Baby Steps 2

Have faith in God when your prayers are unanswered, your earnest plea He will never forget. Wait on the Lord, trust His word and be patient. Have faith in God He'll answer yet.

On February 12^th I started my 7^th round of clomid and I picked up my prescription for my HCG shot.

On February 21^st I went to the doctor’s office to have an ultrasound to measure my follicle growth. I had one follicle that measured 1.8 and one that measured 1.6. They wanted them to measure at a 2.0 so they decided to not give me the HCG shot that day.

On February 22^nd I went back to the doctor’s office. They did not repeat the ultrasound but they gave me my HCG shot.

On February 23^rd I went back to the doctor’s office. Noah and I had our second intrauterine insemination (IUI). This one caused a little bit of pain but nothing bad at all.

On March 4^th Noah and I celebrated our 11 year anniversary of being together!

Life was crazy busy. I had a rehearsal for a Britten opera at UAB on Tuesday March 1^st. I had a 7 hour rehearsal in Muscle Shoals for the Shoals Symphony on March 5^th and a performance in Muscle Shoals on March 6^th. On Monday March 7^th we went to Birmingham for rehearsal, on Tuesdays March 8^th we went to Sewanee for a rehearsal, on Wednesday March 9^th we went to Birmingham for rehearsal. On Thursday March 10^th Noah left in the morning to go to a conference in Baton Rouge and I went down to Birmingham for a rehearsal.

On Thursday March 10^th I was on cycle day 29. For the past three years I have been watching and counting my cycles and I have never before had a cycle that lasted more than 27 days. Before clomid I averaged 24-26 days but since clomid I had been averaging 25-27 days. I had been taking my Basal body temperature everyday that week and it was not going down so I knew something was different. I woke up without an alarm at 4:00 in the morning. I took my temperature and it was still high. I went to the bathroom and took a First Response pregnancy test. I sat on the bathroom floor for a while and looked over at the test. Once again, like so many times before I saw that one pink line completely clear as day. I walked over to throw the test away and noticed that there was the ever so slightest hint of a second pink line. I didn’t think that I had ever seen even a trace of a second line before so I stared at it a good while to make sure my eyes were correct. I called Noah in to ask if he saw the second line as well and he did. We decided that I would call my doctor and set up an appointment. I was nervous about taking a second home pregnancy test because if it said I wasn’t pregnant, I still wanted to go to the doctor and see what was up. Noah went out to the store and bought a digital First Response test. I went back to sleep and at 6:00 I took the digital test. I didn’t know if this test would be as sensitive, but about a minute later the digital test said ‘yes+’. We knew then that we definitely wanted to see the doctor as soon as possible. I was still wary because I knew that having an HCG shot can give you a false positive but my doctor had said to wait two weeks after having an IUI to take a pregnancy test and I had waited 15 days.

At 8:15 am I talked to my doctor’s office and set up an appointment to come in at 10:45am. I left school and went to the doctor’s. I went back and they gave me another urine test, which I passed again with a faint second pink line. The doctor said it was probably too long since I had had the HCG shot for it to be a false positive from that. They gave me lab orders and sent me to the lab to have my progesterone and HCG levels tested and they would call me with the results later that afternoon. They told me they would better know how far along and when to set up another appointment based on these results.

I called Noah who was waiting at the airport and I went back to school to finish the day. At 4:15 the doctor’s office called and said my results were ‘great.’ My progesterone was a 46 and they looked for at least a level of 15 and my HCG was only 196, which is low, indicating very, very early pregnancy. I will go back to the lab on Monday March 14^th to have my HCG levels tested again.

Right now we are cautiously optimistic. I do not know if this is the end of our journey with infertility or if this is just another step along the way. Either way, I am so grateful because I feel that no matter what happens this is a huge leap for us. I have prayed and hoped for a positive test for so long, I almost don’t even know what to think. I'm not ready yet to start thinking about the eventual outcome or to shout our news from the rooftops but I wanted to share our latest and biggest step forward. Everyday that passes I start to believe it more and more but I know that we are extremely early on. I’ll continue to pray and to have faith that God is in control.