Izzie's Present

Yesterday was Izzie's birthday. Izzie is my sweet beagle/dachsund mix who I adopted when she was a puppy. Izzie turned 4 yesterday. It is hard to believe she is growing up so fast!! Anyways, we took Izzie to Petsmart to pick out her birthday present. Apparently she could not contain her excitement. She decided that inside the front entrance to the store was the perfect place to poop!! I was mortified. I couldn't even believe it. Izzie never does anything like that ever. I guess she just had a little too much fun on her birthday. Or maybe she just wanted to leave a present for the people at Petsmart too. Who knows....

The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain

I saw this quote the other day and it really hit home for me. I agree that you have to put up with some bad to really be able to appreciate the good, but I feel like Brad and I have been patiently putting up with the rain for a long time and I am starting to lose my patience. As newlyweds, I thought it was supposed to be all puppies and rainbows like you see at the end of every Disney movie where the prince and the princess walk off into the sunset and live happily ever after, but I guess that was just not meant to be our journey.

I know that most of you know our story, but for those of you who are unaware I will give you our background:

Brad and I met our first week of college our freshman year. We became close friends, but he was always just a friend. I asked him out on our first date for Valentine's Day and we have pretty much been together ever since. Brad proposed to me in September 2008 in a hot air balloon. It was perfect!

After 5 1/2 years of dating, Brad and I got married on September 19, 2009. I had my princess wedding I had always dreamed of and was perfectly content to walk hand in hand into the sunset with the love of my life.

Unfortunately on November 12, 2009 our little blissful newlywed bubble was rocked with one phone call. My parents had called and my brother, Casey, had died suddenly. I was devestated. How do you even begin to recover from that? I threw myself into taking care of my family which was falling apart and helping my mom make sure everything was perfect for my brother's funeral. We had a memorial service back in Plano where my family had moved back when I was in middle school. At the service my baby brother, Michael spoke and I read a scripture. Then the following day we took my brother back home to Ohio where had grown up. We buried him next to my Aunt Debbie who died in a car accident when I was in high school. We spent the weekend in Ohio with my cousins and family. It was very therapeutic to spend time with my cousins. We played and laughed and remembered my brother. Then we headed back to Plano and Brad and I decided to head up to Tulsa to spend Thanksgiving with his parents. I just needed a break. It was nice to have a normal Thanksgiving after a chaotic two weeks and I knew Casey would want us to eat and enjoy Thanksgiving and to eat through the pain as he always said because Thanksgiving was his favorite holiday. 

After Thanksgiving, Brad and I headed back to San Antonio to start picking up the pieces, but our life was forever changed and our happily ever after was starting to crack. We kept trucking along and begin seeing a therapist. I finally was able to find a job subbing and life was starting to get back to normal. In April we decided to casually start trying to get pregnant. After consulting with my doctor, with threw out the birth control pills and decided to just see what happens. My doctor told me it would probably be months before the medicine was completely out of my system anyways. But she was wrong!! We were shocked to found out in May that we were pregnant!! We were over the moon. We told our parents right away and scheduled our first doctor's appointment and went about our merry way so happy that things were finally turning around for us. I was even counting my blessings for not having any morning sickness. I went off on a trip to Disney with my best friend and I was careful about what I rode and did. My best friend even nicknamed the baby squishy. The day after I came back from the trip is when I started bleeding. I was at my parent's house visiting before I headed back home to San Antonio. My mom took me to the ER and I was diagnosed with a threatened miscarriage and told to come back in two days to do more blood work and figure out what was going on. So I settled in at mom and dad's and Brad flew up and we waited.

On June 6, 2010, our worst fears were confirmed. I had in fact miscarried my baby at 6 weeks 6 days. We were sad but optimistic. We were told it was common, and we could try again right away, so then I began to throw myself into trying again. I began charting and using OPKs. No more we'll see what happens, I wanted to make it happen. I thought for sure we got pregnant quickly the first time it would happen again, but I was wrong.  (I should mention that shortly after this I finally got a job interview and got offered a teaching job which we were thrilled about because I had been looking for a year.) I discovered the trying to conceive after loss (TTCAL) board on the bump.com and became buddies with some wonderful ladies and formed a group called Ten and Trying.

The TTCAL board and the ten and trying ladies saved my life. To have people I could talk to who had been what I had been through was such a wonderful blessing. 6 months after our first pregnancy, at the end of October, we found out we were pregnant again. We were excited but cautious. We told no one. I went and did blood work and we waited. A couple of days later at 4 weeks 2 days, I began to miscarry again. My heart was broken again. We immediately went in and did the recurrent pregnancy loss (RPL) testing and once again were told we didn't have to wait to start trying again. All of our testing came back normal which of course was wonderful news, but it stung just a little bit for me because I wanted to find a reason for our losses, something I could fix and there wasn't one. By some strange twist of fate, at the end of November I found myself staring at another positive pregnancy test, while it was possible, I was shocked and confused. We hadn't really tried and I had just had a miscarriage 4 weeks prior. No sooner had I gotten a positive test, I immediately began to miscarry. My doctor called it a chemical pregnancy and she put us a TTC break. She was afraid that if we were to get pregnant again, my body would just not be able to handle it and she did not want to put us through another loss. So we sat on the bench for 3 months. Our first month back on February 23rd, 2011, I got pregnant again! We were thrilled, we told our parents because we knew we would need their support if something were to go wrong. I went in for blood work and I watched my numbers go up. I made it to the second blood draw and then the third! I was shocked and finally started to get excited. Then on March 1, at 4 weeks 6 days, I again went down the familiar bleeding path and had another miscarriage. My OB was at a loss. This shouldn't be happening to us, yet again here we were. She referred us to an RE (a specialist) who we meet with at the end of the month.

And of course when I didn't think it was possible to rain anymore, it began to pour. This past Friday, my principal called me into her office to let me know that due to RIF (reduction in force) and the state budget cuts, my contract would not be renewed, so I would not have a job next year. Even though I have previous teaching experience, it is my first year in the district so I was on the chopping block along with 14 other teachers at my school.

So needless to say, I am so ready for the rainbow. And if you made it through reading all of that you are a trooper! :)

I am hoping this blog will be a place where I can update everyone on our daily life at the Bailey house. I am also hoping to chronicle our TTC journey and a place to process my feelings. I am hoping this will be very therapeutic for me.

Today is a difficult day for me because today was supposed to be our first ultrasound for my last pregnancy, but instead I taking Brad to the RE for his semen analysis. It's the first step in our journey for answers, but I am just sad because it is just another painful reminder of what we have gone through.

So today I am sitting here with my umbrella, watching the rain and waiting for the rainbow....

Kelly