Life, with all of its twists and turns, caught us by surprise again. Ever hear the "best laid plans" saying? Well, we definitely know that there are just things you cannot plan for. Never has it been more apparent than in the last year.
Here is a rough timeline of events:
2003 - Got married (always talked about having a biological child and adopting the opposite gender from South Korea)
2005-2008 - Struggled with infertility
2009 - Got pregnant and had a horrible go around with Hyperemesis Gravidarum
2010 - Shay was born!
2012 - Began to look into South Korean adoption only to discover we are ineligible due to the South Korean government mandate that there cannot be more than a 10 year age gap between spouses (Jeff & I are 11.5 years apart)
2012 - Went to see what our chances of conceiving naturally again would be and were told that we had less than a 1% chance. I wasn't positive I wanted to go that route due to the rough time with H.G. but I wanted to know all of our options.
2012 - Though it was a big change from what we had planned, we started the process to adopt domestically figuring that the infertility diagnosis was confirmation enough to proceed with adoption.
2013 - Our home study was approved and we were chosen by a birthmother a few months ago. This adoption ultimately fell through as she decided to parent once the baby was born.
This all leads me to today. Timing has been so crazy and yet so orchestrated. Our agency was calling us to begin the process for a home study renewal. Both of us were a little hesitant for several reasons I won't go into on this post. Suffice it to say, we weren't 100% and wanted to take some time to both get clarity on how to proceed.
For months we've had our Smoky Mountains trip planned so we wanted to go and celebrate our 10 year wedding anniversary with a private vow renewal and photography at one of the most beautiful places ever, Honeysuckle Hills and just take some time to step back from everything. We also rented a beautiful chalet way up in the mountains with amazing views, hot tub, jacuzzi, fireplace, etc.
Here's the crazy part: Just a few days prior to leaving for the Smoky Mountains, I found out I am pregnant! Excitement, fear, everything hit all at once. This was definitely an answer regarding whether or not to renew our home study. Jeff called our case worker and she was very supportive and has suspended our case but we can always renew it if we choose adoption later. Ironically, just after finding out I am pregnant, I also was contacted to enter the final process for grad. school admission to ASU's online master's program and found out that I had been selected to attend the NAMIC business leadership seminar in L.A., both of which I had to turn down. After confirming the pregnancy with the doctor, off we went on our anniversary trip. I'm so glad we had those precious, amazing days because, on the last day of the trip, Hyperemesis Gravidarum reared its ugly head with full force.
It was an extremely long trip back with me throwing up constantly. Luckily we got back into town in the early afternoon and were able to see Dr. V. that evening. He immediately admitted me to the hospital where I stayed all the way until yesterday evening. We had hoped that it would be much easier to treat the H.G. this time around but we thought wrong. The hospitals and infusion companies will no longer give as high a dosage of meds as they did when I was pregnant with Shay so it took some miserable days in the hospital trying to come up with a combination of meds that would work to help me. Yesterday, after 4 tries, they were finally able to get a PICC line and now I'm home attached to 2 medicine pumps and will have home care nursing twice a week.
I cannot tell you how awful H.G. is. But with it came so much outpouring of support from family and friends. We are so grateful. I'm 7 weeks along and we're most definitely still not out of the woods as far as risk of miscarriage so I continue to ask for prayers. I also wanted to send out a huge thank you to those who have supported the adoption. We still paid about $6,000 into it and, even though things haven't worked out the way we thought, we are still so grateful for everyone who has supported all of our means to grow our family.
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