(The following is Part 1 of Heather and Rodney’s Embryo Adoption story. Their journey will be revealed in a five part series on the EAAC blog.)
Where do we even begin to tell our story? There is so much to share; so much that led us down this incredible path of embryo adoption.
We were married in January 2005. We had dated for over four years before getting married and had been friends for another four years before that. I (Heather) had wanted kids since I could remember – it was my dream to be a stay at home mom, to play with, teach and love on our little ones. My perfect number was four – a nice, large (in my mind) family, without getting too big, and keeping with even numbers. It was all perfect in my mind. Rodney wanted two kids at the most. We joked about who would “win” and how many kids we would actually wind up with.
When we were talking seriously about our future family, we did discuss the idea of “what if”. Rodney has ulcerative colitis and had been on some medications we knew were known to cause some fertility problems at times. We talked about the possibility of adoption, or would we just live life without kids, etc. But I don’t think either of us took that thought too seriously.
The one thing we did decide was that we weren’t going to prevent pregnancy from the get go. It wasn’t an “if” in our minds, but a “when”. So even on our honeymoon, I wondered if somehow, some way I would come home with a honeymoon baby.
Well, as you can guess, that didn’t happen. The weeks and months went by and I quickly started wondering if we were going to “ever” get pregnant. Rodney was quite a bit more patient than I was – he was content to wait.
After a year of trying, I started doing some research on how to best improve our chances. I wanted to get to the doctor right away, but Rodney was still content to wait. I couldn’t understand – if there was a problem, why would we not want to know? What if there was a simple solution? I’m such a fix-it and fix-it-right-now girl that not actively doing anything nearly drove me crazy.
I went online and started reading up on what I could do. And thus began the madness – charting my temperature, ovulation tests, good foods to eat for fertility, changing what we wear, how we bathe, trying to time things perfectly. And nothing helped. Time continued to go by, and I continued to become a blubbering mess every month when, once again, we were not pregnant.
Stay tuned to hear more of Heather and Rodney’s amazing story next Friday.
(Please read comment policy before commenting)
Recent Comments