How We Got Here

Because I've already gotten comments from some of you that don't know my story, I thought I'd share a timeline...

July 18, 1998--J and I were married. I was 20, he was 25. We met in college (University of Virginia) two years before and it was "love at first date."

Early marriage--I was ready for kids right away, but J wanted to wait until we'd been married a few years. He thought it was healthier for our marriage and he may be right. I try not to think about this too much and torture myself about how fertile I might have been if we'd tried when I was 21.

2003--I went off the pill after having been on it for seven years.

2004--We began TTC and I (as nearly every infertile does) assumed we'd be pg within a couple of months. Nope. Instead, the longer I was off the pill, the screwier my cycles seemed to be. I purchased my lifetime membership to Fertility Friend :) and began a diary at preconception.com, where I met some of you! My cycles were so weird that I went to my gyn for advice, even though it hadn't been a year of TTC yet. I began Clomid.

2005--Clomid and Femara cycles. We decided to try IUI, but in pre-IUI ultrasounds found a cyst on my left ovary.

2006--Surgery for the cyst in April revealed stage 3 endometriosis, which my RE removed laproscopically. After recovery, we tried a few IUI cycles, and after they failed, my RE recommended IVF. We decided not to proceed, due to financial concerns.

2007--We began investigating adoption, found our agency in March, and completed our home study in June.

2008--Clio!

Of course, this timeline omits all of the hope, excitement, faith, tears, depression, resignation, etc., all of the emotions and humanity of the last 10 years. In 2006-2007 I struggled a great deal with bitterness and anger, and it has been a hard road to come back from those negative emotions. Even now, with the great news about Clio that we are celebrating, J and I remain cautious. Our adoption counselor made clear to us during our home study that 1 in 4 birth mothers change their minds and don't go through with the adoption. We are readying ourselves for that blow, but it is very hard to prepare for a baby and at the same time keep yourself detatched from that baby, just in case she is not your baby after all. However, we are hopeful that because the birth parents in this case are a bit older, they fully realize the decision they are making and are less likely to back out. However, we may be wrong.

As has been the case at every step of our infertility, we just have to wait and see.