My hunting, fishing outdoors man husband who never sheds a tear

I came home on Wednesday and I couldn't have been more happy to see my husband! We play volleyball on Thursday nights. So the next day I was getting ready for volleyball when I couldn't find my white sports bra. All my clothes are kept in the "red room". The red room is the room directly next to ours and we painted it red.

Brad decided before I left on Saturday that he wanted me to go thru some of my old clothes to get rid of them. He wanted to "clean out" that room. So we moved most of my clothes to our bedroom. So here I am, looking for my sports bra and I cannot find it. I holler out "Have you seen my white sports bra?!?". I hear laughing. Laughing? Why is he laughing at me? He tells me he has not seen it and continues to laugh. I am SO confused at this point. I walk in the living room where he is and I ask him what is so funny. He tells me he has a case of the giggles....my husband has a case of the giggles. My hunting, fishing outdoors man who never sheds a tear has a case of the giggles? I think not.

I am getting frustrated when he tells me, why don't you go look in the red room to see if you can find it. Ok, I thought, that makes sense. I open the door and I find that my hunting, fishing outdoors man husband who never sheds a tear has turned the red room into a nursery. Tears fill my eyes as I cannot believe what I am looking at. White chair rail, light lilac painted walls. He made a baby girl nursery. And as happy as I was I also knew this meant he truly believed that this was the time it was going to work, this was going to be our month. Panic set in for me. What if this is not our month? How am I going to tell him? I can deal with my own pain, but when it comes to him, I never want to see him hurting.

We decided not to take a test until day 31. That was my longest cycle day in the past 6 months so we figured that was a safe bet. On cd 31 at 6:00 p.m the pregnancy test read "Not Pregnant" and I found myself apologizing to my husband for not being pregnant. Telling him this wasn't his fault, it was mine. We hugged each other and I decided to go about my normal routine of bowling that night. As soon as I got to the bowling alley, aunt Flo paid me a visit.

When I got home I found a card on my pillow. Inside the card were the words of my husband letting me know this is not MY fault, and were in this together. it's a WE thing not a ME thing. Even with his sweet words, it doesn't feel like a WE thing. Its hard knowing you're body is the cause.

So we move on. This month will be a break month for us due to some timing issues. I'm trying to focus on God this month and trying to heal my heart. Its very broken. I went to church for the first time in over a year on Sunday and it felt really good.

to be continued.

Too much going on

On February 20th I went in for my second IUI, my first with this new Dr. I had given myself injections the prior days to help my follicles grow. I had two good sized follicles on my right side and one small one on my left. Because I was set to fly out to Washington, D.C for a work trip, I had to have my IUI done a day earlier than the Dr. preferred but she still thought it would be OK.

Needless to say the next couple days were VERY stressful due to the snow/ice storm. due to many cancelled flights and delays I ended up flying from Louisville, KY to Tampa, Fl at 1:30 p.m. I sat in the Tampa airport until 9:30 p.m. We were almost to Baltimore when the pilot came on over the intercom and informed us that the Baltimore airport has been closed due to the storms and we would need to land in Norfolk, VA. By this time is close to 11:30 p.m. They never let us off the airplane and about 30 minutes later, Baltimore opened back up and in the air we went...AGAIN. Finally we landed in Baltimore around midnight and we had about an hour and half drive to D.C. Thankfully i was with a group the whole time and we had a charter bus driving us. We all slept on the bus on the way to D.C.

Part of my job is assisting our event coordinator, with all the bad weather and cancellations, it made this trip very stressful. All I could think about was "I hope my stress level doesn't affect my chances for pregnancy". Most people do not understand the pressure and stress struggling with infertility causes. Your hormones and emotions are all over the place, so adding this additional stress was terrifying. The week passed and I came home on that Wednesday.....

more to follow

New Dr. and DRAMA!

After our failed IUI, I decided I wanted to go to a new doctor. My Dr. at that time told me he felt as we were at the end of our rope with fertility drugs and we should consider moving on to IVF. I just wasn't ready to accept that so I made an appointment with a new doctor. I filled out my paperwork with a consent form allowing them to send my medical records to my new Dr. office.


My first appointment with my new Dr. was yesterday. It's been three months since my IUI and Brad and I haven't spent much time thinking of anything. We really tried to take a break. So when I showed up to the appointment yesterday, I was surprised to find out that my "old" Dr. office didn't send over my records but then also hung up on my new Dr. office three times when they called to try and retrieve the records! CRAZY! I was just stunned at the unprofessionalism. Because of that I needed to walk step by step thru my history with my new Dr. to give her an idea of a game plan for going forward until she gets my records. I honestly forgot what that pain felt like until yesterday. I was reliving my nightmares and feeling the stress.


I spent 2 hours with mt new Dr. and she was very informative and thorough; I left knowing more about PCOS and Endometrosis. I asked the dreaded "what are my chances of having a baby with medicine" question and her answer was 20%. Twenty percent?!?! Twenty percent?!?! I had a mini melt down when I got in my car heading back to work. I couldn't shake the thought of how low that sounded and how hopeless I felt. I got home and I couldn't shake the haze. I asked Brad if we needed to have a conversation on how we were going to pay for IVF. We have had no plan in action for IVF up until this point so I felt we needed to talk about it, right then, right now! I didn't sleep much last night...


I woke up this morning and in true Kelli fashion I wanted to compare my odds with medicine with "normal" women's odds...and bam there it was, just as quick as I could type it into google..the answer. "For most couples trying to conceive, the odds that a woman will become pregnant in any particular month are about 15% to 25%". So maybe 20% isn't so bad... why do I always jump to the bad before having faith? Why do I need facts to help calm my mind?

So anyway, now that I'm on  a positive slide, I am ovulating on my own (not strong but hey its there) so that's a good thing. The plan for the future is to get back on Fermara with a higher dosage to see if we can get more follicles along with metformin dieting and exercise. Wish me luck.. here we go again!

Holly Jolly Christmas?

It's the most wonderful time of year...right? Maybe not for me...anymore.

I've been very busy with work lately and I've not had a lot of time to sit and think. Which is probably a good thing but it just hit me while in the middle of our annual meeting AF visited. I didn't have time to cry or grieve, or to even process what I was feeling, until now. I am so overwhelming sad. This is the third Christmas season I've dealt with this pain. Last year was VERY bad. I was on clomid at that time and I was mentally unstable to say the least.

But this year I am just empty. No happiness, no joy, no laughter just a blank canvas of a person. I feel like I'm losing myself. If I do laugh its forced. I think I play the "I'm ok" part well when I have to. But I'm tired of playing the part. I just want to be mad. I don't want to go shopping and see all the things I want to buy for a baby I want so badly. I don't want to see all these babies on social media with their "babies first Christmas" outfits. I can't handle seeing another pregnancy announcement.

My last name is Jolly but I am anything but that right now. I am writing this in hopes of the day when I can look back at my pain and be that much more grateful when we do get our miracle child.

All over again

It is probably not a shock that my husband is a hunter/outdoors-man. This past weekend was opening day of gun season. Brad prefers to hunt with a bow but this is his favorite season. He left on Wednesday and at that time we were still in our two week waiting period after our first IUI. On Thursday the wait was over, two negative pregnancy test and a visit from aunt Flo confirmed my greatest fears. We were not pregnant.

I thought for sure I would lose faith, I thought I would break down.. I thought wrong.

I drove to the farm Friday afternoon to meet my husband so I could see him. I had already planned to come down on Saturday, but I needed him. I had an hour drive until I was in his arms. I thought about all the reasons I could be upset but none of them stuck. I talked to my mom and I was OK. I hadn't broken down yet. I knew it was coming but when would I feel it? I finally arrived at the farm and decided to go out hunting with him that evening so we could have some alone time.

We hadn't spoken a word about it until we reached the tree stand. I climbed up and sat down across from him. I looked at the man I married. We whispered to each other how upset we were over not being pregnant when we felt so strongly God was telling us to move forward, and that's when it hit me. God is telling us to move forward but he wanted me to have something else first.

When Brad is hunting, he is in his element. He was sure of what he was doing and in that moment I feel in love with my husband all over again. I hadn't looked at him or had those types of feelings in a long time. We have been together for 5 years, and in those years our relationship has gotten very comfortable. I think that just goes with marriage. So here am I sitting across from the most handsome man I have ever seen and thinking how lucky I am to have him as my husband. I think God wanted to draw me closer to my husband. Over the last 2 and half years we've had some really trying times and it's not been easy to find romance in our relationship. Everything was scheduled, most conversations included the agenda for baby making of the month. I was exhausted.

I have not shed a tear for the failed IUI this month, but instead I have more hope and more love in my heart. God did send me a message, it just was not in the order I thought it would be. Brad and I have decided to change doctors so that we can get a second opinion about whats going on with our situation, but we will not go in for that appointment until January. Until then, we're going to enjoy each other's company, have date nights and put the passion back in our marriage all over again.