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Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 4:32 am
I want to say the right thing here, but please forgive me if it comes out all wrong.
I thought that perhaps we could have a place to share our stories of conception, miscarriage, unable to have children, and or the loss of a child, Etc. Perhaps this will give us some encouragement, and comfort. Helping thoes of us who desperatly want children to have hope, that perhaps our dream of parent-hood can come true.
What are some of the ways you became parents? How long was it before you were able to have your child? Will you share with us your experiences of loosing a child?
Thoes are just some suggestions for this thread.
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Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 4:42 am
Gwyndara's stroy.
My husband and I have been married for Six years. Five years ago, we decided it was time to start our family. We took the necessary steps to do so, you know going off the pill, looking up on the internet, finding the best day's of my sycle etc. After one year, my mother said, give it time, your young. so then we gave it more time. After two years my mother-in-law explained how expensive doctors were etc, and we had no insurance. But when we hit year three, I was excited because I had a good job and great benefits. So I went to the doctor and explained that we had been trying for three years to have a baby. The doctor told me I was very calm for being a woman trying for three years. I explained about how we just hadn't had insurance etc. So he suggested having my husband's sperm tested first. It is infact the easiest test to do. So we had that done. It is important to note, that before we began the medical process my husband and I chosse to have no blame placed on any one person no matter what any of the tests said. We found out that my husband has to have a 5,000.00 dollar medical procedure done before we will ever beable to have a baby. then it's a 50% chance of haveing one on our own. after the proceedure, we are to try for one more year, then if nothing happens they will do invetro, wich will be another 10,000.00 I get so discouraged because all of this has to be out of pocket expense. my insurance does not cover any infertility procedures, or treatments. Yes we have talked with the doctors and had second and third oppinions etc. I have talked with the insurance company, and it is not covered. Their is no way to get it classified as a medical procedure. We checked into adoption, and found it is more affordable to try having our own first, and then try adoptin. So I am often discouraged and sad. I pray for the day that I will be able to be a mother.
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Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 5:28 am
I will say a prayer for you and offer you the best emotional support I can. I can't imagine how hard it must be to want kids so badly. My uncle and aunt (my aunt passed away over a year ago) were in that situation and finally adopted. That made it really tough when my aunt died and their adopted daughter was so young. Luckily another aunt moved back to Utah to help my uncle out (it was his sister who moved back). Family support is one of the most important things to have in tough times.
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Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 5:34 am
Firstly, *hugs for you* That has to be a tough thing to go through.. I hope that you too one day are a mom, im sure it will all work out for you and your husband..
onto a story about myself, its about a loss..
My husband and I are nearing our 5th anniversary this december.. back in 2001, almost right after we were married, we found out that we were having a baby! Boy were we excited..
The dates are somewhat foggy in my mind, but.. the weekend before the 6th of June (which I think was like a thursday, or wednesday.. ) Well, to back it up even further, like that thursday before.. I wasnt feeling well and I had a little bit of a weird discharge.. so I called the dr and made an appointment to go in.. got checked out and they sent me the following day to an ultrasound.. They saw the baby, but.. they wouldnt really tell me anything, if the baby was okay or what, they just took the pictures like the dr wanted, and let me go.. Well, the weekend hit and I ended up really sick.. I was tired, and napping on that sunday.. and I woke up having this weird sensation almost like I had wet the bed.. I reached down to check, I dont know why but I did.. and it was blood, I was just bleeding like crazy.. I screamed so loud for my husband, who ran and got his mother, who called the doctor.. and I just freaked out, it was so crazy.. I stopped bleeding.. I talked to the dr who said to come into his office the next morning.. unless I started bleeding again, and then I was to call back..
Well, that monday I found out I had a molar pregnancy, and lost the baby.. I had to have surgery which was on the 6th, and was going to have to go through more testing than I ever wanted to go through.. to make sure I was okay.. I had the surgery, and they almost had to give me a hysterectomy.. they couldnt get the bleeding to stop..
There is a small chance that with the molar pregnancy it could be cancerous.. and they did tell me that mine was, but they removed it all.. thankfully! It was sure a very hard time for me and my husband. Every week I had to have bloodwork done, then two, then three, then monthly.. we were told that after a year, if everything was looking alright, we could try again for another child..
we did, we have our beautiful little girl Julianne Faith, her name was going to be just Julie Anne, but my husband said to me one day during the pregnancy.. why dont we name her Julianne Faith, Faith for us never loosing faith that one day we'd have children of our own..
I still cry sometimes to this day about that, I still cry over losing the baby.. the duedate was December 18th.. its a very hard day for me still.. the baby would've been four this year.
I must admit though, it makes me so nervous at times through this pregnancy.. If it happened once, anything can happen to me again, so I feel.. I guess anything can happen to anyone.. but, yeah.. Im always on my toes.. trying to make sure I dont have anything abnormal, trying to just hope and pray for a successful, happy and healthy pregnancy..
anyway, that is my story.. I hope no one minds that I shared it..
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Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 4:01 pm
Gwyn: *hugs* I don't know what more to tell you than I already have.
BlakRoses: I've never heard of a "molar pregnancy" before. I know exactly how you feel about being worried that something else is going to go wrong.
Hubby and I were married, and three months later found out we were pregnant. About 7 weeks along we miscarried. I'd been over to my parent's house and gotten a hair cut (cut it to half way up my back from waist length--enough to donate to locks of love). That night in the ER I hated looking in the mirror 'cause I had this stranger staring back at me... I didn't like that hair cut for a looong time.
That aside, I came home from getting my hair cut and I went to the bathroom and I was spotting. My mom told me to lay down and put me feet up, so I did. After hubby and I went home we went to bed hoping that some rest would help. About three in the morning I woke up in pain and the bleeding had worsened (I'd been sleeping fitfully due to my worry anyway) so we headed in to the ER. The told us that it was probably a miscarriage (something about the sample they'd taken resembling a pregnancy or something--at 7 weeks the fetus is still very small). Because of the history on my mother's side for the women to continue to bleed after miscarriages (the placenta not cleanly separating) they did an ultrasound, but because my bladder was not full I had a very awkward vaginal ultrasound.
We went in after the weekend was over to my first appointment with my OB, and she told me that my next couple of periods would be irregular, but after my first "normal" one we could start trying again.
After that first "normal" period we found ourselves pregnant with our daughter. Despite the assurance that miscarriages that early on in the pregnancy are most often due to an abnormality with the fetus or something wrong with the way the pregnancy has occurred, I found myself quite worried that I was going to have another miscarriage.
But the pregnancy went well and our daughter is now two.
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Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 1:53 pm
*hugs to everyone*
My husband and I were trying to get pregnant from day one. Five years and MANY tests etc later we could not. We had always discussed adoption as an option for us with or without our own children, but Dan was hesitant. I think it is naturally harder for a man to accept 'someone else's' child as their own, but he agreed to look into it after we tried for a while longer. During that time I had what can only be described as a surreal religious experience that left no doubt in my mind that I was to adopt and take care of those children who were neglected and abused. I continued 'trying' to get pregnant for a year after that for Dan's sake, but I knew I would not get pregnant. After that year I researched some private agencies in our area and we got licensed to do foster care. We got licensed through a private agency so that the foster placement would be a foster/adopt placement and we would have more support. We got our license on April 10 2001 and on April 11th I got a call for an emergency placement need. A little week old baby needed to be watched for 1 month. I jumped at the chance as I was not working at the time and by 2:00 that afternoon I had a baby in my arms. (April 11th is my bday.. so it was a nice present wink ) Even though we knew it was only for one month it was so fun to have a baby in our home and it concreted for us that we were doing the right thing. We had MANY referrals for children after that and none felt right. Then in August we found out that we were one of 2 couples being considered for a 9 mo old little boy. He was 1/2 caucasian and 1/2 latino and looked like a mini Ricky Martin (beautiful!!!). They brought him to our home and wanted to see the nursery etc. Now, up to this point we had not set up the nursery since I thought it would be too hard to walk past the door everyday and see everything and be reminded I didn't have a baby yet. Well, we rushed and set up the nursery.. it was picture perfect. We held him and fed him and totally fell in love, only to find out that they chose the other family because the social worker wanted a family with more "parenting experience" (the other family had multiple children). Now that infuriated me! I mean how the heck am I supposed to get parenting experience without a child?!@#? I was so discouraged after this that I told our social worker I was DONE. She being the good friend that she is, knew that I was going through the grieving process and let me know she would contact us again when we were ready. I started working during that time and got a phone call from her the beginning of Feb 2002. She said "well.... I don't know if you are ready yet, but I have some possible referrals for you" (referrals are when you are being considered for a child) I relunctantly told her to go ahead and she told me about 3 little boys. One sounded like he would be what we were looking for and I told her to go ahead and submit our names, She said they would hold a decision meeting in a few weeks and we should hear something by the end of the month. Well, 20 minutes after I hung up she called back and said he was ours!!! I was stunned and frankly so was she. She said that in all her years of doing this she had never had them make a decision without going to 'committee' (decision meeting). But, the social worker for this little boy was the same one for the little baby we had watched for a month. She remembered us from that and liked us so she made the decision right then and there! I was given the number for the current foster Mom and told to arrange the transfer. Everything just fell into place. When I called the foster mother we were talking at length and she asked if we attended church at all. I explained we did and told her the general area of our church. She said "Are you LDS?" which we are, and when I told her this she burst into tears. See, this family adopted our son's sister (2 years prior), but for personal reasons could not also adopt him, and they had been praying for another LDS family to adopt him! I feel like this was a little miracle all by itself. Both families prayers were answered and a week later we got to bring him home. It was instant love and worry. We fostered him for 2 years while his birth mom went through the legal process. We finally adopted him December 19th of 2003. A month prior to this I had had a funny experience. I felt this overwhelming feeling out of the blue that there was another little boy coming to us but he was not born yet. I shared this with Dan and he smiled and ignored me xd . I called our social worker and explained what had happened and she very nicely explained that while she didn't want to call me crazy.. that most infants in the foster system were about 8 months old and she didn't think it would happen. I stuck by what I was feeling. It was so strange, but VERY strong. January of 2004 (2 months later) I got a call from another one of the social workers at our agency.. she just said " So Erin, would you like a baby?" she explained that they had gotten a call out of the blue from another agency about a baby born the day before that the mother wished to relinquish. The agency that had been called would not place him since he was born with Meth. in his system and they only placed "healthy" rolleyes infants. But they knew our agency had handled some of these "high risk babies" ( rolleyes exclaim ) and they thought of us right away. I told her "that's the baby I knew was coming! That's my baby.. GET ME THAT BABY!" xd We got to meet him a day later and brought him home when he was six days old. It was a real fun experience to bring him home straight from the hospital. It was very fast and quite sudden. Our families had just gotten used to the idea that our oldest was really ours now and WHAM! 2 kids smile smile smile Our experience has been awesome! We have fostered a few other kids here and there and are considering going for another to adopt. We will see what sort of 'feelings' I have come up! Being a mother has been the greatest joy of my life. Thanks for this thread! It is fun to see everyones experiences and realize that there is no cookie cutter way to parenthood or parenting for that matter!
Gwyn:: If you would like some additional info on adoption, please feel free to PM me! It doesn't have to be expensive.. in fact, with our oldest's adoption, we made money. sweatdrop 3nodding
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Posted: Fri Nov 11, 2005 7:17 am
wow, that was a wonderful story to read.. in fact, I practically cried while reading it! Im so glad that is has all worked out for you, that you have two kids, and keep fostering others here and there.. that is SO wonderful!
*hugs everyone*
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Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2005 3:34 am
Thanks for all those stories. They are heartwarming examples of miracles. Thank you, LadyElara, for sharing how your religious faith provided those miracles for you. I remember also having a religious experience with the miscarriage Jen mentioned earlier (we are also LDS). When Jen was pregnant and feeling sick I gave her a blessing. At that time I just felt - knew - that the baby was gone. It was a hard thing to tell Jen afterword why I hadn't given any blessings to the baby. While this is not a happy story, it does help strengthen my faith in God. I believe that everything is in good hands. Jen and I personally feel that while the first pregnancy was a miscarriage, God still allowed the spirit to come to us in the form of our daughter. Thanks again everyone, and best wishes to all who need it.
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Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2006 1:06 pm
those are all such touching stories... I have always been of the belief that God has placed people on this earth with the innate desire to have children but withled the ability for the simple reason that there are women who have unwanted babies everyday! I'm not a big fan of all the new scientific "forced" forms of fertilization because I just feel like they should be adopting instead. I know people like to have "their own flesh and blood" children, but adopted kids can affect you just the same. My dad adopted me when he married my mom and has never treated me any different than his own two kids with my mom.
We haven't started trying yet, but I think if anything happened and we weren't able to have our own, that's definately what I would want to do cause i'm definately one of those people that's going to HAVE to have kids! xd
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Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2006 2:19 pm
[ Message temporarily off-line ]
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