Health:
As of February, I am back with my first pain doctor that has seen me for nearly ten years. I had left there because nothing seemed to be working, we were running out of treatment options he was willing to do, and he is an hour and a half from home. The pain clinic I moved to was nothing short of TERRIBLE. BUT, they let me try a new treatment option, Ketamine infusions, that changed my life. I had them every three months (3 total) and they got a really great handle on my pain, fatigue, etc. When I went back to my doctor, I brought that experience with and he decided to try to start Ketamine infusions with his practice. He ended up not being able to get them, but I am having spinal blocks that seem to be helping as long as we stay ahead of things. We are praying with age, hormones, and developing treatment options, that my pain will change or manifest differently. Right now, my pain is pretty well controlled and I am able to have mostly really good days and for that I am SO grateful.
Infertility:
As briefly discussed in a couple of my other posts, Paul and I are not currently pursuing infertility treatments. I am really lucky and have wonderful insurance that covers some infertility treatments, but only so much. We don't have much coverage for it left for this calendar year, but we don't want to be doing it anyways. We have been trying infertility treatments since our honeymoon and they are emotionally and physically exhausting. I love not having to think about the whole process 24/7! Paul and I get to just enjoy each other and our life together! We are loving this time together. We will definitely go back to it at some point but we don't know when just yet. I had a procedure done in May to help hopefully have some natural cycles but so far, nothing, and that's okay. We know God will tell us when we should try again and until then, we are enjoying our time with each other and our journey toward our adoption.
Adoption:
We are WAITING! We are so happy to say that everything that we can do, is done! Right now, all we can do is wait. For those of you who don't know much about the process, basically we are being networked by our adoption agency. They present us to amazing birth moms who have chosen adoption for their child or children. A birth mom can then decide if they would like to talk with us. We will then talk to her, she can get to know us, and then both "parties" decide if it would be a good fit! At that time we are considered "Matched" and then we pursue the adoption! If she is pregnant, we spend the rest of her pregnancy preparing and getting to know the incredible woman who is blessing us with her child. If the child is already born, we arrange placement, etc. We can also be presented in "drop in the lap" situations and that would be a sweet mama who has had her child or is in the hospital to deliver and decides she wants to make an adoption plan and we could be chosen and have to leave right away to go meet her and the child. So, for now we wait and wait some more. Our contract with our agency is two years long. We were told the average wait time is 6-18 months but that it just takes one sweet mama to pick us to parent her sweet child. So as we wait, we are appreciating time for just the two of us (and of course our sweet dogs) and taking time to enjoy all the activities we like to do that will be just a little bit harder (but so worth it) once we have a child in our home. We continue to pray for our sweet birth mom and her child everyday and we hope you all will join us in doing so.
Lessons I am learning:
Through this whole infertility and adoption journey I have learned a lot of things. Like I mentioned in my last blog post, I am at an incredible peace with our infertility and adoption however, that doesn't make other people's pregnancy announcements and pregnancies easier. I am so happy for people in our lives who are blessed to be experiencing pregnancy and I love sharing in it, but sometimes it is still overwhelming. I try to give myself a little credit in that I am not necessarily grieving not being pregnant, but more grieving wanting to be a mom and not knowing when it will happen. So to our friends and family, when I take a step back from it all, it isn't because I don't care or that I am not excited, I also am just dealing with the grief of not being a mom yet. I also want to mention my INCREDIBLE husband. He has been so amazingly supportive in the whole infertility and adoption stuff but also in just letting me talk through the millions of feelings that come up about them both. I have talked about my grief but I also want people to be aware of his grief too. He rarely will talk about how hard things are on him but I know that sometimes he struggles too. More than wanting people to just be aware of my grief and a little sensitive, I want people to be aware and sensitive of his. Paul didn't grow up, thinking about having kids, and think, "Yeah, someday having kids will be hard, I should prepare myself for that." I did think those things, because I knew about my reproductive issues. So, I know that he, even if subconsciously, is grieving that idea that starting a family would be relatively easy. He is grieving the idea that when he wanted to become a dad, he could. Not that it would take all kinds of planning, work, and money. He also is dealing with the feelings of not being a dad yet and those are difficult as well. So I am learning that while we are at peace and SO excited about our adoption, we also are working through the feelings of "the wait" to our child and to becoming parents.
I am also learning an incredible amount of patience and how to lean on God more than I ever have before. I am an INCREDIBLY IMPATIENT person. You can ask my sweet, very patient husband or my mom. I don't wait very gracefully for the things I am excited about. I will never forget when Paul asked, shortly after we had been dating and in a joking way, if I knew how to be patient. He smiled and giggled a little when he said it. I couldn't tell you what I was being so darn impatient about, but he knew right away how much I struggled with patience. He tells me probably daily to be patient, even over little things like clicking a million times on something on the computer when it won't load right away. So you can imagine, waiting for a sweet child is testing this lack of patience of mine. BUT I do know that God's timing is nothing short of perfect and I know when we meet our child and their sweet first mom, it will all make sense and the wait will be so worth it. I have found an incredible amount of peace in the way I have felt God through our entire adoption journey thus far and I can't wait to continue to lean into Him and watch the way He works in all of this.
We will keep you updated as we continue this incredible journey. We are so incredibly grateful for the amount of love and support we have gotten!