We'll start with our infertility history...

... on June 23, 2007 I married the love of my life, James Randolph Dixon. Like I mentioned in my 'about me' section, we dated for a very long time before finally marrying. Waiting for me to graduate college before getting married, was my parents idea. At the time, we didn't think it was the greatest idea ever, but hind sight is 20/20 I suppose, and we have come to realize it was a really good idea after all. That gorgeous, but very HOT day in June, brought James and I to a place we had never been before... eternal faithfulness. We, whole-heartedly, shared vows that for us, were meant to be for a lifetime. That very day, a verse from I Corinthians 13:4-13 was shared with us; and in the end, was more powerful than we had yet to know. (I'll share the verse with you...)

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not
rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love
does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts,
always hopes, always preserves. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they
will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it
will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection
comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought
like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind
me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now
I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three
remain; faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love."

Love is patient... those are very powerful words. Even for an impatient woman like me. I like to plan. I live my life by a plan. It's not necessarily a written-out-on-paper plan, but more like... a mental check list. Fall in love...check. Finish high school...check. Graduate college...check. Marry the love of my life...check. Start trying to have a baby as soon as we are legally married...check. Have a baby a few short months of trying later...NO CHECK! In fact, almost three years of trying and we are still a, NO CHECK! So I'll begin with how our trying-to-conceive journey got started...

I have always wanted to have children. Anyone who knows me, knows I LOVE babies. And in fact, I am quite good with children. They love me... Just ask my niece and nephew... they will tell you they have the GREATEST auntie in the world! Anyways, a couple of weeks after our honeymoon, James (who was still WSPD officer at that time) sat me down in the living room of our ONE bedroom apartment and said... "Jennifer, I'm ready to have kids." Music to my ears... because selfishly... I had wanted a baby for a very long time. I knew it wasn't time though... trying to finish nursing school and all! (Never mind the fact that my parents would have literally died!) So from that moment on... practice makes perfect. Only in our case, practice meant practice for years! (if we had only known...) Soon after we decided to stop all forms of birth control, we found out that our sister-in-law was expecting our nephew. Added fuel to the fire... I wanted to be pregnant too! We always told our mother-in-law that the next go around, we'd be pregnant together and make her life a living hell. HA! Well luckily for Gail Dixon, that never happened. We welcomed our nephew with open arms in February 2008. I failed to mention earlier, that all the while... I was a labor and delivery nurse. ...I'd later find out that being an L&D nurse probably wasn't the best profession for me throughout our journey. That same February I started talking to one of the doctors that I worked with on a regular basis about what my husband and I were going through. He told me to call him around 10 months of trying and he'd see us for a consultation if we weren't pregnant yet.

10 months of trying arrived in May 2008. We went in for our consultation. I had a procedure to make sure my tubes weren't blocked from a ruptured appendix I had in May 2007. I had that procedure in June 2008. Tubes were not blocked... and that procedure was VERY painful. I was a bundle of emotions, because you don't want something to be blocking your tubes... but at the same time, you want some answers as to why you aren't pregnant yet! So later in the month of June, we started our first round of fertility 'treatments.' Clomid was our first line of defense. Well after three months of Clomid, I was done! NOPE... I wasn't pregnant, but Clomid hates me, and I hate Clomid. I was on the worst emotional roller coaster of my life. By the end of September 2008, we had switched to another 'infertility' pill called Femara. No emotional side effects, Thank God! But three months later... we still weren't pregnant. This brings us to December 2008. (I must mention that the whole time I was dealing with the horrible hormonal effect of all these meds, my best friend was pregnant. She was due in December, and I was so ready to be pregnant with her. It never happened that way though. And I must say the emotional effects were horrible, and because of my selfishness it almost ended our friendship. However, through the grace of God, she forgave me for being such a jerk... and we are now working at a broken friendship, that will soon be whole again. I thank God everyday for her friendship and the support she has shown me. I love you Stephanie!) Back to December 2008...At that point, our doctor wanted us to be seen by a fertility specialist at WFUBMC. Also at this point... James had become unemployed. We decided to take a few months off from the infertility world... and just see what would happen...

...well what happened? NOTHING! Of course we weren't pregnant, and I was super frustrated. In March 2009, I finally called the specialist to make an appointment. In April 2009, we had our first consultation with Dr. Yalcinkaya. He was so caring and got right to the point. He diagnosed me with PCOS and gave us a less than 1% chance of conceiving naturally (or without intervention...) Later that month we started multiple pills and a daily fertility injection (in the stomach... OUCH!) for 10 days; and had our first artificial insemination. Or IUI as it is technically called. We had the insemination in early May 2009. It happened to be the same day as my cousin's baby shower. Which was actually okay with me. It just gave me hope. I wasn't nearly as emotional about it as I had been about the birth of my best friend's baby the prior December (again... I'm sorry Steph!) ...needless to say, that insemination did not work. I was devastated! But not as much as James was... he had 150% of hope riding on the fact that this was our best chance at a pregnancy. I can't speak for him or his feelings, but the disappointment in my husband's face killed me. It hurt me so much that I didn't want to try again right away because I did not want to see the look on his face, if we did indeed have ANOTHER negative pregnancy test.

...After several months of 'rest.' Of course we still were not preventing pregnancy... and of course we still hadn't conceived... we decided to try one last insemination before my insurance changed. Why? ...because I was changing jobs! AHHHH~ I was really nervous, but I finally got the guts to leave labor and delivery. I say it like that, because I had gotten really comfortable there. I knew everyone, and felt like I was really good at what I did. However, I just couldn't do it much longer. I longed so badly for a baby...that bringing those little lives into the world hurt more than it helped. So... I got a new job. In November 2009, we tried our next insemination. Pills and injections, yet again! And yet again, another NEGATIVE pregnancy test. Only this time, we just got used to negatives. The disappointment was there, it just didn't hurt as bad. I guess that's a good thing... Dr. Yalcinkaya's nurse told us at our last visit, that we could try one or two more insemination's, but that it wasn't unreasonable for us to try IVF next. In fact, she could line up everything for us to get started in that direction right away. I was super ready for that next step... financially, no one is ever prepared for that next step. Unless of course you are a celebrity!

...IVF will be our next treatment, I think. We've tossed around the idea of adoption. I do believe fully, that adoption will someday be in our future. I just don't feel like I've given it all I've got, to conceive and deliver our own child. So we save... save every penny we can find... IVF is not covered by my insurance. I hope that once James gets hired full time, where he is working now as a temp... that the insurance there will cover something... ANY portion will be better than no portion! Until such time as we can have our own baby... I love my niece and nephew like they are my own! They both had birthdays in February. That was a blast... and they are the loves of my life right now!

I will continue to update my blog as a source of stress relief! Sometimes James doesn't always want to hear my rant and raves on my infertility. After all... he's been listening to it for almost three years! So to my blog I will turn... I hope that I haven't completely bore you with all my infertility details, but after all... I suppose you wouldn't be reading it if you weren't interested! I would love to talk to anyone about infertility if you are experiencing some of the same things I went through. And of course, I welcome any ideas for a way to feasibly afford IVF! ...but I must remember, in the end... the greatest of these, is LOVE!