How we got to this point...

So, this is my first attempt at a blog of any sort, and this is my first entry. I think I will just start writing, and explain things later as needed. This is mostly for me, to give me someplace to write down my thoughts. I love my friends, but only a few of them understand one of my issues, and even fewer understand the other. I just need to talk without feeling like the person listening doesn't understand.

In that case, how we got to where we are...
My husband and I met salsa dancing September of 2006. We started dating shortly after that. We got married February 14th, 2008 at the court house with a few friends as witnesses. He thought it would be romantic to get married on Valentine's Day. (He decided this the Sunday before said date. I had THREE DAYS to plan the wedding, although small as it was.) We then had a huge wedding, with over 600 people invited (somewhere between 200-300 actually came), on August 23rd, 2008. It was the greatest, yet most stressful, time of my life up until that point.

Now, here comes the first of my "double whammys:" trying to conceive. I was ready to have children right away. Heck! I tried getting him to have children before we even got married! I always had a feeling I was going to have a hard time getting pregnant. I don't know why, call it women's intuition. So much so, that I tried to convince my OB-GYN to run some tests on me back in 2004, even though I wasn't in a serious relationship. She refused, and said "We'll worry about it when you're married and can't get pregnant on your own after one year." I wish she would have listened to me...

So, December 2008 we "officially started trying" to get pregnant. Truth be told, we hadn't been using any birth control since July of 2007, but December was when we kept track of when I was ovulating, etc. My husband was getting quite anxious when I wasn't pregnant after the first few months; he was under the belief that I would get pregnant the first month of "trying." When I still wasn't pregnant 3 months later, he wanted me to go to the doctor to see why. I waited a few more months before calling to make an appointment, and my doctor finally referred me to the reproductive endocrinology clinic in May of 2009. I didn't actually go to an appointment until August 2009 for various reasons.

The reproductive endocrinologist (RE) didn't seem too concerned, there wasn't anything in my family history that lead her to believe I should have problems, but she said she would run a few tests anyway. Well, to her surprise (and the whole departments') I have some crazy rare birth defect! I am only the THIRD case they have ever seen at my hospital (which is one of the top hospitals in the nation.) My right ovary is half the size of my left ovary, and it is nowhere near my fallopian tube, although my fallopian tube is surprisingly open. My uterus is also heart-shaped and retroverted, to add to the fun. My RE did exploratory surgery in September 2009 to see if they could get my fallopian tube closer to my ovary. During the surgery they found mild endometriosis, which was burned and removed.

Around that same time, my husband got tested, as well. At first they thought he was fine, but then a varicocele was found. After several sperm analysis, they found that his little guys had a hard time swimming, and sometimes there weren't enough of them. Eventually, he will have to have surgery to fix the varicocele, otherwise his numbers will continue to get lower and lower.

The doctor said we would be a great candidate for IVF (invitro fertilization,) but she wanted to try 3 cycles of IUI (intra-uterine insemination) first. So, we endured the three unsuccessful attempts at IUI, and the ups and downs of thinking we were pregnant every time, before moving on to the big guns, IVF. Luckily, I have a job with good insurance, and they will pay for up to $25,000 lifetime for "infertility issues."

We started our first IVF attempt in January 2010. (I will be brief with this month or so of ups and downs, because I will be more informative later with what IVF is like during our second cycle.) The highlights are: at one point I was taking 3 shots a day, with blood work and ultrasounds every other day. I didn't respond to the medicine as expected, and had only 9 follicles (because of my age, I should of had 20-30.) Egg retrieval was February 19th, and they only got 6 eggs. 5 of those eggs were mature, and only one fertlized when placed with my husband's sperm. So, on February 22nd, they placed one 3-day-old embryo into my uterus and sent me home to wait until my pregnancy test on March 5th. I started having fevers after the embryo was placed in my uterus, and they finally diagnosed me with an uterine infection 4 days later. I started on antibiotics for 10 days, and felt no hope for the baby growing inside of me. Yesterday, I went in for blood work to confirm pregnancy. It was negative.

Now, onto the second of my double whammys. My husband is from Honduras. He came to the States in 2001, after a hurricaine destroyed his family farm, and left the country devestated. We grew to love each other, despite our differences. As he grew to trust me, he told me more about his life, and eventually his status in the United States. To put it simply; he doesn't have papers. I know many people have strong opinions on this subject. Trust me; I did, too, until I fell in love with an immigrant. I made an appintment to talk to a lawyer, to see if there was any way to get (my then boyfriend) "papers." There were too many loop-holes that he didn't fit into, blah, blah blah. We learned there was nothing "easy" we could do. The lawyer left it at "come see me when/if you get married."

After getting married, we joyfully went back to the lawyer to tell him the good news. We started the process of getting my husband more permanent status and the ability to go back to Honduras and visit his family (especially his ailing mother.) We found out that because of the way my husband entered the country, he would have to go back to his home country to await a greencard. Worst case scenario, he will be there for 10 years. I can freely come and go to Honduras to visit him during that time, he just cannot re-enter the United States until they say so. The average for Honduras right now is 8-18 months, so we're hoping he's not there longer than that. We want to get going on things. I am 30 and he is 31. We didn't get married until we were 29 and 30; we feel like we're just starting our lives. But, it is time for him to go home. Work is getting scarce. We can survive on my salary alone (and have at different times during our two years of marriage,) but he owns and runs a farm in Honduras. He has to have money to keep up the farm and pay the workers. He is also the sole income of his mother, who is legally blind and does not work.

This is where our double whammys merge: Our goal is for me to be pregnant before my husband goes home to "do his time." He plans to go home THIS June, in less than 4 months! We are ready to start a family, and if most of our time spent apart is while I'm pregnant, then the time will go faster for me, and he will come home to a son/daughter. I know many people have opinions about this, too. This is our choice, this is what we feel is right for us.

That's what I'm dealing with. Nothing much...