Adios!

I typed in adios as my title quickly and with an exclamation mark…right after I stared at it wondering if I really was that excited that today is my last day of work. Bittersweet. Although, I excited, I am also nervous. I think about the last time that I left a job. It is incredible how those same feelings are back but the main difference is now I am a mom. I am not sure when the next time I will actually work will be. Right now I am feeling content though. It feels right and I feel happy.

• What I will miss most? I think just simply coming into the office. The basic practice of waking up and having to be somewhere.
• What you won’t miss? I won’t miss my ideas and thoughts being ignored or thought as negative. I won’t miss having a “boss” who likes to make it clear he is the boss. I won’t miss having to laugh at said boss’s dumb jokes.
• Favorite memory at TSM? Walking around on campus and hanging with my coworkers.

I don’t say this often enough. I am proud of myself. My hopes for myself is that I will slow down and take time to give myself some self-care. Here’s to the next chapter and many more.

Do something

I put my two weeks in. I have been thinking about doing it for sometime now. I will spare you with all of the back story but long story short. I work part-time while my husband is a full time business school graduate student. Whew. It has been a lot to balance but I have done it…well until the 17th of February. So its official. I am a stay at home mom…actually I really don’t like that because we are rarely home. Truth is that currently isn’t on my mind. I am sitting at my desk looking out my window at a high school tour. My co-worker who is an ultra-cool hippie cowboy chuckles and makes a comment about how high school wasn’t nice on everybody. I laugh and ask myself was high school nice to anybody?? I find myself looking back at that time with not so much regrets because I really don’t like that word but insight. I look back at my 20’s and they make sense…I was finding myself. I got married and with my husband we were figuring it out. I am one year into my 30’s and now is my time. I somewhat spontaneously quit my job. I don’t think I can give myself that much credit. I was exhausted when I did it. I didn’t document it on social media and have some mariachi band walk in behind me while I marched into my bosses office and quit. We had been at a wedding in Dallas a few days before, then had family intown to celebrate my sweet girls 1 year of life. So clearly Monday morning I woke up feeling like I weighed a 1000 pounds, took my husband to class watched my sweet girl then went to work from 2 – 5pm and when my boss had emailed the week before asking to see me to discuss a recent cancelation by a large client I walked into his office…no resignation letter or thoughts prepared and simply said I am exhausted. I am putting my two weeks in. I guess you could say I did something. I quit and boy does it feel good.

Calm Before the Storm

There wasn’t much to report in February except that it was the calm before the storm. Minimal Doctor appointments, a few acupuncture’s here and there. Just more waiting.

January

It’s a new year. Usually, I am all about starting new and fresh. I love what a new year represents. I usually have a long list of new year resolutions that range from working out 4 times a week to cooking more. This year I don’t have any resolutions because the word alone doesn’t seem to fit where I am in life. Let’s start by the simple definition of resolution:

res·o·lu·tion

ˌrezəˈlo͞oSH(ə)n/

noun

1.a firm decision to do or not to do something.

2.the action of solving a problem, dispute, or contentious matter.

We have a made a firm decision to start a family and because of physiological issues we can’t. We can focus on trying but there is no guarantee we will resolve our problem or contentious matter. I feel as though I am sounding bitter however I feel there isn’t much more to this other than right now in our journey, we are just here. I don’t know how to resolve. I know we have a somewhat plan of action that involves IVF but that doesn’t guarantee a resolution. Our new year is full of unknowns. I find that I read other people’s blogs and they are so positive and full of life. So full of desire to make this beautiful new little life and all I can do is feel numb. Like an outsider who doesn’t belong to the “pregnant kids club” or to the “TTC Community”. Life is still. January is still. Am I failing as an infertile who isn’t ready to “proclaim that God is going to give me my baby”. I can only proclaim I am here. I know D is also here because I can feel him and I know my God is here because I can feel him as well in my day to day experiences. I guess I have a resolution of being patient. I do believe our God is a faithful one. I can proclaim He is going to show me what is right for my life but for now all He is asking of me is to be patient. So I will be just that for this year.

29

It has taken me a few days to process thanksgiving and my birthday…it all seemed to come and very numbing-ly go. What can I say about 29. Well for starters it brought a rash but even more painful than rash it brought up very hard questions. I never thought that 29 will forever be equated to infertility. Isn’t it supposed to be just like when I turned 27, I had just completed a marathon. Or 28 brought the best year of my career as of yet. 29 – the year of hard questions. How do we make sense of life? Life. Do you really feel like you are living until you go through something really hard then life becomes very real, raw and honest. How do I face life when my own expectations haven’t been met? Whether it’s because of my own self or because of outer situations that we don’t have control over. This year of 29, I felt my younger self die just enough for it to hurt but not enough for it to destroy me. I tried to go back to a time when I was 9…was I scared or even think about being 10? 19 was full of bad decisions…29 is just full of sadness. Did I mention the rash? I am back in a place of hectic-ness and chaos. I am an addict to being busy so busy I can’t function if I am over booked. Since dealing with infertility it has literally stopped me dead in my unassuming tracts of life. My life doesn’t seem like mine anymore. My awesome life that I have fought for. I have made good decisions and bad I have grown into the woman that I am because of my failures, successes, fears, triumphs achievements disappointments. 28 I was standing tall on my own two feet. D-boy and I have had our own failures and successes together. By 29 I was supposed to be a Mommy. Motherhood was supposed to be my 29 so I could just slide into 30 with cliche’s like I wouldn’t change turning 30 because I have the best 1 year old. I would be so prime for 30. Have a one year old, be in shape have an incredible husband who gets a promotion every other day it seems. The bright side, I do have D-boy to spend 29 with. I wouldn’t change that for the world. So today I will take being 29 and infertility.

It Happened

I can’t stop going back to the night before Doom’s Day. We were with Special-K we had about 20 minutes left of our session. It was so comfortable sitting in a small, warm, safe place but most of all we had hope. I want to hold on to that night so bad but every day that goes by feels as if I am slipping into a place where the hope drifts further away from me. I asked her, “What happens if we get the worst prognosis tomorrow?” (which we did) and she said, “You can’t really plan or prepare for that however you and Husband are going to experience the worst pain you have probably felt in your life. You won’t know until you are there” I am here now.

I have entered a whole new dimension. It’s very Interstellar-esque sans Mathew Mcconaughey’s perfect hair. I feel like every time i revisit the situation I feel, remember or learn something new as if watching the movie again and again. Desperately searching for hidden meanings. However this is not a movie but my reality and I am not a big science person, ironically space scares me. I now feel like I am living a lone here in space. Last week was about crawling out of the weekend to figure out how to live again in my skin. Doing my everyday day to day activities seem foreign to me. I feel awkward. I have so many thoughts these days the only image I have of last week is of myself crawling to work, barely moving. The weekend was nice because I was able to be still in my thoughts and feelings. I can now at least start to feel like I remember what it feels like to be me. I had lived a full week of knowing that we only had a 20% chance of conceiving.

However, last night is when it happened. I was catapulted further back into my dimension of darkness as if the black hole had sucked me in and shot me into a whole different dimension further out. I told myself and anyone who mentioned that I could never feel envious of others having babies. I was recommended to allow space for these feelings of envy, anger, sadness. I didn’t feel like I needed to allow that because up until last night I had had friends or relatives come out pregnant and feel nothing but joy and excitement for them. I mean who doesn’t love belly’s and babies!?

One of the people I love most in this world has received the most wonderful news of expecting a baby. I don’t think I was grieving the fact that they are pregnant rather the fact that we are in a different place now. Darkness, numbness, a place of nothing comes easy, a place of lots of unknowns.  A place where even happiness hurts.

Finding the balance

Confirmation

We recently found out that after approximately 11 months of trying to conceive a baby unsuccessfully, we will not be able to have our little baby naturally. It all began when I changed to a new OBGYN. The change came because I figured when I found out that I was pregnant I wanted to have my Dr. close by. We started running some preliminary exams and when my exams came back clear as a formality we ran some tests on my husband which did not come back so positive. That day is when the real journey began.  I have to stay positive and tell myself it’s a journey; that this sad and lonely road is not the reality it feels like, a dark rabbit hole that we are being led down.

It was October 1st our 3 year wedding anniversary. I was sitting in my office dressed a bit nicer than usual. I wanted to look extra-pretty for dinner.  The bouquet of roses that the husband had sent were gorgeous. I wouldn’t say I was necessarily waiting to hear back from the lab for his results but it definitely was on my mind.  I was typing up an email when sure enough I looked down and noticed my phone had an incoming call. Picked up and when I heard, ” Mrs. Schurman, this is the nurse from the Dr.’s office. Do you have a minute?” My heart sank. Why would I need a minute?? All I needed to hear was, “Hi Mrs. Schurman just wanted to let you know all was good! Just stay relaxed…drink a glass of wine, take a vacation, don’t stress your timing is off.” The same words I had either told myself or had been told for the last 10 months. I immediately conference-d the Husband in. Walked outside. And then heard the words that would start the beginning of our world changing for the rest of our lives.

“We were unable to process the exam because we had nothing to examine.” Just like that. What do you mean? There were zero…ZERO!? Zero.  What!? There had to be a mistake. Honey, meet me at home.” This beautiful, plush rug that was life, my hopes of having a beautiful healthy little baby, expanding our little family, giving a baby cousin and grandchild to my family, were pulled right underneath my feet. That night my Husband and I toasted to some very expensive champagne not knowing what the next couple of months would bring us but to the simple fact that we knew at this moment we had each other.

From this time to now, I wish I could say that we have had high’s and low’s however it seems like there are much lower lows. Our high’s are feeling how much our family and friends love us. Watching my Husband grow emotionally, seeing myself do things I never ever even fathomed and being proud at the fact that I was strong and can carry my husband when he can’t stand.

Our latest low was on Friday. Scariest thought is I don’t think we are even close to rock bottom. Every Doctor appointment seems to bring harder and more dim news. After all was said and done this Friday it was confirmed that my Husband has non-abstructive azoospermia. (NOA) https://www.cornellurology.com/clinical-conditions/male-infertility/sperm-retrieval-techniques/management-of-men-with-non-obstructive-azoospermia/

We have three weeks until we find out how his genetic testing results come back. If they come back fine then we have the green light to move forward with In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). However, it’s not that easy. Of course it isn’t. The risk we run is that we start the very expensive process of IVF, my Husband goes under, we are mid IVF and they don’t find any healthy sperm…or they find 4 or 5! PLEASE GOD! Our prayer is that the genetic testing comes back ok and that when we do IVF there are sperm…however, if genetic testing does not come back fine then we will go from there.

Whatever the case is I have faith because I believe in a God who is greater and more powerful than all of this. I have good days and bad days. I hurt but know that we will come out on the other side. I don’t know what the other side looks like but I just have to focus on getting there.