Chasing Rainbows

Well here we are again typing these on my phone because my precious Laney chewed every computer cord in the house (and yes the were put out of her reach or so we thought) Today I want to talk about my medical care and how important doctors really are on this infertility journey. I have seen from so many others before we started going through this loved ones posting how much they adore their doctors or fertility specialists. Me looking in from the outside thought that was odd, but boy has my tune changed. If you have read my previous blogs you will know what a terrible doctor I had with my miscarriage back in September. I was terrified to go to a doctor after that. With the suggestion of tons of clients and friends I found my current OB. The office she works at stays so busy and I had to wait three months. That was frustrating but I knew in my heart that she must be good because of this wait. I was so right she walked into the room and immediately I felt comforted. She talked t...

If you have any kind of tragedy or health problem you will probably really understand this post today. Today is all about message boards. I have a love hate relationship with message boards. Sometimes they can be such great help and other times they can depress you even more. The pros of message boards and online support groups. I have met some really amazing women in the groups I'm in and message boards I am on. Its a wonderful way to not feel alone when dealing with something in your life. When I was going through testing they were there to suggest things to test for that might not typically be tested. They answer so many questions that I have that are so little I don't want to bother the doctor with. These women have been so supportive and encouraging. I truly have developed a friendship with these women I have never met but are going through the same things I am. We encourage and pray for each other and that's just incredible. The cons of message boards. The hat...

"There is always adoption" is a phrase we hear very often. Now unlike my post earlier this week this phrase actually never bothers me. We are very open to adoption but most people do not know the facts of adoption. Here are the reasons adoption isn't in the cards right now. 1. The average cost of adoption in the United States is $30,000. I don't know about you but we don't have an extra $30,000 to pay upfront for anything right now. If its a private adoption it is less but still upwards of $10,000 for lawyer fees. 2. The wait is insane. In the United States the average wait to adopt is between two and seven years. Then there is fostering. This option is more financially reasonable however the emotions behind fostering are so high. You might have to give the child back to their family. Me personally and I'm sure Jay feels the same way would be absolutely crushed to have to give a child we had been raising back. Sometimes you can eventually adopt the chi...

This post is going to be a little more silly, but still relevant to infertility. I have a deep love for anything Disney related. When I was telling a friend about what my husband and I were going through I explained it like this. I said its like the 7 Dwarfs First there is DOC-  This one is self explanatory Jay and I are at the doctor all the way in Roanoke every week. We love our "Doc" but wish she was closer then 45 min away. Next we have Happy- I am so happy that we have a game plan to hopefully help us have a healthy baby. I am happy that we have such an amazing support system of friends and family. I am happy that we have such a big church family. The amount of support Jay and I have had is absolutely incredible. I am happy with my new found relationship with God. I have a lot to be happy for even through this grief. Then there is Grumpy- Anyone that knows me personally knows I get HANGRY and the biggest side effect is grumpiness. Well take that and times it...

Yay I finally have a computer back to write these blogs on!! This week is so special because its National Infertility Awareness week, so I prayed about what to write on this special week. Sure enough like always God answered. I had a friend reach out to me because her and her husband are going through almost the exact same thing as Jay and I. We talked for about and hour but one of the things she said stuck with me the most. She said they often have trouble turning it "off" because it consumes them. This statement was huge and in that moment I realized oh my what a great way to explain it. You see we try to stay busy filling our lives with all these activities and things just to get our minds off of everything going on, yet somehow its still all we think about. I could be smack dab in the middle of Disney World, see a cute baby and automatically start thinking about our infertility. If your going through miscarriage, Infertility, or infant loss it consumes y...

Today's blog post is going to be true raw emotion. Women who struggle with infertility or miscarriages often feel like they need to "suck it up" and hide their emotions. I am very vocal about infertility and loss yet I find myself feeing like this at times as well. It's a terrible feeling to go through something so heart wrenching and sad but have to suck it up and deal with it for society. It's 2017 and it's still barely talked about openly. Why is that??? 1 in 8 couples have trouble getting pregnant or sustaining a pregnancy. Now let that soak in for a second. I guarantee if you asked the question on any of your social media platforms who has suffered infertility or miscarriages the numbers would be astonishing. But here is the thing , you probably would only know about one or two of them. Us as a society makes it "weird" to openly discuss miscarraige or infertility. After openly speaking up for a year now on miscarriages and infertility I se...

you guys are so incredible. I started writing these kind of just as therapy for myself but wow your feedback is amazing. This post is going to be all about my experience with the trigger shot process A little science first there are many different types of trigger shots the one I did was called Ovidrel. It's basically a HCG injection. HCG is used to cause ovulation and helps support the development of an egg in your ovary. It then makes the egg release so you ca make a baby. My experience: First off Jay had to do the injection because y'all know I'm terrified of any needle besides a tattoo one haha.  He did a great job, I joke with him and say he enjoyed it a little to much hahaha. Pain wise it wasn't to bad, the medication itself burned a little going in. I thought the shot part was going to be the worse but little did I know the worse was to come I usually research the hell out of any medication I'm taking but for some reason I forgot to with the trigge...

First of all I'm so sorry I haven't been posting for those of you who enjoy following these. Laney chewed my computer charger into pieces 🙈I'm writing this on my phone so it might not be the best quality. I'm a woman and I'm not stupid I know when people talk about me behind my back. I have heard people whisper that statement as I have walked by and he said she said conversations.  It's always  "wow she's gotten big" or " Jenna's getting fat". I used to let it bother me terribly but then I think to myself these things I was pregnant two different times within 6 months. If you have been pregnant before you know you gain weight even if your not "showing" yet. I gained 20 pounds between those two pregnancies. I would love to go back and have beautiful babies as a result of one of those pregnancies but that just wasn't in the cards for us at that time. I was emotionally drained and food helped to cheer me up. S...

There are a few positive things that have come from going through this tough year. I have learned so much! I now realize what is really important in life and what isn't. I will NOT tolerate stupid caddy "drama" because in the whole scope of things there are bigger problems in this world. I could care less if someone talked about me behind me back, when before it would fire me up. I let things go more so then before. I guess when you experience heartbreak like we have it puts things into prospective. Getting angry at he fertility treatment bills we have to pay is logical, getting angry because someone called me fat so trivial at this point. So I have truly grown as a person. It brought me closer to my husband. Of course we were already very close, but going through things sometimes brings you even closer. Jay has never let me feel alone in this process he is there literally every step of the way. He even goes to EVERY...

"Wow you guys are so busy" its a phrase we hear all the time. Now if you do not know us personally I will give you a little run down of our life. I own my own spa and work there full time. I also own my own skin care business, and am a traveling makeup artist. My husband has a full time job also a DJ business, and photography business business on the side. With all of this we also decided to help run a not for profit coffee shop at our church thats open every day. So as you can see were basically busy busy busy every day. Add on our loves,hiking, kayaking, concerts and anything  going on at our church and what do you get???? Zero down time. So that brings me to the title. People often look at Jay and I and think we do way to much. We spread ourselves thin. What they don't understand is thats the way we keep our sanity. When we had to much down time all we thought about were the losses of our babies. We thought about what co...

I only promote products that I feel truly work. With that being said I have an incredible testimony to share with you all. Like most women I break out terribly whenever something hormone related is going in in my body. When I was pregnant I didn't have that beautiful glow some pregnant women had, no I had terrible acne. When I'm about to start my period what do I get ACNE. So you can imagine how nervous I was to go on a hormone medication. I was convinced my skin was going to be worse then ever, and even bought new makeup for my airbrush so I could cover it all.  I found out about this company called Aloette and fell in love. The products are all farm to jar and they use their own Aloeganic organic aloe. I needed a new product line for the Spa so decided to start using that and gradually started buying more and more products to use at B Flawless Spa. Whenever I would find someth...

Letrozole or more commonly known as Femara is what I have been taking for four days now. I was terrified to start this medication because its not made to treat infertility but its actually a breast cancer hormone based chemotherapy drug. The reason doctors prescribe Femara for infertility patients is because it basically suppresses estrogen levels and tricks your body into producing FSH (follicle stimulating hormone). In our case they believe this will form a more mature viable follicle that will produce a more viable egg. The side effects of this fertility drug is very similar to the more familiar one Clomid. I was so nervous because ill admit I'm on tons of blogs and message boards and have been for a year now researching miscarriage and infertility trying to find out whats wrong with me. On all these message boards women are always talking about their side effects on these fertility drugs. The common side effe...

So this is absolutely insane to me and I'm sure a lot of you are unaware because we had no clue. Infertility treatments of any kind are usually not covered at all by insurance companies. Its considered elective, but remember I did not ELECT to not be able to have a baby. Again like in a previous post were not wanting sympathy or anything but I just want to share how insane this truly is. Jay and I are just doing what they consider the basic infertility treatments. We are not doing IVF or IUI which are more commonly known about. We are doing medications to help produce a healthier egg.  Because of this medication We have to have an ultrasound almost every week. If I get pregnant we have them until I am 10 weeks pregnant. Ready for the kicker, none of them are covered by insurance because they are considered elective. At first Jay and I said okay no problem we ma...

Now I get to tell you about whats currently going on with us. I finally saw my RE and she's really a blessing.She sat and talked to use for almost an hour at our first appointment going over what all our test results meant and where to go from there.She created what she called our "game plan" and thats what I'm going to share with you today.She said what We were having was classified as unexplained recurrent miscarriages.This post will be detailed so if you don't want to know how to make babies while on fertility drugs then skip to next post ha-ha. She needed me to come in for my baseline ultrasound. This baseline ultrasound was going to check to make sure I didn't have any polyps or cysts and thankfully I did not. Next was she wrote me a proscription for Letrozole (femara) which is more commonly used for Brest cancer patients but a side effect is fertility. Because of this side effect she feels it will help us have a better chance o...

Now we come to what I like to call the treasure hunt of infertility, the testing. For me personally this part was so absolutely interesting and if I didn't hate school so much I would go to school to be an OB or RE. With the recommendation of a ton of my NRV friends I found a new doctor who Jay and I absolutely adore. The last doctor I went to told me there was nothing we could do as far as testing goes until we had three miscarriages. We went to this new doctor expecting her to tell us the same thing, but instead she immediately sent us down to the lab for testing.  Over the course of two months I had 14 blood tests, testing anything from diabetes, lupus, to brain tumors. Luckily they all came back negative. I also did a saline infused ultrasound to make sure everything is working properly and all of that came back with nothing wrong. Of course I didn't want anyt...

Okay I have quite a bit to talk about in this post so hopefully it won't be to long winded . This post is going to be describing what Jay and I went through with our two losses last year. Lets start with this time last year, Jay and I finally felt ready to start trying for a family, it was to our surprise that we wouldn't have to wait long and found out we were pregnant A day after getting back from Disney World on Mothers Day. We were over the moon excited, and slightly terrified at the same time. Most of our friends  took months to get pregnant we never thought it would happen this fast. I of course had no idea what to do so I called my best friend asking her what the heck was the next step. Of course she told me to call my doctor and I set up my first appointment for when I was 6 weeks. The week that I was supposed to go to my first doctors appointment I started bleeding. Now I didn't know a ton about being...

  I just want to welcome everyone to the blog I decided to start documenting this crazy infertility journey. I will talk about the ups, the downs, and the earth shattering grief Jay and I have gone through for almost a year now.  This blog isn't meant for you to feel sorry for us, its going to be a great way to share with all of you who would like to know just what its been like this year. We have changed because of these losses, but I think we have became better people because of it. I can not wait to open up and share everything with you. As always we always ask for your prayers as we continue this journey.