My first goals after moving down was to just relax and get used to working from home, my husband working nights, and being in a small town. But, in the back of my mind, I couldn't stop thinking about Baby Ray. We were focusing so much on making Baby Ray in the past that it took a toll on our relationship. It wasn't fun anymore, it was all business. That wasn't something we planned for and not something we wanted. If we just had a plan and knew that someone was going to help us get that family we wanted, that pressure would be off of us.
After moving, I reached out to our doctor in Chicago to see if he had any recommendations on doctors that were close to us for us to see. It didn't surprise us that there wasn't going to be a doctor close to us. We were going to have to travel to Louisville, KY, Evansville, IN or Carmel, IN. After researching who was in our network for Cheyenne's insurance, we started calling them to see who would be able to schedule us in for a new patient appointment. We finally found our doctor: Dr. Will at the Midwest Fertility Specialists in Carmel, Indiana.
We wanted to get our first appointment in to see what else we needed to do to move forward with our journey. On Day 402, we had our initial appointment with the doctors. We discussed our options and then began talking numbers. Because my insurance does not cover infertility treatments, they had to show us the cost if would be if we moved forward without me being on Cheyenne's insurance. Those numbers made my stomach drop. I am not sure how people can afford multiple cycles on their own. We told the doctors that as of November 1st, when his open enrollment starts, that I would be on his insurance and we could begin with the process then. Those numbers were not as scary and definitely manageable. The next step would be getting baseline bloodwork and an ultrasound done so they have a starting point for the IVF process and the dosages for medicines to order. We scheduled that and headed home with our binder of information.
On Day 430, we drove the 2.5 hours back up to Carmel for our baseline appointment. Thankfully we have a great friend that lives about 25 minutes away from our doctor's office that is letting us stay with her when we have appointments. It helps our budget tremendously that we don't have to get hotels each time or take full days off work to travel. THANKS BRE!
Cheyenne's duty that day was to provide a sample for the doctors to freeze just incase the day of the retrieval, he wouldn't be able to come to the appointment or the sample on that day was not sufficient. I had to get some bloodwork done and a Saline Infusion Sonohysterography (SIS). If you read the story on about my HSG test that was done last December, this test was very similar to that but instead of the dye, it was just saline. The pressure was still there but the pain was not even close to what I previously experienced. Cheyenne joined us in the room for this test. He was pretty amazed to see the test done and see what was shown on the monitor. The doctor and nurse said that everything looked great and we were ready to move forward as soon as I was on Cheyenne's insurance.
Once we got in the car, we called Cheyenne's insurance to just confirm that I would be able to get onto his coverage as of November 1. To our surprise, even to my HR husband, the open enrollment was just to make changes to your coverage and the changes would not go into effect until Jan. 1. We were so excited and ready to get started... then it was ripped out from under us so quickly. We called our doctors back to update them on our timeline. They let know that our next step with them would be to call with the start of my December cycle so we can get our January IVF cycle scheduled.
We were back to waiting... Something that was so close got pushed back again. Days of hope disappeared. Days of sadness came back. Frustration of having your "hopeful" answer be pushed further away. My DH is much better at seeing the light at the end of the tunnel than I am. I was back to being so sad. He couldn't understand why I was so upset about this when we knew in January we were going to be starting our process to make a family. We had the answer, theres no reason to be sad. I did my best to try and explain my frustration to him but part of me just couldn't find the words to explain it.
These next few months I think were the hardest ones for me. Everything I did made me sad. Everything I watched on TV made me cry. Thinking about this whole situation being far away was just devastating. I lost my sense of purpose during these months. I forgot what my goals were and what I truly valued because all I could think about was creating a family and how I couldn't do that myself. I was failing as a woman and wife. I couldn't give my husband the one thing I was literally made to do. I think I cried more in these months than I have most of my life - and if you know me, I am a very emotional person and lots of things make me cry, so thats saying a lot!
I felt so alone... A few of our friends and family knew that we were struggling with getting pregnant but not everyone. I didn't know who to reach out to or even what to say. You don't want to feel like that person who complains about their situation. We would see posts on social media about "we weren't trying and look at what we have coming soon..." Or posts complaining about their sleepless children or diaper blowouts. I wanted those, I wanted to take all of their struggles out of them.
My husband suggested I remove myself from SM for a while and it really helped. Not seeing the posts about children or pregnancy announcements gave me a chance to refocus and just relax a bit. After taking a bit of time away, I started seeing that light at the end of the tunnel. Now it was just time to enjoy our time with our families during the upcoming holidays and countdown the days until January 1. Bring on 2019.
Until Next Time... JR.
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