Happy Belated Birthday to Me: My 27th Year in Review

I thought it might be interesting to look back on my 27th year of life on my birthday. I was going to do this on my birthday, but it was a Sunday. So it was busy. Then this week with all of the birthday and anniversary festivities has been full of action. As I thought about the last year of my life I gotta say I was a little overwhelmed by it all. So I thought I would share. And let me warn you, it's a pretty long recap, which just shows what a year it has been...

Actually, I'm going to start a month before my 27th birthday. Less than a month before my birthday, Bryan and I were blessed with one of our dreams. We bought our first house. Oh, that house. I love that house. For 7 years we had lived in an apartment or duplex of some sort. And with dogs, having to walk them 10 times a day wasn't too fun. So I was especially happy to be getting my very own fenced in yard. And what a yard it was. About .4 acres of fenced in grassy-ness! The dogs loved it. They would have lived out there if I would have let them. So that, by far, was my favorite thing about the house. The lot was set in a quiet, established neighborhood that just screamed homey! :) Sometimes I would just look around me in awe that this was mine, finally. We were happy. Our life was coming together like we planned. But God had a different plan.

Two weeks after that we lived another dream. Bryan graduated from Law School!!!!! After 9 years of college, he was done. I felt like a proud mama! All that hard work, all that sleep he lost, all the stress, all the books...finally, it was over. And let me just add that out of about 200 fellow classmates he finished number 13 in his class. Top 5%. Yep, that's my man! What a wonderful day. And we got to celebrate with an open house at our new house. I will always remember that day. But something was missing. We had timed it perfectly to have a baby shortly after graduation. At that point, we had been trying to get pregnant for 10 months. My OB had called and told me her work was done and referred me to a fertility specialist. I remember sitting on the floor in the bathroom at work crying. Why wasn't this easy? Why wasn't God giving me a baby? Remember that plan of God's? Well, he was working.

Two days after graduation, Bryan was laid off from his job at the law firm he was working for. This was the firm he had been working for since that January, and the job that he would become an associate for upon passing the bar. Yet another huge change in our lives. We just bought a house, and Bryan has no job?? We realized that our plan to have a baby right during that time would have been very tough without Bryan working. So that was my answer, God knew what he was doing by making me wait for my baby. But as far as Bryan's job it was very hard to understand at the point just what would happen. Well, as so many times before things worked out for the best. Bryan took the next 2 and half months to prepare for the bar. So that was part of the blessing of not working. I can't imagine how he would have done it and worked at the same time. During those few months we pretty much just lived together but that's it. So much studying going on in our house. But once again, it was worth it.

About a month after that we had our first visit to the fertility doctor. We had been trying to have a baby for almost a year. My body just wasn't cooperating, and basically my reproductive organs weren't functioning normally without medicine. Well, you can't get pregnant if all your "plumbing" isn't working. We discussed our options and came up with a plan to begin in August.

In the meantime, the energy company that Bryan had been working for when he left for the job at the law firm rehired him as a contract attorney. He started the week after the bar was over! What a blessing. Little did I know then that this move would evolve into so much more...But again, God was supplying our need.

About a week after that, at the beginning of August, I started round one of fertility treatment craziness! Crazy really is the best word to describe what my body went though. If I had only known what would follow. Mood swings, hot flashed, night sweats, weight gain, and just plain meanness.Poor Bryan. But fortunately I married a man who takes very good care of me. I went for an ultrasound to make sure everything was good to go. Then started the oral medicine for 6 days. Then shots in my stomach along with it. Then another ultrasound to see if there were any dominant follicles. There were none, but some that were pretty close, so we did meds for a couple extra days hoping they would grow. Then proceeded with the last shot to release potential eggs forcing my body to ovulate. Then the two week wait began. Was I pregnant? Did it work? No.

In September Bryan found out that he did indeed pass the bar!!! There was never any doubt in my mind, but still it was such a relief! My husband was officially going to be a lawyer. Thank the Lord! Finally!

In October Bryan was sworn in, and I was officially the wife of an attorney!!! I love the way that sounds. Yes, my husband is a lawyer. And about a couple weeks later Bryan came home and said Brian (the partner from a DC law firm) was at work that day. He had met him a year before. My immediate response was, "I'm not moving to DC!" He told me to calm down, and that they were just talking to him. Fine, let them talk to him, that's fine with me. Well, the "talking" turned into their wanting to interview him in DC. Still I had hope that they would hire him and he could work remotely from Indy. That was my plan.

In November was round two of fertility treatment craziness! They upped my medicine hoping for better results. I went for the ultrasound to see if I had dominant eggs. I did! I had 3!!!! This was it. I knew I would get pregnant this time. But, in the few days after the ultrasound all it did was make me so sick. I literally couldn't breathe or move without everything inside me just hurting. I didn't know what was wrong. An ultrasound showed that basically my ovaries blew up to three times the size from the medicine. So I had giant ovaries, and again, no baby.

During those few days Bryan flew out to DC for his interview. He came home that Wednesday night and told me if he wanted it the job was his. I was so drugged up, I remember still thinking, ok, great, and we can stay here. He might have to travel but we can stay here and still be employed by the firm. I could work with that. By the next day I realized that was not the case. They wanted him (us) to move to DC!!! DC??? Really?? No way. And we had to know in two weeks. We had to make this decision by two weeks before Christmas. What a great Christmas present for our families. Hey, Merry Christmas, we are leaving.

And that's just what happened. We told them we were leaving right before Christmas. Not the best Christmas ever...It was hard to be happy and celebrate the holidays when in just a couple months we would be 9 hours away from them instead of 2. Bryan  had taken the job and was thrilled. And he had every right to be thrilled. He was going to be employed by a top 100 firm in the world. It was such an amazing opportunity. To be an attorney for two months and land a job like this? A dream come true. Making this decision was the hardest thing I had ever had to do. I could not honestly say I believed it was God's perfect will, but my husband could. And that's all that mattered. I trusted that he was making the right decision for his family. But, honestly, it's not a good feeling when you don't know in your heart that it's the right thing to do. But I married him. I trusted him. And I would follow him to the ends of the earth.

Also, that December we had another visit with our fertility doctor. We wanted to discuss what the next step was. Surprisingly, he walked in the room and told me he wanted to do surgery. To "stimulate" my ovaries and make my body do what it was made to do. Right, surgery. Sure, let me just fit that in before we move. I was blind sided and just couldn't wrap my head around having surgery. So we decided to go ahead and do round three of fertility treatment craziness. If that didn't work I would have surgery. Well, since the medicine made me so sick the last month and didn't do enough to produce eggs the first month he set my dose right in the middle of the two. Also, this time we were going to do and IUI (intrauterine insemination). I was excited. We went on a Wednesday to have the ultrasound that would confirm that I had eggs and we could do the IUI Friday. The ultrasound showed nothing. Literally, nothing. No eggs that were even kind of close. It did not work. There would be no IUI, and I would be having surgery. I cried. I cried and cried. I couldn't control myself so I took the day off work. And I went home. And I cried. No IUI. No baby. Surgery.

On February I had a laperoscopy and hysteroscopy. He was just supposed to "poke holes" in my ovaries to get them going. But on top of that he removed endometriosis from my bladder and uterus and a polyp on my fallopian tube. Having surgery was a blessing in disguise. Going into it I wasn't 100% sure this was the right choice. But God, once again , was taking care of me. He knew I had endometriosis even thought the doctor didn't. My great physician was working in my life again.

Three weeks after that we moved to Washington, DC. Our house was officially on the market. My house. My perfect house that I love. Someone else was going to buy my dream home that I had only lived in for 10 short months. I was leaving my church family and friends in Indy. I was moving 7 hours further away from my parents. The moment I pulled out of my driveway for the last time was one of the most difficult moments of my life. My chest tightened up, my heart started pounding, I couldn't breathe, and I couldn't stop crying. Someone told me later I was having a panic attack. I had never experienced anything like that before, and it happened several more times in the next few days. My life was turned upside down. Everything was different. We were far away from our friends and family.

Now, three months later I am finally starting to be okay again. Before we moved I just kept saying it's not going to be wonderful or perfect at first, but like so many other times in my life I knew I would be okay. It has taken longer that I expected, but I think I'm going to be fine :) The crying has stopped, I haven't gotten lost in awhile, I have figured out some sort of schedule, and I am fighting through this. I will be okay! Our house is still on the market. We are still not pregnant. The surgery was successful in that I my body is cooperating now. I will be making another appointment next week with a fertility doctor here. Bryan loves his job, and I am so happy about that. He is living his dream. Hopefully, one day soon, our lives will contain less drama. But in the meantime, I know I will be okay because I have a God who lives in Virginia too. He is taking care of me no matter where I live.

"So let the storms rage high, the dark clouds rise. They don't worry me. For I'm sheltered safe within the arms of God." God has a lot in store for my life. I have realized that so many of these pieces from the past year are just parts of his bigger plan for my (our) life. I will say, I am ready for the puzzle to be put together, but in the meantime, I will trust that God knows what he is doing, even thought sometimes I don't understand.

Whew! I am worn out! Now you know why my blog name is "Life Ever Changing". :)