Our History So Far...

Where do I begin.... First of all I want to say welcome to our blog! This is our story about our fight for a family. I love to write. When I write, I get to express my true emotions. It just feels good to let it all out sometimes, and I can't think of a better way than to write it all down. I started a journal about all of our experiences a while ago and I thought, why not start a blog. It helps me cope with the feelings that I'm having and I thought, if it helps me maybe it will help other people too. It could help the ones that are going through the same thing to know they are not alone. It could help them to know there are other people out there that are willing to listen. It could also help the family and friends that are witnessing their loved one going through this to understand them a little better. It may just be an interesting read for someone and not help them at all. The most important thing is, it's my story and I would like to share our experience for the sake of my sanity. I hope it helps someone along the way. 

Every story has to have a beginning to have an end. Let me start with our beginning:

Jake and I met in 2007. We worked together for the same company but worked in different departments of the company. I worked in the shipping department which overlooked the warranty department where he worked. I would always peek over the balcony to see him when he came out of his office. I always thought he was very good looking. One of my good friends worked in Jake's department. One day my friend came to me and said, "I think you should consider going on a date with Jake. I think you guys would hit it off." I told my friend I was interested and he should tell Jake to ask me out. Several days went by and nothing happened. One night my room mate and I were hanging out and she dared that I send him a text. I know, I know, not the traditional way of doing things, but hey, if he wasn't going to ask me, I was going to ask him. From that point on we talked a lot at work. He took me out on several dates and we had a lot in common. He was very genuine, responsible, supportive, and extremely good looking. He was everything I ever wanted. In May of 2008 he purposed to me in the most romantic way I could have ever imagined. He packed a picnic and took me to our favorite canyon in Manti. During our picnic he purposed with a long stem rose and a beautiful ring. Because of the people we are and how much we love the outdoors I really can't think of a better way to get a proposal. We started our family right away. We got a boxer puppy we named Sage. She is the sweetest most precious dog. She literally became our little girl. We took her everywhere we went. She became daddy's spoiled little girl very quickly. She snuggles with him all the time, she rides in our side by side with him, she does everything with her daddy. We married in November 2008. It was a wonderful wedding. I got to marry my best friend and I can't think of a better day than that! Shortly after our marriage we wanted to extend our family so we adopted a male boxer named Champ. He was 3 years old at the time. When I went to pick him up, he jumped on me and gave me huge kisses up the side of my face. He is a huge baby. His face is the biggest face I have ever seen and it gives the biggest, sloppiest kisses. We absolutely love our dogs. They truly are like our kids. Sage and Champ became the best of friends (Champ is second to Sage's daddy of course). We continued our lives with our little family doing all the things newlyweds do. We purchased a house, remodeled the entire thing from top to bottom, went on little vacations, and lived the newlywed life.

Our little family

Sage and Champ

Sage and Champ are best friends!

February 2010

In February 2010 Jake and I starting thinking about extending our family. We knew we wanted a family with children, but were not sure if we were ready to make such a life changing decision. We decided, since I had been on birth control for so long, to stop the use of birth control and see what happened. We were nervous about such a big responsibility, but figured it would take a couple months to get pregnant so it would sink in in time. We carried on with our lives as usual and let mother nature take her course.

August 2010

In August 2010 mother nature still hadn't taken the reins. We weren't concerned at that point because I was on birth control so long, and rumor has it the longer your on birth control the longer it takes to get pregnant when you stop taking it. However, Jake and I decided that  we were ready for our little family to begin and we wanted to really start trying. We bought some ovulation kits and I downloaded an ovulation calendar app on my phone. I kept track of my cycle and when I was supposed to ovulate. When I received the first ovulation test that showed I was ovulating we rushed into the bedroom. We had more fun being intimate, if you know what I mean. 

November 2010 

By November 2010 still no positive pregnancy test. I started getting a little worried. What used to be a fun exciting experience, has now turned into a full time job! Ovulation tests, calendars, timing, uterus up after intercourse, feet above your head, I'm telling you, it's exhausting! I decided to call my OBGYN and make an appointment to go see him.

December 2010

My doctor's appointment was scheduled for December 1, 2010. My doctor told me that they wouldn't even consider a women infertile unless she had been trying for at least a year. He said that until it’s been a year they usually won’t run any tests. He gave me some good advice and told me that if I wasn't pregnant by August of next year to come back and they would look further into it. 

            I left the doctor’s office with my head up. After what my doctor had said I knew that everything was going to be okay. It just takes time. I have a whole year to try to have a baby and certainly it will happen within a year, right? I went home to Jake and explained to him how my day at the doctor went. We both had high hopes for the best.  We had a year and knew it was going to happen before the year was up. We were just being paranoid. Just take it easy, don’t let the stress get to us and we would be fine. C’mon baby making!

            So the stress began to leave the body and the hope started to renew. We would just keep trying, using ovulation kits, getting the timing right, and just having fun per say. For the first couple of months we kept track of my ovulation like crazy. I used the calendars, ovulation kits, and anything else we could think of to help us. After a couple months we decided to just forget everything we were doing and let things happen as they were going to happen. We stopped keeping track of my ovulation. We stopped using ovulation test. We even stopped making sure we had intercourse right at the right time. We thought maybe if we didn't think about it so much it would just happen. Everybody said that it happens when you least expect it so, we decided to lease expect it. 

August 2011

Wow, it's been a year of baby making! Using ovulation kits, calendars, trying, not trying, timing, lifting your hips after intercourse, I even tried standing on my head! Literally! You guessed it, we are still not pregnant!? What could possibly be so wrong that after a year and a half of trying, a solid year of that we were actually taking steps to become pregnant and not just preventing, and were still not pregnant? At this point we were upset, furious, and confused. It was definitely time to call my doctor again so we could find out what the heck is going on. 

            I had a doctor's appointment with my OBGYN at the end of August. They started running blood tests to make sure everything was okay. Everything came back good on the blood tests so he suggested a sperm analysis for Jake and a hysterosalpingogram, also known as a HSG test for me.  For those of you that don't know what this is, it's where they shoot a liquid dye through your fallopian tubes while they take an x-ray to see if the dye is making it all the way through the tubes and coming out the end. A lot of women have blocked fallopian tubes. The blockage can be caused by several things, however this is a common issue with infertility because it prevents fertilization. We scheduled the sperm analysis for September and the HSG for November. 

September 2011

So, sperm analysis day arrives and we are to have a sample to the hospital within a half hour after retrieval. To most of you, you may not think a sperm analysis would be that difficult right? I mean we all know guys and it just shouldn't be that complicated. Well, for us it was! It's no fun when you have to do it, if you know what I mean, however we were finally able to accomplish the task and took the little brown bag to the hospital for examination. (I'm not going to lie, we were both pretty embarrassed carrying the brown bag into the hospital, although I'm sure nobody knew what was in there, we were still bright red in the face. It was almost like people looked at us and could tell what we just had been doing.) We dropped the bag off and ran out of there as soon as we could. 

November 2011

The results came back from the sperm analysis and all was well. My hubby's little swimmers were as perfect as he is! It's a weird thing to be excited about I know, but when you are trying this hard anything like this is big news! 

       The date for the HSG came quickly. I was a little nervous not knowing what to expect, but I took the Dr.'s advice on taking ibuprofen an hour before the procedure to help the cramping that was to happen afterwards. As I'm lying on the x-ray table with Jake by my side I kept thinking how incredibly uncomfortable it was to have my legs wide open in front of two doctors that were performing the procedure. Little did I know this wouldn't be the last time I spread eagle to several strangers during this experience. The process started and the fluid began to go through the catheter. It traveled through my body into my fallopian tubes. But guess what!? It never came out! So here I am on the x-ray table with the two doctors talking about an "issue" of the fluid not coming out and I start to get horrible cramps. They prepared me for cramping, but I had no idea it would be this bad. I was squeezing Jake's hand, which afterwards he told me I almost broke, and trying to do the best I could to maintain lying down. They tried another round of fluid and nothing. No fluid was coming out and I was in the worst physical pain I had ever been in. They removed the catheter and I was able to get up and get dressed. They told me that the usual process would be that the fluid would come out of the fallopian tubes and it didn't look to promising that this was happening. They said they were going to submit the x-rays to my OBGYN and have him give me a call with his recommendation. To be honest, I wasn't that worried at this point. Because I was in so much pain, I was a little preoccupied. Not to mention it was my anniversary and we were headed to Park City to celebrate. We left the hospital and went to Park City. The cramps were still there but with a little help from some ibuprofen and some pampering from my hubby we had a great time. 

December 2011

My OBGYN called me in December to tell me his analysis of the x-rays. He said that he didn't believe my fallopian tubes were working correctly and that my tubes were preventing fertilization from happening. He referred us to a Reproductive Endocrinologist, also known as an RE. I called the RE right away to schedule an appointment. The RE sent me a bunch of documents to fill out before my appointment. Who knew you would have to have your whole life history on paper before the RE would even see you. The soonest the RE could get us in was February 2012, so we scheduled the appointment for February. 

February 2012

It was February 1, 2012. Our appointment was at 7:40 in the morning. We were at the RE's office by 7:30. The RE came to get us and took us back in his office. He started discussing our history, medical records, and x-rays. He said that from what he could tell my fallopian tubes had been blocked by scar tissue. He was explaining the reasons this could cause infertility. He showed us a diagram of how everything works and the reasons why my body wasn't working properly. Everything seemed to be going okay. Yes there was a problem, but he seemed very familiar with the issue and didn't seemed to concerned, so I wasn't either, until I asked what the probability was of me being able to conceive. He said I had a 1% chance of conceiving on our own. It hit me like a ton of bricks. There are thousands of women that have children every single day and I have a 1% chance!!?? I almost burst into tears right in his office! He then proceeded to tell me that even though we only had a 1% chance of conceiving naturally we had about a 30% of conceiving using Invetro Fertilization a.k.a. IVF. That did make me feel a little bit better, but 30% still isn't very high. He went on and on about what IVF is, what it entails, what's expected of us to be able to do IVF, etc. He said that we would be very good candidates from looking at our medical history so far and that this is the #1 cause of infertility so they know how to treat it very well. My optimism started to go up a little bit until he threw something else at us. He said if you want to increase your chances of IVF working to 60% I would suggest you get your fallopian tubes removed surgically before moving forward with IVF. He said that the tubes being blocked could cause fluid buildup and if I did IVF and we were successful, then there would be a high chance of a miscarriage because of the fluid buildup. It just kept coming, one thing after another. Now I felt like I just got hit head on by a freight train! Not only has he told me that I have a 1% of conceiving naturally, now he is telling me to take that 1% chance completely away by having my tubes removed. Of course at this point I was looking at all the negative. My anxiety level was through the roof, not to mention at this point we haven't even had our appointment with the financial adviser to go over pricing! As our consult finished up, I was pretty overwhelmed. It truly felt like everything I worked for thus far crumbled right in front of my face. 
        The financial adviser came and got us right after our appointment with the RE. She took us in a little room and handed us a paper. My first glance at this paper I could see numbers that represented the price of a very expensive vehicle. I just about fainted. This appointment was getting worse by the minute. They discussed the pricing, the packages, loan options, etc. Yes you heard right, packages. So I guess we have to decide if we want to try once, twice or three times for a child. If you go with the multiple times you get a better deal if you have to do the cycle multiple times, but if you get a baby the first chance you end up paying more. It's so complicated! We finally left our appointment. We both walked out and got in the car in silence. We drove down the road a little ways to a McDonalds and I burst. Yup, I had a complete come apart, sitting in my car in the middle of a very busy McDonalds parking lot. All that was going through my head was, what if all this don't work, then what are we going to do? How we going to come up with the money? How am I going to handle it physically? etc. etc... We went home and discussed a few things between each other. We then called our family's and let them know what was going and what we had found out. Needless to say it was a very very long day!!

March 2012

After many discussions with our RE and his nurses we decided to move forward with my surgery to get my fallopian tubes removed. Our RE said that we were perfect candidates for IVF and he could see no other reason why IVF wouldn't work. Because of this we decided that we didn't want to take any risk of anything harming the baby after working so hard to get the little one inside of my belly, and it only made sense to eliminate the risk of the fluid causing a miscarriage. Of course with IVF there is the same risks as a regular pregnancy as far as miscarriages, but if we could do something to prevent a potential harm, we were going to do it. So this sounds like a pretty simple decision right? Well for me it was not! First of all, I'm terrified of needles, I had never had surgery before and had no idea what to expect, I had never had anesthesia before, I couldn't stop thinking about the financial aspect of how we were going to afford a surgery and IVF, and most importantly, the thought of taking away the 1% chance of me conceiving naturally was extremely difficult to accept. Despite my anxiety, I knew that I wanted a child and I was willing to see past all these things to get one, so I called and scheduled the surgery for April 2. As surgery day creeped up on me, I started to get extremely nervous. One minute I wanted to go forward and the next minute I didn't. I couldn't make up my mind on what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted this for our chance of holding our miracle, but physically I was sick about it. Two mornings before the day of surgery I actually called and cancelled the appointment because I was so scared. After thinking about it the rest of that day, I called and rescheduled that appointment. Luckily they were able to keep it for the same day.

April 2012

It's surgery day and I'm an emotional mess. I arrive at the hospital and they have to take my blood, test my urine, etc. etc. I finished with the pre-testing and was put in the stand by room to wait for the Dr's. I broke down again! Here I was at the hospital all ready to go and I can't decide if I really want to be here or not! I kept saying, come on Shala, hold it together, but I just couldn't. A nurse walked in right at the moment of my break down. She went and got me a valume to try to calm my nerves. We waited about 30 minutes after that before they came to get me. When they came I climbed in the bed, kissed Jake goodbye, and knew I couldn't change my mind now. They took me to a little room and a Dr. came over to put an IV in. They wasn't able to get the IV in very easily (I have since found out that my veins are not the best veins for Dr.'s to find). They were able to finally get it in and they wheeled me to the surgical room. The Dr. told me he was sorry he was late, he had a delivery he got caught up at. They put nice warm blankets on my arms and I was fast asleep. When I woke up I felt great. I got a cherry popsicle, graham crackers, and apple juice. After a little while they let me go home. It took about a week to heal good enough to return to work. I still wasn't sure if I had made the right decision, but whether I did or not it had been done. 

The pictures of my blocked fallopian tubes

May - August 2012

Now that I was completely healed from surgery we started to focus on the next step. Getting the funds to pay for IVF. Our parents arranged a raffle where my parents purchased a gun and Jake's parents purchased a meat smoker and everyone sold tickets for the raffle. We held the raffle in my hometown during my hometown celebration. We had great success! 

We also tried to pay off as many bills as we could and save some $ of our own to put with it. During this time we also did all the pre-testing for IVF. Anyone who has gone through IVF will know what I'm referring too. There are several pre-tests that both Jake and I had to do. Ultrasounds, blood tests, sperm analysis, urine tests, etc. I had a few complications with cysts on my ovaries during the ultrasounds that put quite a delay in things. During our pretesting faze Jake and I decided we were not completely happy with our decision in RE's so we researched and found a new RE. After we had met with her and told her our background and showed her our results thus far from our pre-testing she seemed extremely confident about our chances of having a successful IVF cycle. Her confidence gave us so much hope. After meeting with her we new we had made all the right decisions so far and we couldn't wait to begin the process. She had an answer on getting rid of the cysts so we could move forward as well. It all just seemed perfect! We told our families we were planning to do the cycle at the beginning of the year but we were actually scheduled to do it in October. We wanted our announcement of our pregnancy to be a surprise so we didn't tell anyone we were doing it earlier. I scheduled my first appointment to begin our first IVF cycle in September.

(to read about our first IVF experience, go to the next tab at the top of the page)