A Wish for Another Chance

My new favorite app is Timehop.  Most of you know I am a picture freak, and I constantly over share with the rest of social media, so my Timehop every day is full of old pictures from the past few years.  I love looking at it in the morning and remembering those times.  The best ones are pictures of Anna from 2 and 3 years ago.  I hardly remember what it was like when she was so small.  This, among many other reasons, is why I'm asking for one more chance.

To spare you from reading through the many blog posts I've written, I'll sum it up.  We have been experiencing secondary infertility for two years mostly because of my body reacting poorly to my emergency c-section and wrapping the important parts of my reproductive system up in nasty scar tissue.  I am coming up on my one year anniversary of the laparoscopic surgery that brought the news that would turn our world upside down.  Our doctor informed us that the only way to expand our family would be through IVF.  The silver lining of the c-section drama is that we have a beautiful little 3.5 year old girl for whom we will be forever grateful as she blesses our life every single day.

We switched over to the infertility world about 6 months ago and have undergone two rounds of IVF (one fresh round and one frozen).  Throughout this time we have felt so thankful for what we have but still yearn for one more child or children to complete our family.  So all 3 of us have a huge wish.  We wish to be able to do this all again, to welcome another baby to our family.  It's hard not to want another one when I look at my sweet girl and her pictures from baby days.

So God please give us one more chance.  I promise we will love and welcome another Cribbs baby into the lonely crib that has been laying dormant in our garage for a while now.  We trust in your timing and hope for good news soon.  I mean how could you not want another one after seeing this picture?  Yes I am extremely biased!

The Journey Back to Zero

Last week I traveled home to celebrate the life of my amazing, 98 year old grandmother who passed away at the end of August. At her memorial service I talked with several of you who have followed my blog.  Not only did you have amazing things to say about my grandmother but you took the time to acknowledge the loss we have been through and that was really touching.  It made me thankful for the community I have, even if right now it is an online one.  Thank you for your encouragement to keep going and fighting for this dream we have in our hearts for another child.  Thank you for reminding me that we are not alone in this struggle.

We are now almost 4 weeks post miscarriage.  I have had some time to process the loss and get some clarity on things.  I will spare you the details of course because they aren't pleasant.  Since I did not miscarry naturally it was a little tricky.  My doctor gave me the MTX shot to end the ectopic pregnancy, and several days after the shot my number went up instead of down.  I was so nervous about getting another dose because it made me very sick.  Thankfully a few days later it began to drop.  It was slow going at first and very painful physically and emotionally.  Finally last week my number dramatically dropped back down to an 8 which is almost normal.  We were so relieved to hear the news that my body is pretty much back to 0 which is the goal after a miscarriage.  Plus no more blood draws for now!  I think I had 16 of them in one month.

So, what's next?  Right now we are just relaxing and enjoying a time of no medicine, doctors appointments, or needles.  We are even going to take a trip to Hawaii for some R&R after 6 months of ups and downs.  In the late fall we will start thinking about trying another round.  From what we have read, ectopics are kind of a fluke thing that can happen.  My body wanted to get pregnant, but unfortunately our embryos didn't implant in the right place.  Hopefully with some new things we are trying it will cut down on our chances of a repeat ectopic.

Thank you for your prayers especially ones for clarity.  We started this process knowing we would give it our best shot.  We contemplated all the different options to add to our family and had a peace about using our time and resources to go forward with IVF.  A lot of people have asked why we don't go down other roads, and that is our reason.  So we have one more shot at a fresh round of In Vitro, and we will give it our all.

The night my grandmother died, her family and caregivers recited Psalm 23 to her as she slipped away and joined the great cloud of witnesses.  This Psalm has taken on new meaning knowing how it comforted her.  We may "walk through the darkest valley," but we don't have to be afraid of what's next.  I know if she were here right now, she would hold my hand and gracefully tell me in her comforting way, "This too shall pass."