Expansion of the Thomas Clan

I wanted to start this blog to write about the expansion of our family. I have kept a written journal since Eric and I started trying for our first baby in June of 2007.

Our journey to start our family didn't quite take the path I would have expected. My greatest fear in life was always that we wouldn't be able to have children. I was realizing that fear when, after 25 months of trying, we still hadn't gotten pregnant.

I watched all of my friends get pregnant or have babies. I became jealous and bitter that Eric and I couldn't have the one thing in our life that was missing. It was a difficult two years.

But our prayers have been answered. After months of praying for a baby, crying, and asking God why this was happening it finally became clear.

In May of 2009, shortly one month after my mom passed away, we got the most amazing phone call. Eric's sister Lori, who I have been lucky enough to be close with ever since I met Eric, called to tell us she and her husband, Richard, were 9 weeks pregnant. Before I could get the entire word "Congratulations" out of my mouth, Lori was telling me to wait. For various reasons she and Richard had decided not to parent this baby. They knew Eric and I had been trying for a long time, and said they couldn't think of two better people to adopt this baby. Needless to say we were shocked. We had just made an appointment to see a world renowned Reproductive Endocrinologist who was local, and had an IVF success rate of about 70%. By this point, we figured we wouldn't get pregnant without some medical intervention. Thinking with emotion first, I of course wanted to adopt this baby. I wasn't quite sure what Eric was thinking, but I knew I needed to give him time and not push the issue. We spoke a few times about it and decided that we needed to first see our RE and figure out what his recommendation for fertility treatments was.

On May 26 we went to see Dr. William Schoolcraft at the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine. He was a very nice man. Very humble. He talked to Eric and me, went over our medical histories, and in the end recommended Intrauterine Insemination (IUI) with Clomid as a first line of treatment. We would both need tests done, which will still happen in July. Eric will need to repeat his semenanalysis and I will repeat my hormone labs plus have a histerosalpingogram (HSG) to make sure my fallopian tubes aren't blocked. He recommended IUI a maximum of 3 times, and if that failed then we could move on to IVF with ICSI. He did say though that if Eric's SA came back again with 0% morphology he would let us choose whether to do IUI or move straight to IVF. We decided either way, we might as well try IUI at least once. If it worked...GREAT, if not...then at least we had tried it and could move on. Now that we were armed with some info about treatment, we needed to talk about the adoption.

June 1 rolls around and we left on vacation to Maui. Ten wonderful days in paradise! We talked more about the adoption. In a perfect world, we would have conceived on our own...didn't happen. Next best would have been to try a few fertility treatments and THEN make a decision regarding the adoption. BUT, we knew from the beginning that time was an issue and we couldn't wait until Lori was 8 months pregnant to give her an answer. After talking to our adoption liaison at work and learning that typically birth families and birth mothers aren't placed together until 6-7 months gestation (in order to give the birth mother more time to consider her decision and hopefully decrease the chance that she will changer her mind about the adoption at the last minute) I thought we might have time to try one IUI before making our final decision. Lori's OBGYN however let her know that if we weren't going to adopt this baby then they needed to seek an agency and start paperwork asap because it would take a few months to clear. We couldn't keep debating the issue. We had all of the information we needed, and just had to make a decision.

We had many options to weigh. Did we want to try fertility treatments, which may fail, and hope to conceive our own biological child, or did we want to go ahead with this adoption. After talking a lot about it in Maui, Eric and I finally decided that this adoption was the answer to our prayers. We had been praying for a baby for two years, and here was this beautiful baby that would need parents. We decided that putting off fertility treatments for a few extra months wouldn't hurt. My chances for conception wouldn't decrease as I would still be in the same age bracket, and it would give Eric and I more time to get healthy...only increasing our chances of getting pregnant. We plan to try fertility treatments sometime around March 2010 when the baby is 3 months old (depending on whether or not I'm ready for treatment with a 3 month old in the house!). That way, if they work on the first try the babies would be a year apart in age. Eric and I will still try naturally. If we happen to get pregnant on our own, we will be more than happy. In fact, I've had a ton of people tell me that now that we're adoptiong we'll probably end up pregnant, lol.

I am happier than I have ever been in my life. It is hard to actually describe the amount of joy I feel right now. After two years of trying for a baby, months of dissapointments, dreading the next phone call from a friend to tell me that she is pregnant I really had become bitter. I wasn't the same person I was two years ago. I did a lot of crying, questioned my faith, and became depressed thinking that I may never have children. But, now I am finally going to be a mommy. This year has been full of ups and downs so far. After battling infertility for 2 years and then losing my mom in April I had a very hard time imagining that things would be looking up any time soon. I even boycotted Mother's day this year. I couldn't become a mom and I had just lost my mom. I can't believe that 2 months after my Mom went to Heaven, I have been blessed with a baby. I can't help but believe that she had a hand in this, and is always watching over me! I only wish she would be here so that our baby could know her!!

So, this is the beginning of my blog chronicling our adoption. I can't wait to finally meet our baby, Due on December 16, 2009. I can't wait to hold him or her in my arms and finally be a mommy!

--Jenny

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