This is going to be a long post but it's important for me and my posterity that I write all of this down. It's been such a huge part of who I am and who our family is now. This is our journey through infertility to a miracle. After Soren was born and I was dealing with my blood clot, the doctors and Ben and I weren't sure if any more kids were in our future. But as the years went by I just couldn't get having another baby out of my brain. Ben and I talked about it so much it drove both of us crazy but we decided that we would check with my doctor to see if he would be ok with me going off the heavy duty blood thinner Warfarin and start trying for another baby. We were happily surprised that he agreed and on July 13th 2010 I had my IUD removed and the process started. Now my first three kids were born in three years and so we naturally assumed that it would take no time at all to get pregnant. So when October rolled around and nothing changed I went back to my obgyn and started clomid. Around the end of March early April 2011 I got a positive pregnancy test. We were so excited. I saw my obgyn who confirmed the pregnancy with another positive test and I went on my merry way. When all of Ben's family was in town before Easter, we did this big cute announcement and had everyone so happy. The next week I went to a perinatologist and they performed an ultrasound. I will never forget the pain and sadness I felt when they said that there was nothing there. I had a chemical pregnancy where my body was producing the right hormones but nothing was growing. We were devastated and telling my kids was probably one of the hardest moments of my life. We cried and were really sad for a couple days. My heart hurt but we kept at it hoping we would one day have that baby.
I eventually was prescribed metformin and another pill that blocked my high testosterone by a family doctor that ran tests on my thyroid and other things. Everything seemed normal aside from my high testosterone and it was presumed that I have PCOS or poly-cystic ovarian syndrome. It was scary to hear that diagnosis but we were slightly relieved to finally know what was wrong. This was during 2011-2012. We were slowly just getting more and more frustrated that nothing was happening when we had both felt so strongly that another spirit was waiting to join our family. I have to admit that there were times I went into a really dark place and was barely hanging on to my last shred of hope and it was really hard to see both of my sisters and several sisters-in-law getting pregnant. Of course we were so happy for them but it still felt like we were being forgotten. There's this song by Bryan White about wishing on someone else's star because everyone seems to be getting what I've been wishing for. I had lots of these moments.We decided to make one last ditch effort and went to a fertility specialist in early 2013. Ben had to give a sample and they found him to have a slightly low sperm count and low testosterone but they didn't seem overly concerned with those results. Instead, they sent me to have two very invasive and extremely expensive tests. One confirmed that I had cysts all over my ovaries which went with my diagnosis of PCOS. While the other revealed nothing new. When I went in for results, the doctor basically told me that they couldn't find anything significantly wrong and so I was a good candidate for IVF. We were looking at another few thousand dollars. Now we had already spent a thousand dollars on the first tests and IVF wasn't even a guarantee. Plus for most of 2013 I was doing shots of lovenox because I got another blood clot. That was getting expensive and tiresome and we just weren't sure how much more we could take. In October of that year, Ben and I went to the temple. We were in a pretty stressful time with Ben having been laid off the month before and losing our insurance and just not being sure where life was going to take us. So we went to the temple in search of answers and I couldn't believe how strongly we just knew what to do. During the session it says to multiply and replenish the earth and find joy in your posterity. I realized that I was always so preoccupied with the multiply part but failed to find joy in my family right now. I was missing the now and couldn't just enjoy my three beautiful babies because I was obsessed with a baby I didn't even have. So with that we decided to stop trying and to just enjoy. I took my last shot in early December and just finding the joy. Joy was and is my word of 2014 and we moved forward.
With the start of the new year, I joined a biggest loser group with some women in the stake and started losing weight. We took the kids to Disneyland, Ben got a job offer and moved to Utah, and we just kept moving forward. By my birthday, I was down 37 lbs and Ben was down about 35 lbs. At this point, we were ready to move our family to Utah and see what the Lord had in store for us there. The kids started school, Ben kept working, and I continued working out. I fell in love with the trails in Eagle Mountain and was walking/jogging 7 miles some days. In May, I remember having a rough day while out walking and I was so frustrated that I couldn't get anymore pounds off. I was just 13 pounds away from my big goal and the scale was not moving. I had a trip to Vegas planned the first couple days of June and was so excited to head back home. I remember not feeling great and eating a lot of my mom's snacks. The first morning back in Utah I took a pregnancy test. I had taken one a few weeks earlier and it was negative but this one was positive.
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