Waiting is the Hardest Part

Why is it that when you want something so badly, everyone else seems to have it? I'm just about ready to get rid of my facebook account, because I struggle seeing all these happy "we're having a baby!" announcements. I'm happy for all of those announcements, because I hope to make one about my hubs and I someday, too. It just hurts everytime I see one. I wish I knew what it was like to say, "Hey, let's try having a kid." Two months later, BAM! There is a bun in the oven!

I hope that when my husband gets his semen analysis back from the doctor soon, it miraculously comes back with super normal results. That way I can hope that our 1% chance of conceiving comes up to like 10%. I could pee on a stick and get a positive result and all of that money we've been hoarding can be used to buy a super fancy mom-mobile!

The waiting is the hardest part. I am having a hard time wrapping my mind around waiting to do this IVF for another year or two. To help speed up the savings I'm considering getting another job in addition to teaching. I don't make very much since I'm on a first year teacher salary, plus furlough days. I'll be finishing up my masters this spring, so I'll be able to pick up a second job this summer. The paychecks for this second job will be going in to savings and won't be touched in addition to my increase in pay for my masters. Just a plan I made up in my head...now I just have to think about where I'd want to spend my summer days and after school in the fall.

Until this IVF thing happens, I'm focusing on getting this body in shape in the off-chance I get pregnant on my own. The hubs and I have been gym rats the last few weeks and it has felt amazing. I really work out all of my emotions and frustrations at the gym and feel pretty good until the weekend where I have time to think. I have a ton of weddings this summer so at least I'll be looking awesome in all of my bridesmaid dresses!!

The Start of This Journey

Today is the day I am beginning to write our story.

A little background:

My husband and I have been together for nine and a half years and have been married for what will be four years in June. We've been through it all - long distance, unemployments, and now infertility. We've been trying to have a child for a year and a half now. We are lucky that we haven't been trying for longer before we figured out what was up with our reproductive abilities. Some people try for years and years. I have PCOS so I knew I would need some help in the ovulation department, however I never dreamed that the hubs would have issues as well. He has low sperm concentration, motility, and morphology. In normal people terms he has a smaller amount of dudes compared to "normal" men, and his dudes are lazy and funny looking. Our chances of conceiving naturally are very slim so we have to endure the messy process of Invitro Fertilization aka IVF with a special procedure called Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI). ICSI is where the doc will take one dude and inject it into my egg.

There are four fertility clinics in our area so we went to information sessions for each clinic and tried to pick the clinic that we though would be the best fit for us. We are not very far into this fertility process, just a few blood tests and another semen analysis for the husband. He'll need to go see a urologist and I will have to do more blood tests most likely.

My husband and I frequently discuss this process and how it is going to be, and what it comes down to is money. We will be paying for this whole process out of pocket. I have a timeline in my head and I would like to go through this process in May or June of 2012, because I would be at the end of my year as a school teacher with the summer ahead of me and time to relax and prepare for a baby. However, if we are looking at this in a practical way, we financially can’t afford to go through with this process this spring. We need to have the money saved up for IVF, in addition to an emergency fund in case something catastrophic happens. That would be ideal. My husband thinks logically. I think emotionally. I can’t help it. My husband has this "number" in his head to have in our savings account before we go through with this and it is a big number, and a number that we wouldn’t be able to have in our savings account for more than a couple of years. I know it is the responsible thing to do. I want to be responsible, but I want a baby more. I want a child with every ounce of my being.  Trying to plan for this IVF and the financial burden it presents has reminded me of how unfair life can be sometimes. It kills me that money determines when we can have a child. Money.  Stupid, stupid money. I pray that a miracle happens and that the 1% chance of the hubs and me having a child naturally happens sometime soon!

That is it in a nutshell for the time being. I would love and encourage any comments, thoughts, support from anyone who reads. I'm blogging because I'm afraid that I'm getting annoying to the people who are aware of our situation. Thoughts of babies and IVF are consumming me and it is all I want to talk about, but no one in my life can understand since they haven't been through it.