A Little Background Info... Well maybe a lot

As I said in my profile, Craig and I were married in November 2005. We are high school sweethearts and have known each other since grade school. After we got married I quit teaching my lovely inner-city 7th graders and started traveling with Craig. Baseball has taken us to some amazing and NOT so amazing places and we have made wonderful friends who I still talk to every week! God has blessed us so much in the past 5 years!

In October 2006 I decided to get off of birth control to see what my body would do. See, I had been on some sort of hormone since I was 14. Medicines ranging from estrogen to testosterone, back to a depo shot and combinations of birth controls and supplements. My doctor was trying to prevent me from having endometriosis. So needless to say I wasn't exactly sure how my body would function/not function without hormone supplements. Craig was in Arizona playing fall ball so I figured this would be the best opportunity incase I went completely nuts!!! Surprisingly I felt better than I had in years! I was not as moody or anxious and I felt like I had more control over my emotions.
That coming spring Craig and I decided we were ready to throw caution to the wind and if it happened it happened.  I knew that it might take a couple of months so I didn't put too much stress on it. Still we bought a bigger house and I got the SUV, mini Vans aren't my style. I was like, "Soccer practice here I come!!!" But after 5 months of no luck, I began to question how long it would actually take. I remember sex ed in high school and they made it sound like sitting on a toilet seat could get you pregnant. So when the season was over that September, I came home to talk with my doctor. He did a couple test and drew some blood and all my levels looked perfect. He told me to go buy some ovulation predictors and keep trying. So thats what we did.
April of 2008 rolls around and I'm getting impatient. We see a fertility specialist in Chattanooga, TN that basically tells us that Craig will never be able to have children. Talk about devastated!!! We didn't know where to go from there. Let me tell you, that season was the worst time of my life. The news almost destroyed our marriage. But thankfully we got through it and became stronger because of it.
That off season I went to a specialist in Mississippi. This group of doctors retested both of us and decided that neither one of us was a sole contributor to not getting pregnant. This doctor started digging into my mother's medical and reproductive history. She could always get pregnant but not carry full term. After having my little brother at the age of 26, she had to have a partial hysterectomy. In 2008 she had a complete hysterectomy and they find that she had very advanced endometriosis. After this, I'm scheduled for a laparoscopic surgery to see to what degree I have this same condition. Sure enough they find I have stage 3 of 4 endometriosis with an endometrium cyst on each ovary. So much for the 10 years of preventative measures... Doc cleans me up and says I better than new. Then he draws me a graph, gotta love medical terms in graph form huh? Any way he tells us that the next year is the best for getting pregnant if I don't get pregnant in a year we move to the bottom of the graph to the 3% of people that have "unexplained" infertility. So go home and try, try, try.
This brings us to September of 2008 and nothing is happening. We continue to hope that it will happen and try not to try so hard. That spring we end up in Louisville, KY and the University Medical Center there has a world renowned researcher and doctor for infertility! What luck, I needed one of those! So off I go in search of answers. They decided to put me on birth control for a month, then start with a double dose of clomid (100mgs). Excellent, a half dose has been known to make people psychotic. But I give it a go. And nothing! After 5 months of fertility cocktails...NOTHING! Craig and I are now part of that DREADED 3%. NO worries, we have 2 of the cutest dogs in the world! We can go home to MS, regroup and decide what to do.
That September we decide to give artificial insemination a try. I take the hormones, drive 90 miles every other day for blood test and sonograms. Finally it's time and drive back to Jackson to find out they never stored the semen... soooo there was nothing to inseminate me with! AWESOME, really like this wasn't embarrassing and awkward enough! That was a bad day. My mom drove me home and I started to prepare for yet ANOTHER round of drugs and emotional roller coasters. We tried again in November, the day after our anniversary and the same day we found out Craig had been picked up by the Orioles. WOW talk about never a dull moment! Sadly that round did not work. So we decided as a couple and then as a family (his parents and mine) that IVF was going to be the last option. Spiritually I was worried about this option and what it would mean for unused embryos. Being a Christian and Catholic, I struggled with coming to terms of this being morally right. I talked to preachers and other devote followers, prayed about it and came to the decision that God had given these doctors the ability to help me and I was using their expertise for good. Not to choose gender or eye color.
December and January were CRAZY with appointments and shots and THOUSANDS of non insurance covered medical cost. We were emotionally, financially, and physically involved in this process. But we were hopeful and our families support helped us through. At the end of January I completed my first round of IVF. They had transferred two embryos. We counted down the days to take the blood test and alas a positive result. Craig and I were ecstatic, I mean floored but we knew this was the first test. I needed 3 more. The 2nd and 3rd test were positive and we decided to share the news with our parents and siblings. Last test was only 2 days away!
February 8 was the WORST day of my life. Vicki, my REN called and I could tell she was upset. My levels had dropped completely and I was told it was a chemical pregnancy and that I was no longer pregnant. I remained calm and told her I understood and then waited for Craig to get home so I could tell him. Telling him was extremely hard and watching him loose control was even harder. I was so upset and shocked that I couldn't cry, I was numb. We spent the next few days crying and asking why, but we knew that God had a plan and we needed to trust Him in this struggle. That weekend we packed up our things and headed to Spring Training. This was a new year, a new team, new friends, and new opportunities and we planned to make the most of them.
And God new what he was doing! Craig made the team out of camp (check off the bucket list) and we were going to be in Baltimore... Home of Johns Hopkins and the best medical researchers in the country!

This was our year and our chance at having the family we had prayed for and waited on for 3 years!