Long time no hear

Sorry I haven't posted. 

Life can be a little hectic when you have twin babies. 

Both are still healthy and thriving and I have 1 walker. 

Tons of teeth and still more childproofing to be done. 

My husband is under a lot of stress at work so almost all if the household duties. Well, to think about it, yes all of the household duties as well as caring for the twins. 

He's getting some help with his stress now. 

Although my TTC days are over, I love being there for others. 

When I decided to seek medical help to conceive. I joined a group of gals. Called ourselves "TTC 37+". 

All but 1 conceived and have given birth. The other 1 is expecting a baby through adoption later this year. 

It's been a year since I lost my mother and things are finally slowing down a bit and I'm really starting to feel the loss. 

41 years old and I feel like an orphan. 

I was childless for so long that I sometimes feel that these beautiful babies aren't mine. 

It feels as if I've been given someone else's beautiful children to take care of. 

Well these little one are turning 1 next Tuesday and their birthday party is tomorrow. 

Never thought I would get the chance to plan a birthday party for my own babies!!

I will stop the gabbing and let the pictures tell the story. 

Thank You Dr. L

So sorry for not being back sooner.
The twins are a full-time job and a half.
At a little over 6 months old they both teethed early and with all the crankiness and drool, both are sporting their 2 bottom teeth!!

I'm taking time out of all the hustle and bustle to remember someone who helped make my family possible.

I received a letter from FCI in early January.
The one doctor that believed in me is no longer with us.
He was the doctor that didn't give up.
He was the one doctor that respected my eggs more than I did by refusing to transfer them to a less than ideal uterus.

He was the only doctor that ever told me that my eggs were golden.

He took the time to talked to me when my mother was dealing with her liver cancer. He shared how he dealt with his father's cancer struggle. He held my hand when he saw me concerned.

When the time came to transfer my only 2 frozen embryos, he wanted to be the one to do it. FCI is a huge practice with all doctors capable of the transfer but he wanted to be there for us.

Early in my pregnancy, he told us that we had nothing to worry about. He told us that these babies were for keeps.
He was the coolest dude.
He helped us achieve our dream and I am forever grateful.

Dr. L passed away on January 8 th 2013.

Thank you Dr. L
Thank you for helping us achieve our dream of a family.
Thank you for taking such good care of those 2 little embryos.
Those 2 embies are 2 healthy smiling six month olds.

God bless you

Quick update with pics

Twins were baptized
And behaved beautifully in November

Asha got her first tooth a week before turning 5 months.

Roman is still working on his.

Made and mailed my first family Christmas card. Actually first time mailing Christmas cards in several years.

Still working on the minivan issue with husband. This is driving me out of my fraking mind!!!

So much to blog about.

I will be back but I leave you with pictures.

PTSD?

I've been thinking about this for months, and I do believe that women with infertility, who have suffered from miscarriages, and even women pregnant after infertility suffer from this.
Not to downplay people who have been diagnosed with this or suffer life threatening experiences, but I do believe that I suffer from this or a form of this.

After an early morning feeding, I decided to refer to Dr. Google.

I found several articles suggesting this.
Maybe talk therapy should be included more in ART/fertility treatments.

Just a thought

http://ivftraveler.wordpress.com/2010/07/06/ptsd-of-infertility/

http://www.lapalomatreatment.com/blog/can-infertility-cause-ptsd/

Miracles Can Happen...even after 4+ years

The first picture was taken as we drove into the city exactly a year ago to pick up my babies.
Its been a year since I brought my miracles home.
Exactly a year!!
Today I hold my miracles in my arms.
I have no other place to share this story.
I stare at the pictures and I still cry over my ice babies.
I cry even as I look at their faces smiling back at me now.
These are my miracles!
So what! science helped me!
They are still miracles from God!
I took a cheapo home pregnancy test at the 3 days after the transfer.
I was silly! very silly!
Took the test and there was a strong line!
"this shit must be broken!"
Did another, heck I had 50 of them!
Positive!
Another
Positive!
Came close to asking husband to pee on one to be sure.
I look at the picture of my thawed embryos and swear I know which is which.
I almost see their faces as I look at this picture.
Difficult to imagine that from a deep freezer came life.
Beautiful life came from a laboratory.
How strange!
How beautiful!
How awesome is God to give man the gift of intelligence and guide him to do wondrous things through science!
I remember that day!
I watch the embryos being drawn into the syringe on the huge screen

The nurses exclaimed" look they are hatching you're going to have twins!"
What a wonderful wonderful dream...and it came true!

I look at them today and it is hard to imagine that these funny little balls of love, smiles, and laughs came from something that was once frozen. Frozen for months.
How is that possible?
It's hard to wrap my mind around it. Thank God!

The Infertility Closet

First, I apologize if this blog is messy today. Typed it with one hand.

Now that I've gone through my journey to conceive my children and although my journey has ended, infertility still affects my life.

Recently, I have been placed into an infertility closet. I choose not to be, but my husband and my mother-in-law have forced me into it.

A few weeks ago I went to check out used cars. We are in desperate need of a new car for our little family. I went to carmax to see a wide variety of vehicles. The salesman I met was a nice older gentleman whose daughter was expecting twins. It was still early and he proudly presented a 7 week ultrasound picture.

He was excited and anxious to ask me questions.
His first and only grandchildren. Maybe it's something about my face, people like to tell me their stories.
The gentleman began to tell me how his daughter struggled for so long trying to conceive a child. Finally she and her husband came to him and his wife and ask for a loan in order to attempt an IVF procedure. They had tried everything else. He and his wife did not give them a loan, they gifted them the money for their IVF procedure. He went on to tell me that his daughter went through so much. He never knew there was so many medications and injections. after her retrieval only two eggs remained ,only two eggs fertilize, two eggs transferred. she was blessed to be pregnant with twins. She was still in the early stages however I believe that it will be a successful pregnancy.
He was so anxious to share this with me. $15000 babies he called them with glee. The salesman was so happy and so overjoyed to share his daughter's story. So proud!

I wanted to pour my heart out to this man. But I felt there have been invisible shackles placed upon my lips. I wondered and I worry what if my husband came to the salesman and the salesman let him know that I told about our infertility struggles. To me I felt no shame in telling the man what I gone through and sharing my struggles and sharing my trials. I felt that it was so unfair that these restraints have been placed upon me by my husband and my mother-in-law.I love to help people and I love talking to kindhearted people.

Slowly I began to open up. Had to, it was in my heart. I felt as if God placed me in this position and brought me to this man to share my struggles and share my journey. I wanted to give hope to them.I felt shame not ashamed of having to have IVF are going through infertility but the shame of not being forthright with this man. I began to slowly tell him bits and pieces of my own story and my own journey. I think he understood why I had to be quiet about the situation. It was a beautiful thing that this fellow was so proud of his daughter for her struggles that she went through to bring more lives into their family. I wish others could be as proud and as forthcoming when it comes to things like the silence of infertility.

I do not like this infertility closet that I have been forced into. I do understand why some have concerns about it.
There are very few weak minded individuals that find it comical or blasphemous to seek help in producing children.

Why is society so twisted in this way?
A strange day and age in which sexual promiscuity is accepted. Public drunkenness is excepted infidelity is excepted and where fertility is something to joke, snicker and pity about.
Why is that?
why is it a word that is spoken behind closed doors?
Why should I feel shame for something that I hadn't brought onto myself?
no one wishes to bring on themselves.
I have overcome this! I fought my ass off in this battle with infertility! I was challenged and I won!
Now I have to be ashamed and hide not because of my own feelings but because of how society views it.
It does not make me less of a woman. It does not make me look pitiful in God's eyes. I am triumphant!
I struggled but I finally got to the end of the finish line in that race.

I have a beautiful picture of the two embryos that were placed in my womb. These are my children. But my husband won't ever allow me to tell our children.
Will they feel inadequate strange odd because society deems them "artificial"? I would hate to burden them with the stigma that may be attached to their conception.

They were loved, they were wanted, they were plan,they were desired. They were conceived in the act of love just as many other children are. I love them so much and I see them as gifts from God.

Man may have had a hand in creating them but doesn't man always have a hand in creating children. God gives us his tools for reason.

For now I am in infertility closet. But I will venture out when my heart tells me too. hopefully one day I can come out of infertility closet confidently and be excepted.

Twin Spam October

14 weeks old!

Brain Vomit, purging my brain

There are so many things I would like to blog about.
Ive been coming to terms with a lot of things and couldn't pin down just one to blog about.
I'm ready to let go of my psrent's hoouse.
It's just a house now, my parents live in my heart and my mind.
Holding on to it might hurt our little family financially.
I don't want to risk my children's future, financial security, and safety.
We are in desperate need of a new vehicle. We are in need of a safe vehicle for our family. We have taken care of my Mother's household for several years while she was living. Now it is time for us to focus on this new chapter in our life. Sometimes it feels as if I was in purgatory for several years waiting to move on and move up. We are alive again. I know this would've made my mother happy and she would have wanted this for us.
My mother loved to journal. She wrote every day. I've recently have been scanning through some of her notebooks. So much wisdom and insight grace these pages. She wrote about the past and of things to come. She wrote of how my sister would have to deal with what she had done in the past.

At the moment my older sister and my younger brother are living there and are driving each other nuts.

My older sister is 14 years older than I am and my youngest brother is 5 years younger than I am.
He was legally adopted by my mother and father at the age of 2. He is their child and no one else's.
My mother wrote of this and as recent as the week before her death she stressed this. She stated," this is my son. My child!"
Biologically, he is my sister's first born.
She was a troubled teen and was skipping school. One day she was caught by a truancy officer in a house with a bunch of boys.
Thinking that city life was corrupting her, My parents quickly shipped her to my grandmother who lived in a smaller town. Grandma didn't take any shit and everybody knew each other.
Well a few months later my sister was begging to come home. She stepped off the plane months pregnant having hid it quite well from my grandmother because if grandma had found out, she would no longer be breathing. Wanted a late term abortion but then decided she would give the child up for adoption.
My father could not bear for my mothers first grandchild to be adopted away. They had always wanted another child to raise with me but stopped trying because of the risks. My father was 50 and my mother was 43 when I was born.
My sister vowed to better herself and was in a nurses training program shortly after giving birth to him. Failed a physical during training because she was pregnant again. Wanted to give this second child up for adoption. The biological father's family stepped in to adopt this child, a girl. My sister then went off to the military and would disappeer for years at a time. They had custody of this child until she was snatched by my sister a few years later. This poor child was snatched from a lovely couple who doted on her and lived for her. This little girl grew up in the inner city and went on to continue the cycle of irresponsibility. Giving birth to her first child at 15 and having a child almost every year. By the time she was 30 she had 8 children.
My sister went on to have 3 more children. Up to the late 90's when were unaware of the 2nd girl that was given up for adoption. This child had been searching for her birthmother. She was blessed to have been adopted by a wonderful couple. The adoptive father was a secret service agent. This young lady now works for the secret service herself.
Over the years , my parents would sometimes have custody of 2 more of the children when my sister would surface.
To get back to the situation of my parents house. My sister is there with my younger adopted brother and he is not giving her any sympathy for what or how she lived throughout the years. She is trying to force a relationship and calling him her son. He hates hates hates this. She has grown jealous of the relationship that he had with my mother. At the funeral she realized how the children that she did raise regarded my mother as their "mother". Because of this she lashes out at him. Calling him names and disrespecting him. She tries to degrade him. Every morning there is a new and stupid conflict. She hasn't a job and spends all day watching reality shows and gossiping on the phone. She has befriended my brothers ex girlfriends and calls them to gossip about him. She will never grow up or grow a brain. She lives for conflict and it's time for her to go.
I can't be a mother for my grown siblings. Its time for me to be the mother of my own little family.