My Story

So how did I get here? I got here the hard way, I guess. I waited to get pregnant until I was married, but that's where all the trouble started. First we tried the regular way, and then we started with all the tests and fertility stuff. We had to get a loan to try IVF, which involved lots and lots of shots. The first round of IVF failed, and I was devastated. Because, you see, they make it all seem so easy to get pregnant that you just expect it all to work. So we waited a bit and tried IVF again. This time it took, and life was great. She was a girl and we named her Zoe Marie. Unfortunately, I got pre eclampsia. At 19 weeks. Two frakkin' weeks short of the remotest possibility of survival, but I would have taken it. I would have done anything to keep Zoe, but my blood pressure skyrocketed and my kidneys shut down. And my water broke, which pretty much ended every last hope I had right there. So I figured when I went down to have the c-section to get the body out of me that I wasn't coming back. I apparently had a discussion with God about the whole thing, because I was in a coma for at least 24 hours. I woke up in the ICU with my arms strapped to the bed--even unconscious I didn't want that tube down my throat! It took me awhile to figure out that I had a tube down my throat, so I panicked a bit. Once I realized that I was okay, breathing-wise, I scratched on the sides of the bed. I finally got someone's attention, and they took that damned tube out. My husband and my family were relieved. I was told that I could not ever get pregnant because of the risk.

That all happened in December of 2003. I can't even begin to describe the hole of despair I fell into. I look back at that time in my life and can't believe that I didn't just lay down and die. I went through the motions of pretending that my life was normal, but it was nowhere near it. I don't really want to talk about it, but if you've ever been there, you know what I am talking about.

Then one day my Ob-Gyn made some comment about my having kids, and when I reminded him that he told me that I shouldn't, he made a comment to the effect that it wasn't impossible for me. That gave me hope. What also gave me hope was that my husband and I had ONE fertilized embryo left from 2003. So I started to think about it. I thought about it for a long time. I finally decided that if it was meant to be, then that one little embryo was it. If that didn't work, then that meant that I wasn't meant to be a parent.

Once I had made my decision, then I had to convince Larry, my husband.