our options open, knowing that we could receive our next child through either foster care or adoption - or maybe even both!
The road of infertility is not an easy one. It is heart breaking each month. We feel we have a great deal of love to give and our family is not complete. Our only child asks frequently when he can have a brother or sister. We tell him that Heavenly Father has just decided it isn't time yet. It kills me to watch him on Christmas morning, excited to play with his new toys and games and not have any siblings to play it with. His experience is so different than ours when we were growing up.
We know our family is not yet complete and it is time to reach out and find our next child.
Welcome to our blog!
We are just getting this blog up and running and will most likely fine tune it several times! We are the Livingston family, Shane, Liz, and Dennis - just 3 people and eager to grow into a bigger one. We hope this blog serves as a way to get the word out so other people who may be looking for an adoptive family can connect with us.
We'll set up different sections to introduce each of us and what we're like! Please feel free to share our blog and help us find the #2 we've been looking for!
We'll set up different sections to introduce each of us and what we're like! Please feel free to share our blog and help us find the #2 we've been looking for!
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