Good News…. We’re not ENTIRELY crazy!

It’s been awhile and even though there haven’t been any BIG changes, I thought I would record some of the next steps we have taken.

In my last post, I mentioned our biggest prayer request was that I would be able to track my own cycle using at-home ovulation tests.  I started the day after my HSG test on day 11 of my cycle.  For anyone who has ever taken a pregnancy test, it kind of feels like that type of anticipation.  You wait 3 min while it blinks and then you either get a blank circle or a smiley face.  By about day 17 and the test still showed negative, I was getting frustrated and disappointed.  Sometimes even if I don’t FEEL like trusting God, I find if I repeat what I know in my heart, my head (even though it can be stubborn) will catch up eventually.  So, I spent those “3 min” in the morning repeating “Your will Lord, Your will”.  One morning the words of Lauren Daigle’s song Trust in You just starting flowing from my lips before I even realized it......

When you don't move the mountains
I'm needing you to move
When you don't part the waters
I wish I could walk through
When you don't give the answers
As I cry out to you
I will trust, I will trust, I will trust in you

By day 20 I was just going through the motions.   I decided to call my fertility doctor’s nurse, Ruthie, to check in.  I told her my frustration that I was on day 20 and nothing had shown.  We talked a little more about my normal irregular cycles and she encouraged me to just try the next 2-5 days to see if it picks it up.  I also found out that the results from all my blood work a few weeks ago, had never been sent to them and that my HSG test had one dark spot that meant the doctor wants to do a second type of test to check out what it is exactly. (on a side note: the dark spot could have simply been an air bubble in the liquid during the test or a simple cluster of……something I can’t remember…. and IF it is, it’s a very easy procedure to remove that won’t affect my ability to be a surrogate at all).

So, I spent the rest of the day contacting the lab to have my results resent and then found out the lab incorrectly tested one vile so I needed to go back and have it re-drawn.  By the end of day 20 I had found out:

1- I needed to go back to the lab to have a re-draw

2- I was no longer immune to measles and needed to go have an MMR booster and would need to wait minimum 1 month before getting pregnant

3- I was going to need a second sonogram test to determine exactly what was on the HSG results x-ray

4- I had MOST likely missed my ovulation and needed to prepare myself for a program cycle with medication

It wasn’t the BEST ending to the day but it wasn’t the worst, sometimes having answers, whether good or bad, can be better than no answers at all.  I continued to pray in my head exactly what I KNEW in my heart, He was in control and He had a plan NO MATTER WHAT!

The next morning, I woke up and started researching where I could get an MMR vaccine and when I could go in for my re-draw of blood.  I had been testing my cycle first thing in the morning but Nurse Ruthie assured me that I didn’t need to worry about first thing and they usually encourage their patients to test in the afternoon.  So, for the first time in almost two weeks I didn’t jump out of bed super early and try to go back to bed all disappointed.  I just took a slow morning with the boys.  By the time Luke needed to go down for a nap, I figured now would be a good time to take the test.  I halfheartedly went through all the steps. I had left the light off in the bathroom because Luke was sleeping and was working by the light of our little night light.  I walked back into the bathroom and thought that circle looks much darker than normal.  I pulled the test stick into the light and the cutest little happy face smiled back at me!  I totally did a silent “snoopy dance” and almost started crying. 
via GIPHY
I took a pic (since it disappears after a few minutes), ran downstairs and messaged daniel, Stephanie (our IP mother), the surrogacy agency and anyone I could think of who had been praying for this!

I excitedly called Nurse Ruthie and she was excited (and as surprised as me) that I had detected the ovulation so late on day 21 but its normal for my cycle.  Within a few days, I got my MMR shot as well as my re-draw.  We got an official medical clearance from the Fertility Clinic, which meant we were set to go onto the next stage which would be the psychological evaluation.

So yesterday Daniel and I headed down to San Clemente to meet with the psychologist Surrogacy by Faith uses with all their surrogates.  The main part of the evaluation was for me but Daniel, as my partner (in crime), also needed to be evaluated.  On a side note: you know you’re a parent when the idea of driving an hour to go see a counselor with your husband feels like an AWESOME impromptu date!

I got to take a ‘fun’/weird private test with over 300 questions that was testing not only my personality but also my honesty. When you must answer questions like “I sometimes lose my temper and yell at people” with a “mostly true” all you want to do is tell the computer “but that’s because I have 3 boys who sometimes try to climb all over me while I’m cooking at a hot stove and the house smells like stinky shoes and dinner is from a box for the third night in a row, so give me a break Mr. computer, sometimes I lose my temper” but all you can click is true or false and hope the computer isn’t secretly judging you, you start to think “what kind of human being am I”.  BUT the truth is every single person has lost their temper and yelled at someone at some point in their life and the people who wrote this test knows that, they want to see if we will admit to being human! 

Luckily, I passed the “written exam” and both daniel and I had our interviews without any glitches! When our time was up she stood up, shook out hands and said “I think you’re going to make an amazing surrogate”.  It was a very enduring statement for me to hear because I’ll admit that there have been many times when I’ve lost my temper and found myself crying in the corner and I’ve told Daniel in-between sobs “How did I EVER think I could be a surrogate when I can barely take care of our own family” (let’s just say this has only happened twice since Nov and ALWAYS around a “certain time of the month”).  Daniel sits there with his arm around me and lovingly assures me that I haven’t emotionally scarred the children for life and that everyone has bad days and that we’ll make it through Surrogacy just like we have made it through every adventure we’ve tackled, together with God’s help.  (Have I mentioned recently what an AMAZING man, husband, partner I have in this crazy roller coaster called life? Cause I do!).

So here we are:

                  ü  Medical screening 

ü  Psych Evaluation (Hence the title of this post: Good News…. We’re not ENTIRELY crazy!)

ü  Ovulation detected

Next up will be my follow up saline sonogram on April 5^th to check the dark spot from my HSG test, testing my ovulation again for my next cycle to confirm I can accurately detect naturally and the Legal Contracts which will be sent out shortly for us to look over and sign.

I find it SO like our God to bring me RIGHT up to the boundaries of “possibility” to see if I will continue to trust in Him or just revert back to my trust in the world.  I SERIOUSLY considered stopping testing on day 20 because I figured it was nearly impossible that my cycle would be that long.  I was disheartened by incorrect tests, needing to get a shot that would require ANOTHER month of waiting and the idea that I couldn’t track me cycle.  BUT at the end of day 20 I continued to sing those lyrics in my heart because I KNEW that even if things didn’t go my way, even if He chose not to move a mountain in front of me or if He asked me to walk through the waters, He wouldn’t stand on shore and watch me go, He would take EVERY SINGLE STEP with me cause day 21 was just around the corner.  Its those moments dear ones where we either choose to follow in the face of uncertainty our own fears/disappointments and try to MAKE something happen or choose and trust that no matter the outcome, His way is perfect.