If it's not ok, it's not the end.

It has been quite sometime since my last post but I am finally home and ready to get back to it! I want to first of all say that I know that not everyone (all 26 people) that read my blog are of my faith, but it's a huge part of who I am and without it, it don't know if I would have made it through this summer. So as you read this post if there are scriptures or quotes that you are like "hmmmm that's not in my bible!" It's because it's not, but feel free to click on the links provided to find out more if you're interested.

I was in Boise less than two months and I swear it seemed like years. I loved being by my family and I am so thankful for them and for all of their help, but I am so glad to be home with James again! I almost don't know where to begin it was such a crazy summer but I guess I should just start at the beginning.
We got to Boise and the end of May, after a long 17 hour drive and I jumped right into our IVF cycle at the Idaho Center for Reproductive Medicine. The very next day I had my first appointment. Everything looked great and we started my follicle stimulating hormones to get those eggs growing! Throughout the first few days everything looked great, we had way more follicles (eggs) developing than we had during our last cycle so I was very excited and hopeful that we would have a lot of embryos to freeze after this cycle. A few days before my egg retrieval my estrogen level was beginning to get so high though they backed me off of my medications completely to help avoid getting ovarian hyper stimulation syndrome. My levels started to come down so we went ahead with my egg retrieval as planned. Everything went great and they were able to retrieve 23 viable eggs, 2 more than last time! I was so hopeful that we would have a lot of eggs to freeze now. I was a little disappointed when we found out that only 11 of our eggs fertilized and when I went into our transfer, we were told we only had 2 embryos that had continued growing. We decided to transfer both and we now had nothing left to freeze. You know, I don't think it's very often that you can say that you were knocked up by a woman, with your mother and daughter in the room, and your husband was over a thousand miles away...only with IVF! But we were now putting a lot of pressure on this transfer and hoping more than ever that things would work out.

Soon after my transfer I quickly started swelling up like a balloon. By quickly, I mean gaining 7 pounds in one day. It was pretty obvious that I had developed hyper stimulation and my abdomen was filling with fluid. I had experienced this a little bit our first cycle but since that one didn't work, my hormone levels returned to normal and it went away after a few days. The thing with hyper stimulation is there is really not much you can do about it. High sodium fluids are your best bet, they help to pull the fluid back into your blood stream and then hopefully it goes through your liver and kidneys and out like everything else. I think I easily drank my body weight in Gatorade, chicken broth, V-8, and anything else I could think of. It didn't help me at all really. A few days 

later I was in pain and throwing up and rushing down to Dr. Slater's. Now is the fun part, they were able to drain the fluid with a giant needle, yay! This ended up happening 4 times, they drained 2.5 liters, 1.5 liters, 3 liters, and then another 2.5 liters. That's like having your abdomen fill up with over 4 bottles of soda in just over a weeks time. It was miserable!

About two weeks after my transfer, weighing only 3 lbs less than the day I had Isla, yikes!

The worst part during all of this was definitely the unknown. This all happened before our beta 1 and 2 tests and even though it was a good sign that I was pregnant, I wasn't about to assume anything and get my hopes up too soon. In the days before our pregnancy tests I couldn't help but be completely
emotional. All I wanted was for it to all be worth it. I didn't care what it took at this point, I just wanted it to be okay. With James still in Arizona it was so hard to go through this and feel alone and it again made me realize that I needed to rely on my Heavenly Father more than anyone. Last year in a talk from our general conference, Boyd K. Packer said in his talk, "There are few things more powerful than the faithful prayers of a righteous mother." Though I have thought about this often as I've prayed for a little (a lot) of direction in raising Isla, it wasn't until I was stressed and crying myself to sleep that I realized this applied as much to my unborn child as it does to Isla. Though I didn't know if I was "pregnant" yet, I knew there was that strong possibility and I had to put all of my faith in The Lord and I could only have faith from that point on that everything would be ok. When they confirmed our pregnancy a few days later, I was filled with so much gratitude and appreciation for our newest blessing. If only we had smooth sailing from there (come on, really, things are never so "easy!")
I was so excited to pick James up from the airport on Saturday, the day after finding out we get to be parents again. I don't think he was quite expecting me to look 9 months pregnant already but he was still very excited to see Isla and I. We only had him for a week but it was much needed. Other than one more time of needing to be drained things were seeming to go well, for about a day. Wednesday morning I woke up with a sore neck and just assumed it was from all of this sleeping on my back and being giant! On Thursday the pain was unbearable, really I think labor was less painful. I couldn't lay back or sit up with out someone supporting my head because my neck hurt so bad. It was swollen and the veins in my neck were huge! I tried resting, icing, and nothing but pain medicine seemed to help. I felt like a terrible mom. I couldn't pick up Isla, I couldn't play with her, I just kept having to tell her no whenever she asked for anything. I know that moms often feel inadequate and so have I but this was a whole new feeling of low. We had also done another beta test and our numbers were ok, but they hadn't quite doubled like they should, so I was now terrified that things were turning for the worst.
My little brother was getting married that Saturday though so I just decided to stick it out and hope it went away and things would work out. James, Isla and I made the trip down to Utah on Friday morning. I slept pretty much the whole way and luckily so did Isla. My neck wasn't feeling any better and now I was having trouble breathing. I don't know why none of this seemed serious to me. I just kept assuming that it was more fluid causing pressure. Even though I spent half of my brother's reception resting on some strangers couch that Saturday, I made it through the weekend. On Sunday, we said our goodbyes to James and he went back to Arizona and we headed back to Boise for a couple more weeks.
On Monday I was actually feeling quite a bit better but my neck was still swollen so I decided to go see Dr. Slater. After a few questions and a quick check up she encouraged me to head over to the ER, she was concerned that I may have a blood clot. So I headed over to St. Luke's hospital and got checked in at the ER. The doctor there was not expecting to find any blood clots because I didn't have a lot of the major signs and symptoms and my neck would be an unusual place for them to develop. After a CT scan though, they found that not only did I have quite a few large clots in my jugular vein, but also a lot of smaller ones in my lungs. I was immediately put on blood thinners and then admitted to the hospital where I got to stay for three days for observation.
This was the first time I had ever been away from Isla overnight and it was not at all how I imagined my first night away from her. Let's just say it was much less glamorous than a sexy getaway with James. When you're in the hospital and pretty much healthy, people only come into your room at inconvenient times (like the middle of the night) and other than that you're pretty much bored and alone the entire time. Even though my mom and mother-in-law came to visit often, it was still a boring three days. Seeing Isla after my first night away was so hard too. I know this is a mom thing to say, but she literally looked like she had grown overnight! It crushed me that I didn't get to put her to bed and wake her up. I hated that not only was I now separated from James but Isla too. Not to mention, I was now even more stressed about the status of our pregnancy. I was just trying to make it through each day until our first ultrasound hoping and praying that we would see that little heartbeat.
When you're hormonal, stressed, and lonely and honestly, slightly depressed about the whole
situation, it's pretty easy to throw a pity party for yourself. For the first time during our whole situation, I just wanted to know why. Why did it have to be so hard? Weren't things already hard enough for us? Why did we need to have all of this happen to? Isn't infertility enough! Why can't we just have one "easy" pregnancy through IVF and things just work and be great? As I sat in my hospital bed being a crybaby, I had a thought come to my mind, "that all these things might give thee experience." This was written on a journal that I gave my little brother when he left for his mission. It comes from D&C 122 which says this, "And if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good." I remember writing my brother while he was gone and telling him that sometimes things in life are just hard, for no reason other than it's for experience and that it is for our own good. It's life and that's just how it is. It wasn't until this night though that I kept reading and I was really struck by the next verse, "The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?" No, I am not greater than my Savior. I am forever grateful for His atonement and His sacrifice, and me laying in a hospital bed is very small and insignificant compared to His night in gethsemane. 
That is why it is so hard, because sometimes we need to remember why we are so truly blessed. Moments like that remind me why I am so thankful for trials we have been given. Because the experience I've gained really has been for my own good and I have learned and grown so much from them. And even though things have been rough, we have truly been so blessed and I am so thankful that we will be welcoming our new addition early next year.