In the beginning...

I decided to start this blog as a therapeutic way of releasing all of the pent up emotion that I normally keep inside of me about our struggles to become parents. This is not an easy subject for me to talk about and I often find it easier to tell strangers than it is for me to tell family and friends. For those of you who have walked a mile in my shoes, a warm welcome and thank you for joining me on this journey. It's a terrible thing, that there are other couples like us that have struggled for longer and have been through more heart ache than we have but there is comfort in knowing that we are not alone. For those of you who perhaps know of someone, friends or family, that have trouble conceiving, I hope that this helps to deepen your compassion and expand your understanding of what it is that we go through on a daily basis. Finally, I know I am not the first and won't be the last, but I am a Canadian, looking for treatment in the US so if I can help another achieve cross-border medical treatment, I am more than happy to share my knowledge and experience.

So this first posts catches me between cycles...again. You can see from our history that we have been at this for a long time. I feel that over the past 6 years, our life has stood still while everyone else's has moved forward. We've watched as all of our family and friends have celebrated the joys of becoming parents (some, multiple times) or had the thrill of working hard and watching their careers take off, or both. For us, it feels that time has stood still. We set ourselves up to have a family - 4 bedroom house, a child-proofed dog, jobs close to home with good work/life balance, home close to grandparents - and now we just wait. I have this feeling in the back of my mind that I am letting life pass me by, stubbornly stamping my feet and shaking my fist at Father Time, telling him I won't move on until I get what I want, that of course, being a baby to call my own.

My last cycle was cancelled just this past weekend at our request because the Canadian clinic that did our suppression check (baseline blood work and ultrasound) did not catch a cyst in my ovary. This cyst basically interfered with the development of my follicles and threw my hormones out of wack, which caused other complications. This is supposed to be our last cycle and we just couldn't proceed, knowing that we were operating under less than ideal circumstances. Normally, you wouldn't be allowed to even start an IVF cycle when they find a cyst because it interfers so much; however, since this wasn't caught before I travelled down to the US, I think my doctor was trying to salvage our cycle for us and do the best that he could given the situation. After much debate and conversation, our final decision was to stop, take a break and try again under better circumstances. I can't finish our last IVF attempt knowing we will have regrets about how it went down.

Although it was for very logical reasons that we cancelled our last IVF cycle, it is still fresh and my heart is just beginning to realize what my head has been telling it now for a few days. Logical, practical me took over once we decided to cancel our cycle and took care of getting me home safe and sound. However, once I got home, emotional me has shown up along with crashing hormones and swinging moods and the reality of what we decided to do is beginning to sink in. It has been getting harder and harder to get up in the morning. Our miracle has yet to happen and maybe this next time will be it but no matter what, I need to move on with my life, whatever that means.

Anyway, thank you for "listening". I started off by saying that this was to be therapeutic for me and I do feel better having gotten all of that off my chest.