Lets Start at the Beginning.....

A very good place to start!
Well let's see, Bob and I have been married almost 5 and a half years. Marriage has been wonderful and challenging! There never seems to be a dull moment as you are figuring out how to live with someone!
We began the family making process about 2 and a half years ago. I have always been sure that I was meant for motherhood. I can remember growing up and telling mom and dad that I wanted to be a housewife and a mother. Now that I am a little bit older and I hope wiser, the desire to be a mom and raise a little one has grown exponentially.
For the first couple years of our baby making attempts I was absolutely convinced that our fertility issues were my fault. Maybe I wasn't ovulating? or maybe I needed more weight (cake and more cake please)? Maybe less weight? Less stress? Less caffeine? I was constantly wondering what in the world I was doing that prevented the pregnancy we so desperately wanted.

So in April of this year we decided to get Bob checked and discovered our problem. Bob is a carrier of a genetic abnormality on chromosone 13 and 14 which dramatically impacts his body's ability to produce the necessary number of swimmers. After his first test the doctor said that he had 3.8 million on his team. I remember thinking, "That is plenty of swimmers, after all, you only need 1 right?" Well apparently, although 3.8 million is impressive, he should be fielding 20 million. Holey Moley! I thought this was supposed to be egg meet sperm, not egg meet the entire population of Denver and pick the lucky one. Geez this was going to be more difficult than I thought.

So we were referred to a fertility doctor in the posh area of Scottsdale. I remember driving to our first consult thinking, "we are going to get some drugs, add some diet changes and get pregnant". Our doctor took us into his office, sat us down and told us without even hesitating that the only way we were ever going to get pregnant is through IVF with ICSI and PGD (don't worry I will explain).

IVF is where they take a few eggs and some sperm, put them in a petri dish and get them together. Once they are embryos, they stick them back into me and in 9 months voila...BABY! ICSI is where they actually inject the sperm into my egg instead of a petri dish. It is kind of like a junior high dance. Instead of putting the boys and girls in a room and hope they get dancing, the teacher takes the little boy's hand over to the girl and makes them dance. Not as scientific as you thought, huh? The PGD is pre-genetic diagnosis. With Bob's abnormality the chance of genetic problems and defects goes up significantly. The PGD allows for our embryos to be diagnosed so that only the healthy ones get into the oven. So after all of this explanation he easily shared that the cost for all of this would be $23,000. Our stomachs dropped.....this was not the answer we were hoping for.

That appointment started our journey into the infertility world. We have seen 2 fertility doctors, 2 urologists, 1 geneticist and have had copious tests. Still, no baby and everyday feels like a mixture of fear, uncertainty and hope. Strange, huh? Through it all though, Bob and I have drawn closer to each other and closer to the Lord. While we don't understand the reasoning behind all of this we know that we serve a Big God and He can work the impossible.

Hopefully, the start of this blog will lead all of us to the day when my head line reads, "Pregnant at Last", until then I will do my best to keep you all updated on the Longmire's life and infertility. I will also learn how to add pictures.