She has arrived...

Well I scheduled my Quick Takes to post on Friday morning, and then shortly after it posted AF made her appearance. So cycle day 1 ended up being Friday, and I felt a flooding sense of relief.

As I mentioned in my Quick Takes, I hate that I have to feel this way...

I know I have explained what happened back in July, but here is a quick synopsis. I experienced a molar pregnancy which means that my egg contained no genetic material, and an abnormal fertilization occurred. After implantation, tissue started growing and mutating into these grape like nodules which have the risk of becoming cancerous, and the growth emits sky high levels of HCG mimicking a true pregnancy.

So we scheduled a D&C and after the tissue was sent to pathology, they determined that the tissue was benign, but it had a 15-20% chance of returning as cancer. So I am going in for blood work monthly to monitor my hcg levels since if the tissue cells return, they will immediately start producing hcg, and I will have to go on chemotherapy to kill the cells and stop them from metastasizing to other areas of my body.

The problem is that if we got pregnant right now, obviously a baby would also emit hcg hormone, and my doctor would have no way of determining if it was just the pregnancy causing the hormones or if there was also molar tissue contributing to the hcg levels. So to be on the safe side, they would push for chemotherapy to take care of any molar cells that could potentially be there. If we went through with this, our little baby wouldn't survive, and then it would be an entire year before we would be given the green light to try and conceive again.

So that is the issue in a nutshell, and when my cycle was long this month, I felt the anxiety creeping in... I kept trying to push it down and abandon my will to God's plan, but I slowly felt it overtaking me... I called Bill at work in tears telling him how scared I was, and all the worst case scenarios were playing over and over in my head.

If we were pregnant, I wanted that baby so badly, and I didn't think that I could bring myself to go on chemotherapy... but then I couldn't help but feel that I would be gambling with my own life.

And if it was just the cells returning, that brought on a whole slew of emotions about chemotherapy, taking care of my girls, not being able to add to our family for a year....

I have been finding myself with baby fever lately... I love reading all the pregnancy posts, and I am so happy for you ladies and all my pregnant friends in real life, but there is a tiny part of me that is jealous. I have had an overwhelming sense of peace, but there is a part of me that feels the pain of going through the miscarriage which turned into the molar mess. It has become an ache in my heart that longs for the baby I lost.

Dealing with all of this has caused me to reflect more deeply about God's plan for our family and our fertility, and I have been thinking about my beautiful sisters in Christ who are carrying the heavy cross of infertility, and you ladies are some of my heroes. I pray for you daily.

I have been able to thank God for this suffering, and I see that He has already showered many blessings down on our marriage and our family through all of this, and I am working on developing a spirit of abandonment to God's will. I know that He will take care of us, and I wasted a great deal of energy not trusting Him in the depths of my heart.

It's funny how I could have easily said, "Of course I trust God's plan for my life!" However, despite my efforts, the fact that I couldn't suppress the overwhelming sense of fear which turned into panic in the moments leading up to taking the pregnancy test spoke volumes about what was really going on deep down.

Well, the test was negative, AF has arrived, and God has taught me a lesson about trust. I am a work in progress...

St. Monica, pray for us!