Cast your cares.

I figure this may be a good way to help me wear myself out to finally actually go to bed and fall asleep tonight. Besides, I'm not really one to keep this stuff to myself. It's part of the way I deal with things. For me, there's just no point of keeping it inside because I'll fixate on it and start telling myself a bunch of lies about what a failure I am. So, hopefully typing all this out will get me to a point where I can begin to process it and rest.

So, here's how the story goes (even though I wish this was not how it went)....

Friday, September 24...

I started the best birthday weekend I've ever had. I was on day 31 of my cycle (It was the second one that involved letrazole, daily thyroid medicine, and an hcg shot). I figured that that morning would be the one where I'd go ahead and take a pregnancy test. Lo and behold, through God's grace, that thing turned positive in three seconds. I had taken it at 4 in the morning, so I was definitely groggy but excited, elated, thrilled, and surprised. I showed Sam the test. He was elated, but fell back asleep (He is a sleeper, for sure.) So, I just sat in bed until time to get up. When I got to work, I told my principal (because I'd be having to leave early to get blood work done) and two dear friends who would be covering my dismissal duty. Friday's bloodwork came back great, with an hcg level of 230. We had dinner at On the Border to celebrate and worked on absorbing the fact that God had set in motion what we had been hoping for so long. I began taking new meds to keep the pregnancy going.

Saturday, Sept. 25...

I don't even remember what we did. I am pretty sure it involved taking another test and continuing to be elated and grateful.

Sunday, Sept. 26...

I had to go to the dr. for a second blood test to check that my hcg level was rising at least 60% in the course of two days. We had the bloodwork done. We went to church. We sang "Blessed Be Your Name" and cried through the whole song because we felt such a sense of relief and gratitude after the stress of the last seventeen months of fertility meds, tests, and procedures. I went to lunch with a friend. While at lunch, my nurse called with the hcg test results... 587.5. I was again filled with a sense of joy that, through this whole journey, I had not yet gotten to feel until that weekend.

We went to my grandmother's for my birthday dinner. We mentioned the good news to my parents and grandmother. They were thrilled. We went home and rested with a new kind of peace and excitement from the weekend's events and positive blood test results.

Monday, Sept. 27 - Thursday, October 21...

Every day it felt like I had such nice, strong pregnancy symptoms... soreness, tiredness, food aversions, tiredness, tiredness, and tiredness. Not too mention the continually growing elation and excitement and expectation and joy that came with every symptom. We downloaded pregnancy apps on our phones and read daily/weekly little articles about pregnancy and development. We talked about the baby. We were grateful for the baby. We thanked God for the baby. We thanked God for the intelligence and gifts He gave the doctor who helped us, with His help of course, figure out how to get pregnant. We celebrated. We thought about how cool it was that we found out about the pregnancy around my birthday, that we would find out the baby's gender around Sam's birthday, and that we would have the baby around our anniversary. It was like the timing of all this couldn't have been more perfect and meaningful to us. We told Sam's mom and siblings. (We are not good at secrets like this. We were too excited to keep quiet.)

We had two ultrasounds. The first ultrasound on Oct. 13, showed the tiny little baby and the tiny little heartbeat on the screen. We got to take a couple pictures home. The second ultrasound, on Oct. 20, showed that slightly bigger, but still tiny baby and that faster heartbeat. Once again, we got to take a couple pictures home. The excitement and elation continued.

We had made it. First of all, the procedure we had done only had a 15% success rate in achieving pregnancy. We were part of that 15%. By the second ultrasound, my doctor told us that we had an 85% percent chance of making it full term with this pregnancy. Ironically and unfortunately, we were also part of the 15% as well.

Friday, Oct. 22...

I knew something wasn't right. I just felt weird all day at school. Then, I got home and discovered what I was afraid I would. I immediately called the on-call nurse. She scheduled me to come in Saturday morning for blood work. I cried Friday evening out of total fear.

Saturday, Oct. 23...

It seemed that hopefully the worst was over. The cramps and bleeding (sorry if that's tmi, but it is what it is) greatly decreased. My bloodwork from that morning definitely showed that I was still pregnant (hcg of 7395). The nurse on call said that this could just be what I have to deal with through the rest of the first trimester and that, if it didn't get worse, everything would be fine. My next appointment/ultrasound remained scheduled for Friday, Oct. 29.

A couple hours later, things got worse. I called the nurse. An ultrasound was scheduled for Monday.

Saturday night was really bad. It got worse really quickly. I had such pain that I hope to never experience again. It was the kind of thing that buckled my body to the floor. The kind of physical pain where I literally could not stand and Sam held me up when I tried to walk and buckled again. It was the kind of emotional pain as I literally saw that sweet little developing person whom we already both gotten to love leave me. (I know that's a whole lot of information, but this helps me to get it out. Sorry.) I saw it. We went to bed confused about how we had seen a heartbeat two or three days earlier suddenly turn into all that we had seen in those last two days.

Sunday, Oct. 24...

I sat around in bed upset. Then, I decided there was no point in that. So, I made myself get in the shower, put on clothes, and get ready for church. Getting ready for church was hard. I was hurting. My body was trying to make me go get back in bed and do nothing. But getting up and going was the best choice.

I don't know how He does it, but somehow God puts the right words in Craig's mouth every weekend. This week's message was about the lies we tell ourselves. It was about how somehow little seeds of doubt plant themselves in us and we let those ugly little seeds grow and grow until they damage our spirit and our views of ourselves. He talked about how we hold on to those lies we tell ourselves... that we're not good enough, that we won't ever get something right, that we can't do what others do, that we don't deserve what others deserve. I sat there and felt like he was talking directly to me. I have had every single one of those feelings over the last three years and nine months of wondering when/if we'll ever have a baby. I have doubted myself, my ability, and my worthiness. Craig told us that he had heard a song sung by an old preacher one time and that he wanted us to use it and sing it whenever we felt those lies coming into our minds. For the first time in five years of going to Hope, my pastor stood there by himself on that stage, obviously nervous, and sang to us. God got him to sing yesterday. It happened on the day I needed it the most, and it was the very best thing I have experienced in any church. He sang this...

Cast your cares upon the Lord.

Cast your cares upon the Lord.

For He knows what you're going through.

Cast your cares.

Oh, cast your cares.

Cast your cares.

Cast your cares.

Cast your cares upon the Lord.

He asked every person to sing along, just all of us and him. Half the church sang at first. We just listened. Then, he stopped and said for all of us to let whatever lies we're still holding onto go for just long enough to sing one time. A few people began to stand and sing. Others began to stand and sing. WE began to stand and sing. A few people at a time, people began to stand and sing. Sam and I cried and tried to sing through our tears. And, it felt like such a release to stop blaming myself for a minute. I sang that song in my head I think thirty more times Sunday, every time I started to blame myself for all that happened over the weekend and over these years of frustration. I began to understand that it's been a long, hard road and that I don't know how it'll end up, but that it's not because of all the false things I've been repeating to myself over and over. I sang this song in my head Sunday night as I tried to go to stop crying and go to sleep.

Today....

was a bad day. We had the ultrasound. The tech showed us "where the baby used to be". We cried in the ultrasound room. I had more blood drawn, while I sat there and cried. The lady who drew my blood stopped and prayed for me and told me to let the tears out. We left the dr.'s office and rode home in silence.

I went to work. I knew that sitting at home was not a good idea for me because all those little lies that pop up would show up. Instead, I was mad all day. I was mad that it didn't work out. I was mad that they said my little baby measured small (when I now know exactly how much bigger that baby was than they thought). I was mad that my doctor was out of town and couldn't talk to me today. I was mad that the nurse who called me said that it would probably be months and months before we could begin to try again. I was mad at the situation because I'm worried that my friends who are pregnant won't feel comfortable talking about their pregnancies around me. So, I just worked. I stayed and was a professional at parent teacher conferences. Then, I got in the car and cried on the way home.

So, here I am. I tried to eat dinner, but didn't really feel like it. I tried to go to bed, but that was futile. So, I am typing all this out and wondering what to do with the ultrasound pictures. I haven't figured that out yet. And, I'm wondering what tomorrow will feel like. I'm hoping it feels better than today has felt.

So, that's the story. I guess the best thing to do now is to keep on trying to cast my cares. I'm trying.