How the Circus Came to the House of Laird

I've been thinking about this for a few days and finally decided the story should be told. I'll be as brief as possible. :)

We got married in 1996 and started trying to have kids a couple years later. No pregnancy. I was given the "pcos" diagnosis, probably for lack of anything else. I don't ovulate. Tried a few rounds of clomid, no success. I seriously can't remember year we first did IVF because:

a: it was so freaking long ago

b: I was such a total emotional disaster by then those years are a blur

c: my mind is currently taken over by schedules and simply making it through one more day.

Anyway, it was probably 6-7 years ago and it didn't work. We had three frozen embryos left over, did a FET a few months later which resulted in a pregnancy and early miscarriage. Our next round of IVF was in 2003 and resulted in singleton pregnancy and sweet AC arrived in 2004 (textbook pregnancy). No frozen embryos left over this time, so J and I got greedy for a bigger family a couple years ago and do one more round of IVF. Positive pregnancy test and another early miscarriage, but there were frozen embryos left over (docs and us pretty surprised). We transferred three frozen embryos March 2007 and all three decided to stick around to see how fun it would be to live with us. IV, EL, and MG waited 34+ weeks to make their entrance (I'll do a pregnancy post later, although it's a bit boring).

As any of you w/pregnancy or lack thereof have experienced, the fertility road is long with lots of enormous potholes. I am not pleased with how I handled the first 3 years, becoming someone my husband did NOT marry. Everything changed one day though, when one day (after yet another round of a worthless IUI didn't work) I was crying and praying in our guest bedroom. I hit a crossroads in my faith where I needed to decide that if God was really God, then He is in charge of us having children (or not having children) and it really wasn't my burden. This doesn't mean I didn't mourn any longer, but it does mean the weight and pressure and stress and freak-out of "what if we can't have kids??" was considerably lessened. It was still another 3 years before we would have a pregnancy and the eventual arrival of AC, but those years resulted in great maturity and a renewal of my relationship with J. Did I still cry sometimes? Of course. Did I find an excuse to skip a baby shower or two? Of course. It was just easier. With AC's IVF, I went to just about every appointment by myself (totally relaxed and not expecting J to go with me at all) and felt so sorry for the couples in there, waiting nervously and grade-A stressed out to see how many follicles would be there, if at all, or what the blood test would show. They were so sad, like zombies, and I remember being like that. I'm so thankful we don't have to do that anymore.