Our Appointment Yesterday

Yesterday Dan and I had our first appointment at the Fertility Center in Grand Rapids! Our last appointment was in Kalamazoo – we realized we were spoiled with that one, knowing that the majority of our appointments now will be in Grand Rapids. That called for an early morning, leaving a little after 6am. For all of those who know us well, that is VERY early. We are used to staying up later (in youth ministry, lots of it happens at night, so you learn to be a semi-nightish person). So 5:30am alarms aren’t always welcomed. Yes, I know that is normal for many of you, but for us, it’s not :).

The goal of that trip was to meet with the counselor – wow, we accomplished SO MUCH more! And we are incredibly thankful for that, considering the drive! What was supposed to be a hour appt., ended up being a 2 1/2 hour appt, which again, we feel so blessed! We met with the counselor for a hour, talking about what we think of the process so far, how well we know Brenda, our expectations, our support system, and she gave us some scenarios to think about. It was REALLY good meeting with her! In this whole process we can’t help but talk about our faith and how God has led us through all this – we are just following His lead. She said a line that we are going to take with us the rest of this journey – “daily, let go.” We were talking about some of the fears we’ve had and there are just so many unknowns out there. She said that daily we need to wake up and pray to just let it go. Let go of the fears. Let go of the worries. Let go of the unknowns. She said WE WILL encounter times when we need to have that saying at the forefront. It’s not going to be easy and some parts will be hard – that’s the reality of this process. But if we daily just let go of the control and let God, it will take us so far! We had a lot of medical questions – some she could answer some she couldn’t so she checked to see in the nurse was available for a quick minute to answer some of our questions. Well….

We ended up meeting with the nurse for over a hour! It was absolutely amazing! Going into this appointment with the counselor, we knew we would leave with a lot of questions, considering many of our questions dealt with the medical aspect of this process. The nurse was able to answer almost ALL of them! She was so great. Yesterday she didn’t have any appointments, which was rare, so she was able to sit and talk with us on the spot – for over a hour! For her to take that kind of time out of her day, unexpectedly, was such a blessing! We got a whole lot more understanding on what our next steps need to be. We have another appointment in January with the same nurse to talk about the medical procedures when we start. That is going to be our “official” consultation with her. She will take us step by step through each of the 5 (I think) procedures that need to be happen. She gave us a BUNCH of homework too, such as extensive paperwork and also research we can do on the shots I will need to be taking. Granted that is a little up in the air because between Dodds and my heart doctor, they need to figure out what meds I can and can’t take because of my heart.

We also talked about how we want to go about this process with the embryos, such as how many to fertilize and so forth. I tell ya, that is one HUGE question out there. We believe that we don’t want to fertilize more than we are willing to carry or allow to become implanted. Now, that means we have the option of donating our embryos too. If we implant and the first two take, and we had fertlized more, there is a 1 year waiting list for people who are waiting for an embryo donation. We were shocked at how long the waiting list was. To be honest, it broke our hearts because we know what it’s like to not be able to have a child. Granted the situation is a little different, but the emotions can be the same. Another thing to think about.

The 3rd person we met with was the doctor who deals with freezing eggs. She had a 10 minute block that she could speak with us, so we jumped on that opportunity. By freezing my eggs, we would bypass the issue of wondering how many eggs to fertilize. The stats were not great at all. We were a little discouraged by them in fact. So, in other words, we have no idea where God is leading us. We thought we were for sure going to freeze my eggs, but there are a LOT of unknowns in that process – there is only a 5% chance there would be a take-home baby if we went this route and had to use frozen eggs (if it didn’t work the first time). We are no math geniuses, but we know that that is not a “great” statistic. But what we do know is that God will lead us to the right decision. For most couples, they plan on using all of their frozen embryos because they are able to carry – in our case, it’s different. Carrying is the issue. We are taking the advice of the counselor – “let go.” We just need to keep praying about this one and we know God will lead us to the decision He wants us to make, if we ALLOW Him to lead! That is our big prayer right now – deciding what to do. Only God knows at this point!

After we met with her, it was almost 10:30! We set up our next few appointments, which we were able to get 3 in 1 day in January! They have been so great at that office to accomodate us and our distance away! They have gone above and beyond in my mind ALREADY and that was our first appointment there! We walked out of there saying “wow.” It was WAY more information than we were expecting, but information we have been wanting to know since starting this process! We just didn’t expect that all to happen and we were SO thankful it did! We feel we have direction. As much as we were moving forward before, we are moving forward even MORE. We have appointments set up. We have homework. We feel this is now a work in progress. Before it felt like we were just “information gathering” still. Now we truly feel we are a part of the process.

One nice thing about the longer drive is that it gives us a chance to debrief with each other. We talked non stop on the way home about different scenarios we could be encountered with. It’s really mind boggling to think about all the different “cases” that could happen. But, God knows if and when and we just have to trust Him!

It was a GREAT day yesterday! We left there feeling so good and we just praise God for His guidance and His plan yesterday! It was PERFECT!