Our journey to parenthood Part 1

Thanks to Carrie for the idea to post about this.


It all started in the year 1971 when a little girl named Tonya was born. Oh wait, maybe that's a little to far back. How about this. It all started when a boy named Tim and a girl named Tonya were married at tender ages of 21.


Like most people that age, we thought we knew it all and had a plan for when we would have children. We decided we would wait until we were 25 (we are the same age only 2 months apart) to start try to get pregnant. As scheduled somewhere in our 25th year we started trying. And as with most things that are scheduled, we soon found out that life doesn't always turn out as you plan it.

The first year went by and while we were discouraged we were still very hopeful. We started our first type of fertility treatment which was for me to take Clomid. Another year went buy with nothing. By this time we were dumbfounded. What was going on here? Didn't God know that all my life I wanted to grow up and be a mommy. Sure, I might have to work to help support the family but my family and being a mom would always come first. Why could all these people around me get pregnant? Why could the drug addict on the street pop out as many kids as she wanted? What was wrong with me? What had I done to deserve this?

At this point we started seeing a fertility specialist. We went through a few different treatments (I'll spare you the details) Still nothing. The next year or two were a blur. I underwent laparoscoptic surgery to find out what was broken in me. Much to my surprise I had a pretty significant case of Endometriosis (again, I'll spare you the details) Let's just say that it prevents things from working like they should. The surgeon did what she could to remove as much of it as she could. We left with renewed hope that we could be successful now. Another year goes by and the fertility treatments were getting more intense. By this time, I was injecting myself with hormones and Tim was even giving me a shot every couple of weeks. I had to go in several days a week to have blood drawn to find out when I was "ripe" for the treatments we were doing.


One day, I was getting my blood drawn and they came at me with the needle and I just lost it. I was sobbing. I couldn't stand getting stuck even one more time. Now as a side note, I used to be a Phlebotomist (a.k.a. vampire, blood sucker, the one who draws the blood) so there were many times when I was the Guinea pig for a new person learning to draw blood. I had never been afraid of needles. I was pretty tough, if I do say so myself. I had just had enough of being poked and prodded. Not to mention the fact that my hormones were raging with all the different treatments. Tim looked at me at this point and said "Enough is enough we're taking a break." So we did. We stopped all the treatments, the hormones, the drugs. It was a relief really. Don't get me wrong, I was still angry/mad/frustrated/hurt etc. It was just a relief to not be thinking about if for five seconds. It had consumed my every waking moment for 4 years. At some point, not sure of the timing, I went to have a treatment for the Endometriosis, not to get pregnant but because it is very painful and I hoped that I could "cure" it. The treatment was horrible. Essentially I was put into menopause for 6 months. Tim deserves a medal for putting up with me through this. First, I was pumped full of hormones for several years and then they took them all out of me in a very short period of time. To say that I was unstable would be a understatement. There was some hope that the last treatment would help but it was not to be.


To be continued......