A Little History

We had Christmas with my mom's family yesterday... what a busy day! But, I enjoyed being around family and even having my sister, her husband, and their very sweet dog spend a couple of nights with us.

The only bad thing about family functions is having to deal with the idea of family.  Or, in our case, the lack thereof.  There are actually several people on t hat side of the family who are trying to concieve, but with no success yet.  However, one of my cousins, who was not planning on having a baby anytime soon, is pregnant.  She is excitedly nervous about it.  At the same time, it is difficult to be excited for her unplanned pregnancy while our planning doesn't seem to be doing much good.

I thought I would give a little history on Jonathan and myself, just so you could get to know us a little better.  Jonathan always says he has a thing for older women.... even though we are both 31, I am about 3 months older than him.  We have been married for just over 4 years.  I have been teaching upper level sciences to high school students for over 9 years. Jonathan is a Paramedic with a local emergency service.  Within the last 4 months he accepted the call to become a minister.  I'll explain more in a future post, but that is what he is working toward at the moment.

 About 7 years ago, my OB/GYN diagnosed me with PCOS and Type II Diabetes.  PCOS stands for polycysticovarian syndrome.  Basically, it means that my ovaries tend to produce cysts. PCOS goes hand in hand with Type II Diabetes.  (for more info:  See Diabetes.org) My doctor has always told me that I may have trouble concieving, but she has always been optimistic that we would have children, it just might take some time and medication.

So, almost three years ago I got off birth control and started the whole calculating the length of my cycles and approximate ovulation date.  I will probably talk more about this process later, but for the moment, just know that my cycles are REALLY long.  So during the course of about 2 1/2 years inculding a couple of extended breaks, we tried multiple rounds of a fertility drug called Clomid.  The purpose of most fertility drugs is to increase the number of follicles (eggs) released during one cycle.  Well, we didn't have much success there. 

In fact, Jonathan and I started talking about other options to have a family.  What is a family?  For us, it is a group of people who love one another unconditionally and share similar values. Usually, there are parents and children, but not always.  We started thinking about adoption. Where did we go first, the internet.  That actually scared us.  First problem, the price. I am a teacher and Jonathan is in the emergency response profession (or he was at the time).  Second problem, we were hours away from an adoption agency. Then, the Lord brought us to Lifeline.... or He brought Lifeline to us.