Thanksgiving Infertility Flashback

This Thanksgiving had me thinking about all I have to be thankful for this year, but also some memories of Thanksgiving 2 years ago and one of our more memorable IUI cycles.  Seems like longer than 2 years ago.

We were in the middle of a cycle with letrozol with the new doctor.  I think we were planning that this would be our last IUI before moving into donor eggs.  I went in for my monitoring to find out that I had good sized follicles and would be ready for my trigger shot, but we wouldn't be able to do an IUI because this would put me ovulating on Thanksgiving day and the clinic would be closed.  We were disappointed, but thankful that the meds for this cycle were cheap, and it's not like we could change anything.

So I gave myself the trigger shot and we were off to my sister's house for the holiday knowing that we would be trying on our own around 10:00 Thanksgiving morning.  I hadn't decided how we would find some alone time yet.  We spent Wednesday night hanging out and probably playing some games.  Thursday morning us gals were working in the kitchen getting things ready for the day of cooking and eating.  I suppose about 20 minutes before go time I sent Gav downstairs and said I would take care of making sure no one came downstairs.  I told my sister and mom what was going on and they quickly turned all business in helping me out.  They wanted this to work as badly as we did.  They would stay in the kitchen and make sure no one came downstairs.  I found out later this wasn't an easy task.

Thanksgiving morning 2011, we gave it our all on the air mattress in the living room of my sister's basement.  And again that night.  Of course 2 weeks later, we got a big fat negative.  But a wonderful memory and a good story.

In 5 years of infertility, we've heard our share of "it will all work out" and "everything happens for a reason."  While I under NO circumstance recommend this kind of talk to an infertile, I am starting to think about how all we went through is what brought us to Bayden.  I'm even starting to be thankful for that journey.  While I'll never forget the negative tests, the loss, the hurt, the bills, the fights, the shots; I am thankful for it all.

A few months ago when we were out with friends from Gav's work, I heard him talking to a guy who had been married for a year now and was saying how now everyone asks when the kids are coming.  He was saying that they want to just be the 2 of them for a few years.  I heard Gav telling how we wanted kids right away when we got married.  It didn't work out that way for us, but it gave us 5 years of just us.  It wasn't what we had planned, but we were able to do things that wouldn't have been able to do if we had kids right away.

While those 5 years were hard, they were also really good.  I'm thankful for that time we had just the 2 of us and the all things we got to do.  I'm thankful that it's the journey that brought us to the three of us.