Reset Button

Since I was a child I longed for the day I'd become a Mom, and for a long time I dreamed of having 3 or 4 children. Aside from Paul I only had one other boyfriend. That man wanted to have lots of children, and I remember that in my discussions with him we had decided as a compromise that we'd have five children. This was back in my naïve days when I thought you had some control over how many kids you had. When I was dating Paul, I found out that he thought two kids would be more than enough, and so I remembering thinking that three might be a compromise between the four I hoped for and the two he wanted. When we got married, I figured the most kids we would have would be three, and when we pursued Ukrainian adoption, we had prepared three dossiers in case we adopted three siblings at the same time. I thought that after we had Ian that my desire to try ivf again would be gone because of how long it had taken us to have those two children and also what our ages were at that time, but it surprised me how badly I still wanted to have one more baby. It took Paul a lot longer to also have the desire to try for number three, and I was actually surprised that he changed his mind. I knew when we did the our third egg retrieval it would be our last. I was hoping against hope the Lord might use it to give us our third child, but actually my expectations were very low given how close I was to turning 40 years old. The Lord graciously gave me the desire of my heart and allowed me to give birth a third time. After I had Oliver, I had zero desire to be pregnant again. That was the first time in our then eleven years of marriage that I had felt that way. I thought maybe this was some of the good that could come out of that difficult summer in the hospital. The traumatic pregnancy had taken away my desire to have another baby, but we still had one frozen embryo since the RE only let us transfer two of them that time. It took a long time for me to work up the courage to start the FET process, but once I started stabbing my belly, I wanted to be pregnant again as much as I did in 2007 when we were trying ivf for the very first time.

Then I saw those two beautiful lines on the hpt. On the first day they were so faint I really kept my hopes down because it seemed just like the ectopic pregnancy, but when the line was much darker the next day, my hopes started going up even though I knew that implantation seemed to have taken place too late for it to be a viable pregnancy. When I found out that the pregnancy was definitely doomed, it was harder to take than I thought it would be. I kept thinking that because I already have three children at home and because my last pregnancy was so difficult, it would not be hard to deal with a miscarriage. I was wrong. I am struggling to have our ttc journey end on this sad note. If we hadn't had a frozen embryo, I am confident we would never have darkened the door of a fertility clinic again. A year ago I had no desire to try for a fourth baby, but going through the FET cycle and then seeing those two lines on the hpt stirred the desire within me for a fourth baby. However, I have zero desire to ever take another fertility medication again, and after all the failure we experienced throughout the adoption process, I have zero desire to do another home study and try to adopt a fourth child. I have tried to remind myself of what the last pregnancy was like to try to get myself back into the mindset of never wanting to be pregnant again, but I haven't succeeded thus far. I wish there was a reset button I could push to get my emotions and desires back to where they were a year ago. We never planned to try for a fourth child. We only did because our third ivf resulted in a baby and a frozen embryo, something that didn't happen with our first two rounds of ivf. I am not sure I will ever understand why God didn't allow all three embryos to be transferred in January 2012. Up until last week I thought the reason might be that we were going to have a fourth baby in the spring of 2014. Maybe the Lord took our little one to Heaven to protect me from an even more dangerous pregnancy. All I can cling to right now is what Job said, "The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. May the name of the Lord be blessed."