To Our Future Child

One of the things that I decided to do in order to keep my spirits up is to begin a journal that I could one day give to out future child when they are old enough to read. I have heard so many women begin something similar to their future husbands when they begin dating, or even little notes to their fiance to be opened during their first year of marriage. That's when it popped into my head, 'why don't I do the same, but to our future child as a keepsake?' I mainly wanted to begin the journal so that they would be able to see the rough journey we went through just to meet and love them. That they would be able to be reminded over the years just how loved and wanted they were before we even met them. Just how God loves and wants us before we were even placed in our Mother's womb.

I wanted to make it even more of point to do so after we determined that God is leading us to have children through adoption. Through my school years I knew a handful of kids who were adopted, some as a baby, some as children by other family members, some who had adopted parents, and of course some who lived in foster homes at the time. For the most part many of those kids I knew felt completely loved, and couldn't imagine their lives without those who stepped up to the plate to raise them. But then there were a few others who were adopted who didn't feel loved at all, not by their family or by fellow classmates. They always felt out of place and like they didn't belong. This wasn't a complete surprise to me growing up, manly because the city I grew up in did not have many families that had adopted children. Infertility and adoption was still a complete taboo back then, which was funny since we had an actual orphanage in town at the time. Some of the kids from that orphanage even went to my school.

 Knowing this past experience I started to think about our future child, would they have those feelings of being unloved and out of place too? Since we are planning on adopting an older child, what we weren't able to bond with them correctly? What if they ended up just hating us or not feeling connected to us at all? What if...what if...what if...insert mini panic attack here. We haven't even begun the adoption process and I was already starting to freak out. I knew I had to do something proactive to curb the anxiety and stress of it all. That's when I decided to begin the journal.

I don't write in it every day, but just at major points that would convey just how loved and wanted they are. To show that we fought tooth and nail to have them placed in our lives, to share our love and hearts with them.

Why We Decided to Try Holistic Treatments

When we decided to try a basic IUI treatment, we had no idea just how many injections that it was going to entail. You can imagine my surprise when I received the instructions from the doctor and noticed that there were going to be several injections as well as pills. Not exactly the best news for some one who has a phobia of medical needles. My fear only grew when I went to the pharmacy to pick up the medications and saw just how large AND long the needles were. I swear I just about passed out when the poor pharmacist gave me the needles, I even laughed and said, 'this must be for some one else, right?'. Sadly, it was not a mistake and they were all for me. I went home trying to wrap my head around the fact that I was going to have to somehow muster up the strength (mentally and physically) to go through with both injections at home.

The pills were easy enough to take, but it was the crazy symptoms they commonly caused that had me worried. I was at a new job where no one knew me that well just yet and also wouldn't know that I might have mood swings that were not a reflection of my normal personality. I also have a track record of being allergic to new medications, naturally I was worried that I would randomly be allergic to one of these new pills. Because of that possibility I decided to tell my new boss so that if heaven forbid it happened at work, they would know what was going on. Thankfully, I didn't develop any allergies to the medications.


When it came time for my husband to give me the first two injections all hell broke lose, at least mentally for me. Obviously I knew that later that night my husband would be giving me the injections, so I tried to prepare myself mentally for it all day. I prayed, I even tried to watch videos of people getting injections during lunch to try and desensitize myself a little bit. When I got home I tried to tell myself that I was ready for this and that it would be worth it if I got pregnant. I felt confident and ready for the injection. Boy was I enormously wrong about that. The whole day I kept envisioning the needle, I would tell myself it's just the small needle. How bad could it hurt? When my husband brought everything out I noticed that the small thin needles were not the ones he was holding, but instead the massive and long needles. I went into instant freakout mode.

I literally smacked his hand away and almost knocked them right out of his grip. I even checked the instructions because I though surely he was mistaken and had the wrong ones. Nope, they were the correct needles. After about 30 minutes of crying while having a panic attack, my husband made the executive decision to just do the injections quick and while I was completely distracted. Part of me was thankful that he decided to think quick and just do it so I had no time to think or process what was going on. The other half of me was going to murder him in his sleep for doing something like that. Mainly because the needles were so big and long that I could feel every second of it in me and it hurt like hell. The third injection I convinced the doctor to give to me during my appointment, because otherwise I was going to have to give it to myself at work. And we all know how the first to went at home, that was not going to happen at work.

As most of you know we did not have success with the IUI, I didn't even remotely have the slightest of pregnancy symptoms. AF came right on time and with no complications. After all of that craziness and realizing that my fear of medical needles was still alive and well, we decided to instead focus on holistic or natural treatments instead. We also decided to focus on looking for adoption agencies and what we need to do in order to prepare for that journey. We also decided that in continuing to move up to more powerful medications for treatments, which would include more injections, would only cause more stress for both of us. Which would only continue to reduce the chances of us getting pregnant. The statistics the doctor gave us for chances of success for IVF was still incredibly low for us. After a lot of prayer we decided to not go through expensive western treatments, but to instead go the more natural route. Even if it meant we would never have any children of our own.

Making this decision also helped us to begin looking more seriously into adoption and preparing for that journey. But it also meant that we didn't have to worry about spending large sums of money all at once on the treatments. Spending all of that money would effectively make us go bankrupt. We still do not have a little one of our own yet, but I can safely say that our mental and physical health are much better after coming to that conclusion.