Braxton's Birthday!

Braxton Nathaniel is finally here! He was born on Wednesday, March 2nd at 3:48am. 8 lbs 10 oz and 20.5 inches long! Such a beautiful baby!

Michelle's labor was wonderful and went very fast! She woke up at midnight with labor pains and Zach called me on their way to the birth center. They got there around 2:30am and I was there about 2:40am. Then she had Braxton about an hour later! Praise God she had a short labor and Braxton came quickly! I cried my eyes out when he was born. He's so perfect!

It was so empowering to watch a natural birth at the birth center. It's amazing how God created our bodies to endure labor and birth without medication. Michelle made it look so easy! Lord willing I'll be able to have my baby naturally at the birth center. I'm excited to go through it and experience it. I really hope that I am able to and don't have any complications with pregnancy or labor. It goes through my mind sometimes because it's been so hard to get pregnant. I sometimes think that pregnancy and labor with come with complications too. I've been praying for a long time that God will give us children and that I'll have a healthy pregnancy and delivery without any problems.

Speaking of, we are using an OPK (ovulation predictor kit) this month. I'm not really sure why we've never used one before. It makes complete sense to use it if you're trying to get pregnant. I thought about it before, but for some reason we just never really used it. We talked last night about how it probably should have been one of the first things we did to try to get pregnant. If I ovulate every month the way I've ovulated this month, we have been WAY off in "guessing" my ovulation day. We've been thinking it was around day 16, but according to the OPK it's been around 19-20. So we've just been completely missing it the past few years! Surprisingly, this is actually the first month we've seen it visually that I'm about to ov. We've just sort of been "not preventing" but also not really doing much to figure out my actual day of ov. I tried charting, but I was horrible at keeping up with it and gave up quickly. The OPK is SO much easier and doesn't feel too cumbersome on our lives. It's much less work and more accurate. We'll try this for the next few months and see what happens!

A lot of catching up to do...

I realize I have not blogged in a long time. Almost three months to be exact. I'm not really sure why I have not been blogging. I guess just the busyness of life and wanting the chill out and be with Brice during the down times I would have to blog. It's always so busy through the holidays and it's hard to find time to settle back down to life again.

I ended up getting the laparoscopy done in the middle of November. It went really well and the doctor only found extremely early endometriosis. He was able to laser it right off and only had to make two very small incisions: one in my belly button and one on my right side. The endometriosis ended up being on the left side, but I guess since it was so early in its growth he didn't have to make an incision on that side to get it out. I'm very thankful that he found something, and not nothing. I'm even more thankful that the something wasn't major and was easily removed. The doctor told us that endometriosis can do various things to prevent pregnancy. He thinks in our case the endo was releasing a chemical to prevent the sperm from getting to the egg. Now it's all gone and hopefully we'll have some good news coming up here in the next few months! :)

I had the surgery the Friday before Thanksgiving, so I was still a little sore through that next week. We went to Atlanta and had Thanksgiving there with Brice's mom and sister, and then we went to the North Carolina mountains for the weekend. I had SO much fun just being with Brice shopping at all the little shops, taking pictures, and hanging out at the coffee shop. It was also great to see all his family that we only get to see that time each year.

We went to snow mountain with Brice's family a few weekends before Christmas. It was such a blast to play in the snow again! We were also able to celebrate Christmas with his family that weekend.

Christmas was also great this year. After a few years of not celebrating it (in the traditional sense of the tree and decorating and presents) we decided to celebrate it this year.

In previous years we were unsure about how we felt about celebrating it with all it's pagan origins and what we felt at the time unbiblical traditions. However, we prayed a lot about it and felt the freedom to celebrate it the way we wanted to for the first time this year. We are still working through the details about how we want to incorporate Jesus into every aspect of it. Thankfully we've had time, and still have time, to research, pray, and talk about how we want to celebrate Christmas with our children. It's much easier when it's just the two of us because we know that it's not all about trees, lights, presents, and santa. We want to teach our children about Jesus with every thing we do in celebrating Christmas. We want it to be a Christ centered fun time where we develop our own family traditions and teach our children that it's all about the celebration of Jesus' birth and how and why He came to the earth and died for our sins. We also want it to be a day of serving others and showing Christ's love to the lost and hurting. We want it to be part of our tradition as a family to spend some of Christmas day serving in our community and have the opportunity to share the Gospel with others.

Christmas eve I made Christmas dinner and some great friends of ours, Zach and Michelle, came over to eat with us. Zach's family was in town and also came over to celebrate with us. Michelle got Zach an adorable puppy for Christmas and brought her over to our house where he saw her for the first time. They named her Leah. :)

Zach and Michelle stayed overnight that night and celebrated Christmas with us that morning. It was so fun having a sleep over and we had a great time celebrating Christmas with amazing friends who are like family to us.

We were all supposed to go to Rob and Sherri's for homemade cinnamon rolls Christmas morning (more great friends of ours who live right around the corner). However, their electricity went out so Sherri came over to our house to make the rolls and take a shower. Then everyone ended up coming to our house for Sherri's amazing homemade cinnamon rolls.

Afterwards Brice and I walked and met everyone at First United Methodist where there were many volunteers serving food to those in need. Brice and I had the opportunity to go out with Rachel and take boxes of food and Bibles around town to people who were hungry. We went to all the inns around downtown where people were staying and brought them Christmas dinner. It was such a great day of serving and celebrating Christ with others!

It also snowed on Christmas! Well, sort of. It lightly dusted the day after Christmas.

This past weekend we went up to St. Louis for the Mobilise conference. We rode up there with Zach and Michelle while Zach drove the entire way, there and back. He's crazy! Anyways, the conference was incredible! It was a such a sweet time of worship and prayer and a great time of encouragement. It started Friday night and went until Sunday morning. The main speaker for the event, Tope, spoke Friday and Saturday night and we were able to go to his seminar in the middle of the day Saturday.

What really spoke to me out of all the sessions was on Saturday night when Tope was speaking on living by faith. He talked about Joshua 5 and 6, about the wall of Jericho. He said a lot of Christians will get to the wall of Jericho in their life, whatever struggle they go through and they will stop and camp out at the bottom of the wall and get stuck in a rut.

As many of you know who read my blog or know me, my biggest struggle is infertility. It's a continual struggle until God gives us children, and maybe even beyond that if we continue to struggle to have more children. It's one of those subjects that everyone talks about because it's such a huge part of life. Almost everyone has children, and many couples decide at a point in their life that they want to have children and end up having one soon after trying. We constantly find ourselves engulfed in conversations about children because all of ours friends have them. When you meet new people, most times the first question they ask is how long have you been married, then, if you have any children, and afterwards, in our case they ask when do you plan on having children? I've learned to expect that question when we first meet people, and most times it doesn't really bother me. However, sometimes it will be a time when I'm really struggling and it will get to me. Infertility is such a huge sometimes seemingly unending roller coaster of emotions, even though I know one day there will be an end. So, infertility is the huge wall of Jericho in my life.

Tope says, "Jericho stands unrelenting, high, staring down speaking the whole time saying I'm here, I won't shift, come!" He says there are three ways to break through these walls of Jericho: 1) Acknowledge God afresh, just see God for who He is and worship Him 2) learn to walk by faith, trusting the One who has called you (the wall of Jericho came down by faith) Seek God and don't give up, don't give in, and don't break down. Believe in His promises and 3) Obey the last command. God says show me your faith by your works.

I feel like a lot of times through this struggle I hit the infertility wall and get knocked down. I realized as I was sitting there listen to Tope speak that so much of my words in that area lack faith in God. I struggle with asking God why is He not giving us children and often find myself saying in day to day conversations, "well if we ever have children", or "well your children will be grown by the time we have kids". I think about prophetic words that have been given to us about having children and say, well that hasn't happened yet so is God really going to give us children? Was that word really from God? Tope says negativity is a faith killer. I often have negativity in the area of us having children and, not even really realizing it, doubting God and not trusting in His promises by what I say to other people. I say I have faith that God will give us children, then act like I don't.

I'm so thankful that God has revealed this to me and now I can move on from here with faith that God will someday give us children. My faith has increased tremendously that God will someday give us the desires of our hearts. I have renewed faith that when I pray and ask God to give us a child, He does hear me and He will give us children someday. I just need to keep seeking God and living my life for His glory. To keep walking this life of faith in God and preaching His word and ministering to others. To keep serving Him in everything I do and helping others who are need of Him. To praise God for all He has given me and worship Him each and every day. I thank God so much that He speaks to His children and that His Holy Spirit is at work in our lives transforming us to be more like His son.

I started this post last Saturday...

and I am just now getting to it. I've come to the conclusion that if I actually sit down to blog when I want to, then I wouldn't have a major amount of things to blog about when I sit down to do it later!

I was reading some other blogs on how people are using blog trackers. I thought that was a great idea, just to see how many people were looking at my blog and where they were from. So I started using one, and noticed that a lot of people were actually finding my blog by searching unpaper towels on google. It got me thinking, maybe I should start selling them again? A lot of people out there seem to interested in it. When I started making them to sell, not many people seemed interested, at least in Statesboro. Maybe others outside of our little town have actually heard of them and are interested in them. The people that are most interested in Statesboro are the ones who know me or come over to our house and see them on our countertop. What do ya'll think about unpaper towels? Have you heard of them, like them, would you ever use them? I'm interested to know other's thoughts.

I was struggling a lot this past week (week before last now) with getting pregnant. I think this is just one of those things that's always going to be a roller coaster of emotions. At the beginning of the month, we're both super hopeful for what the month is going to hold. Will this be the month it happens?! Then, the second half of the month is a waiting period wondering if it's going to happen or not. Then it doesn't, and I go through all of these emotions of sadness, frustration, and loss of hope. I know a lot of it has to do with the hormones that are already going on at that time, but it's still just one of those things that I feel like I'm always going to struggle with.

This month I noticed Brice was more upset than usual. I think as more time passes, the more he's wanting a child. When he found out we weren't pregnant this time around, he expressed to me that he was just as upset about it as I was. I know that he's always been upset when we thought we might be pregnant and weren't, but for some reason this time it seemed different. He seemed more sad about it not happening than normal. However, he is still very strong and positive about us getting pregnant when it's God's timing. A lot of times its very hard for me to be positive and hopeful about it, so it's very helpful to have him there as a support.

I'm also extremely thankful for the women God has put in my life to support and encourage me through this time. I was able to talk to one of them last week about it and just pour out to her what was going on and the emotions I was going through. She prayed for me and was tremendously encouraging. She told me things from an outsiders perspective; things I never noticed which helped put things into perspective for me. I don't know what I would do without women like that in my life. It is super hard to go through something so emotionally draining and not ever knowing when the emotional cycle will end. I can't imagine going through it without other women in my life to talk to.

I've been thinking a lot lately about writing a book. Well, not so much a book at this point, but sort of like a journal of mine and Brice's story. I've told so many people about how we met and what has happened in our lives, and almost everyone I've told has suggested we write a book. People love to hear stories like ours, and everyone says it would be such a good book. I'm not sure if I actually want to write a book, but I definitely want to write it all down and be able to look back on it and read it. I would love to have something like that for our children to read one day too. I'm just not sure how to get everything I want to put it in down. There's so many things and events that have happened and are happening now that I want to include, but how do I ensure that I get everything before I start writing it out? I want it to be in order and if I start writing then remember something, I won't be able to go back to put it in. That always happens when I go to write things out. I think I know everything I want to put in there, then I'll remember something I wanted to add but forgot. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to do this? I'm think I'm just going to brainstorm in a notebook and try to remember as much as I can. Then, when I'm pretty sure I've gotten it all, I'll start writing it out in a nice journal.

Brice had off all this week for fall break so we took a night and went to the fair. It was SO much fun. We went with a group of friends, and we rode a bunch of rides.

We rode this awesome ride called the Crazy Mouse. It's one of those mini roller coaster type rides where you are in the little car and it feels like you are going to go right over the side of the tracks. We went on this ride the first time, and loved it so much we went straight back in line to ride again! Brice had the great idea of make a video of us while riding it.

So much fun!

HSG Results

Lately I have been crazy busy between work, things going on at church, having people over at our house, and working out. I'm sure most of you know by now from my facebook status or just by talking to me that I had my HSG last Tuesday. It went amazingly well. The dye went through my uterus and tubes in about 15 seconds. They said it was the easiest and quickest HSG they have ever done. It seems that so far everything is going so well and there is nothing wrong. Now we wait for the next three months to see if we get pregnant. Even though there is nothing wrong, the HSG increases our chances of getting pregnant because the dye cleans outs any mucus that might be in my tubes. There are a lot of cases where women have gotten pregnant after the HSG just because of that reason. So that gives us some hope.

Brice left for St. Louis today and he will be gone until Saturday. :( There is a conference going on up there for New Frontiers from Wed- Friday. He also has his interview on Thursday with two of the New Frontiers guys that are part of the church up there. This will be the determining factor of whether or not we officially move up there. It will also decide, if we do end up going up there, how long it will be from now that we go. It definitely will have to be a year at least because Brice signed his contract for this school year. We are thinking it might even have to be two years because of the $8000 stipend we received for buying our house. The stipulations are you have own the house for 3 years and it has to be your primary residence. If we leave in a year and rent it out it won't be considered our primary residence, so we're not even sure if that's an option. I guess we'll have to wait and see what God does!

God has definitely changed my heart about St. Louis. Before I was very against it and did not want to leave Statesboro, my friends, and our church family. Now my feelings about it are completely opposite. I'm excited to leave Statesboro and move to a bigger city and just enter into a new stage of our lives that God has planned for us. This may not be what He has planned for us. But if it is, He has really changed my heart about being very open to it and even excited about what He'll do in our lives if He does take us to St. Louis.

In light of Brice leaving today, we decided to have date night last night instead of the usual Wednesday night date night. We were really excited about it!!!!

We went to Olive Garden and had some yummy white wine, which is odd because we are really red wine fans and not too big on the white wines. We split a meal and then went for a walk on Georgia Southern's Campus. We walked through each building reminiscing about all the classes we had there and the experiences we went through. We talked about how crazy it is that Georgia Southern used to be our lives and all we knew about Statesboro. We never thought we would actually stay here, buy a house, and begin building our lives here.

I'm really going to miss him while he is gone though. I'm glad I got to spend the whole night with him before he left.

I love my husband so much!

Emotional Struggles of a Barren Woman

I'm feeling a little down today and struggling a lot with not getting pregnant. It's so easy when you are a barren woman deeply longing for children of her own to think everything in terms of the struggle you're going through. I'm sure it's like this with any struggle. Any prophecy, scripture, or word that is preached is quickly applied to my life in the context of my struggle with getting pregnant.

Today Rob preached his 11th sermon on God's Scandalous Grace. In small summary, it was about how God's grace abounds in our trials and struggles through life. He talked about how each of our trials look different and God takes us each through unique experiences and struggles. God uses these trails to sanctify us and mold to be like Christ. God puts each and every single one of us on a different path, therefore His sanctification process looks different for each of us.

I feel a lot of times like there is something I'm doing or have done in the past that is keeping me from getting pregnant. Like there is a sin I have committed and I'm being punished for that sin. I know this is very wrong and not at all how God views me. I know He loves me and has forgiven my sins from the past, present, and future. It's just this huge emotional cycle I been going through since we began struggling to get pregnant. Especially since, for some reason only know by Him, God has put us in a place to be surrounded by women who are constantly getting pregnant. Literally almost every woman I meet, and especially those I become friends with, ends up pregnant a few months later. Coralie said something so amazingly encouraging to me when I asked her for her advice and insight before we started our testing process:

"I just spent an hour typing out technical stuff and getting you some links that I hope are helpful, but I want to start with this: Remember John 1:3 - this is happening so that the works of God may be displayed in your life. That might mean a miraculous event, like in the first chapter of John, or it could mean that others will see the two of you grow daily in sanctification because of this. You're not being punished. Christ has born ALL the earned suffering for us. You're not broken. God is sovereign and he sovereignly wrote this path as a part of the days of your life. You are as He intends you to be. Finally, He has written an end to this suffering. We don't know when that end is, but the Lord does. This is but a season and it will pass."

It is SO easy to believe Satan's lies when I am so emotional all the time. Believing that there is something wrong with me, I've done something wrong, or that I must be being punished for something. But I must fight all of those lies with God's truth and the promises that He has given me in His word. Brice encourages me with this often as well, that God is sanctifying me through this process in amazing ways that I can't even imagine. He's sanctifying me in ways that he's not sanctifying others, and He has a purpose for all of this. He has a purpose and plan for our lives, and as Coralie said, this is but a season and it will pass.

Sunday Sewing

This past Sunday I was finally able to sew a little bit! Brice bought an Ipod touch a few weeks ago, and when he puts it in his pocket his phone and Ipod scratch each other. He can't put it in his other pocket because there he carries his keys. That would make the scratching even worse!

So we went in search of a cover for the front his new Ipod touch. Surprisingly, they have nothing on the market for that! The only thing we could find was one or two leather ones that had the flap open cover. It would be perfect if it didn't make the Ipod 5 times bigger in your pocket and cost $30. It was at this point that Brice turned to me and said, you can make one of these! I agreed, and Sunday afternoon I whipped one up for him really quick. Well, not really quick, it took longer than it would have had I not stopped sewing 9 months ago. My sewing machine kept jamming and giving me problems. I also had a very hard time getting the velcro straight across from each other. You can tell I did not succeed very well in the end. The right side is higher up than the left. It took about 45 minutes, and it's probably the simplest thing I've ever made. However, I think it still turned out quite cute!

Open with the Ipod Touch Inside (You can see the all the scratches on it)

Open without the Ipod Touch

The Front

The Back

I used some leftover fleece I had sitting around. He wanted something thicker than cotton so nothing in his pocket would poke through. It's also very soft. I thought about making some and selling them. I would definitely use something stronger on the outside, such as vinyl, and then sew a cotton, fleece, or flannel layer on the inside for a soft layer to protect it. This would also hide the velcro seams on the outside of the case. I also thought about using snaps, but pushing it closed all the time might ruin the Ipod screen from the pressure. Just an idea, I don't know how well they would actually sell. But there is nothing on the market like it.

So that's it! Not too exciting, but it was fun to sew a little something after not doing anything in a long time. It's really exciting to turn a flat square piece of fabric into something useful!

I scheduled my HSG yesterday for next Tuesday morning. I have to be at the hospital at 7:50am. Brice is going to have a sub for the morning so he can come with me. I looking forward to seeing what this test will tell us.

Good News

Well, I received some good news yesterday. My blood work came back fine, which means no clomid! My progesterone levels were normal and I'm ovulating on my own so I don't need to take any fertility assistance. All this makes me wonder if I ever even needed to take it in the first place. The other doctor we were seeing never even drew my blood to check my progesterone to see if I was ovulating. He just ASSUMED I wasn't. How frustrating.

They also tested my thyroid and prolactin and said everything was fine. I called the nurse back this morning to get the exact numbers, and she told me my progesterone was at 17. She said anything over 12 is good, and anything over 15 is excellent since it will lead to high rates of pregnancy achievement and success. This is all very good news! It seems that everything is coming back normal so far. This is a good thing, yes, but they also do all the easy tests first. Then comes the more complicated ones that check for the more complicated problems. So I could be dealing with something bigger than just not ovulating each month. However, we could also find out that everything is fine, and it's just not God's timing for us to have children yet. I praise God for our modern technology though, that it can help me find out if there is something going wrong and fix the problem. He's such a gracious and loving God!

Next up is the internal x-ray test of my uterus and tubes, called the hysterosalpingogram (HSG). I have not scheduled that one yet, but it will probably be sometime next week.

Thank you all for your prayers and support in this journey we're going through. It's easy to start feeling lonely and forgotten through all of this. It's very encouraging to know that my friends and family are praying for us. We love all of you!

Week in Review

So today is Friday, yay! I love Fridays because I either have off of work or I only work for about 2-3 hours. It's wonderful because I get to have some time to myself to read, clean, nap, sew... even though I have not sewn in probably over 6 months. Lately I've really been wanting to start again, so hopefully I'll be able to find some time to do that. Anyways, Fridays are just great days!

Yesterday marked our 4th year of marriage! I can't believe we have been married for 4 years already! We didn't really get to celebrate since it was on a weekday and we had a lot going on. I came home from work at 2 and cleaned the house, cooked dinner, and then went to work out at 5:30. Then we had our life mission group at 7. So not much time to really celebrate or do anything fun. However, Jordan and I made a confetti cake with confetti icing and we ate that with everyone after life mission group. That's my most favorite cake ever! Brice also got me a new faucet for our kitchen sink! It's one of those really nice ones that can detach and convert into a sprayer! It's so much easier to clean after I cook now because the faucet is higher up and I can detach it! It's so funny the things you get excited about when you own a home. Brice and I are going to actually celebrate our anniversary on Saturday in Savannah. We're going to check out the Pirate House that we've heard so many good things about. I'm looking forward to having a whole day to spend with my husband alone, just the two of us!

So this is the second week I've been consistently working out. There is a class from 5:30-6:30 every Mon, Tues, and Thurs at a church in our town. The instructor does weight training on Monday, and either step aerobics, kick boxing, or pilates the other two days. I LOVE it so far! It's only $2 a class, which is completely doable, and it's so laid back. If you can't come a certain day it's no big deal. I'm sore after each class which is a wonderful feeling. I've really needed to consistently work out for a long time. I have never been consistent or motivated with it and so everything else I've ever tried has failed. I really need to include working out as a major part of my diet, especially since I'm having trouble getting pregnant. Now I need to work on other parts of my diet, such as eating (and drinking) less sugar. We usually eat very healthy lunches and dinners, but lately I've been craving cake ( like confetti cake :) ) and sweet tea. So I'll drink sweet tea with lunch, and sometimes dinner, and that's a lot of sugar. That's not counting what other sugar I may have consumed that day through the things I've eaten. I just get so sick of water sometimes. I drink tons of water each day, and sometimes I just want some flavor!

I have not heard any news yet on my blood work. I'm hoping I'll hear something on Monday. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad sign, since I was told they would let me know something on Wednesday. They were really good about calling us with Brice's results within about two or three days. It's just really hard to be patient with this process because it seems like the answers to our issues are so close. I just wish that they could do everything at once to see what's going on. However, it makes complete sense that they have to do certain things during certain times of the month, because my body goes through a cycle of different hormones. I'll probably be getting my HSG test sometime late next week or early the following week. I'm just praying that they find something small and easily fixable. I'm nervous to get a result back that says I'm not ovulating, and then he'll have to put us on clomid again. It's hard not to think about our previous experience with it and how difficult it was with the doctor we were seeing. I just need to trust God and have faith in Him through this process. Who knows what He has in store for us, but I'm excited to find out!

Tonight we are having dinner with the Curley's! I'm very excited to spend time with them and see their new house! I had so much fun catching up and hanging out with Christy on the 4th of July. It's already been a month since we've hung out! I wish we could hang out and do more things together. We have so much fun when we're together... I'm really looking forward to relaxing and having some fun tonight!

Our Infertility Journey, So Far

Recently Brice and I have decided to start testing to find out why we are not having children. We have been trying for 3 years with no success.

Our journey started about 3 1/2 years ago, soon after we got married. I was taking birth control our first few months of marriage, and I believe that the hormones severely messed with my body. I felt that my body was all messed up while I was on it, so I decided to stop taking it about 6 months after we were married. At that point we weren't really "trying" to have children, we just weren't preventing.

The summer of 2007 my cycle was becoming more normal again, after a year of being off birth control. We decided we wanted to start trying to get pregnant that summer. During the summer of 2008 I was introduced to the Fertility Awareness Method, where you chart your body's natural signals and temperature to find out exactly when you are ovulating. I tried it for three months that summer, and got pretty frustrated with it. My body didn't do exactly what the book was telling me it was supposed to, so I stopped charting.

In March of 2009 I went to get my yearly exam and found out I had high prolactin. It wasn't too high, only about 18 above normal, so the cause was unexplainable. I had to get an MRI to be sure I didn't have a tumor on my pituitary gland which is what produces prolactin, which makes a woman's body produce milk to feed a baby. The MRI came back completely fine, so I was referred to an infertility specialist. At this point my cycle was going about 40-42 days, which was abnormally long for me. He told me that my body thought I was pregnant because of my raised prolactin level, so I was not ovulating and that's why my cycles were going so long. He prescribed clomid and sent us on our way.

We started out on 50mg the first month, which did nothing. He then put me on 100mg, and that worked for a few months. Then I stopped having ovulatory pain in the middle of the month, and I tried to call the doctor to let him know I did not think the clomid was working anymore. I could not get a hold of him for 2 months. So in December of 2009 I stopped taking clomid and no longer went to that doctor.

Then there was a possible adoption opportunity in December, but unfortunately that did not work out. After the clomid my cycles went back to normal and we decided, for the time being, to stop pursuing medical assistance to help us get pregnant.

A few months later a friend of ours introduced me to the Lady Comp, which is a computer that helps keep you from getting pregnant by telling you the exact day you are ovulating. She told us that we could use it the opposite way since it pinpointed the day of ovulation. It works by taking my temperature and using my previous cycle information to let me know when I ovulate. It is basically a computer version of doing Fertility Awareness, just a lot less hassle.

We have now been using that for about 4 months. Through all of this almost every couple in our church has gotten pregnant and had children. Sometimes I feel really alone in the journey God has put us on. Thankfully God has blessed me with an amazing husband who is always there to encourage me and be there for me through all the ups and downs. God has also blessed me with a woman in our church body that struggled with infertility before she had her two children, and a family our pastor introduced us to who tried for 12 years before they recently had their two children. I've learned over the past 3 years that there are surprisingly a lot of women who struggle with infertility. It's been especially encouraging to me to read the numerous stories in the Bible of barren women who prayed for countless years asking God to give them children. God eventually gave each of them children in His timing and many of them turned out to be great men of God.

So, after all of that, we have decided to start testing. I went to my first appointment July 19th where we consulted with the doctor about our experiences so far. Brice was tested the week after and the results came back great.

Today I went to get some blood drawn to check my prolactin again and my thyroid and progesterone levels to see if I'm ovulating. I get the results back on Wednesday. I go back in two weeks to get a hysterosalpingogram to make sure my uterus and tubes are ok. I've heard it is painful so I'm not looking forward to that part. Our new doctor said that since he's been doing the tests instead of the radiologists people have not been complaining about pain, so that's very encouraging. We really like our new doctor. He was shocked that our other doctor just put us on clomid and sent us home. Usually the doctor is supposed to monitor if ovulation is happening each month on the clomid. I'm just more than ready to find out what's going on with my body and why we're not getting pregnant.

So this begins our journey through infertility testing after 3 years of trying. We are continuing to pray and seek God for the precious gift of children and patiently waiting for His response.