What's Up With My Life?

CHANGE. It's a big word and one I have become increasingly familiar with over the past three months or so. Some of it has been unintended, but most of it is good, and wonderful. How has my life changed, you ask?

My job. I am no longer a classroom teacher. After seven years of working in a classroom with kids sitting in desks, teaching curriculum with a white board and looking into those sweet faces on a daily basis, I have changed to now work from home. I teach kiddos online, over the computer, in a virtual classroom. I cannot see their sweet faces, but I speak to many of them daily and I get to impact their lives from home. Why did I change so drastically? Well, there are many reasons, but one is the most important.

I want to start a family. I was "on" all the time, every day, with little to no breaks in my life. My body was so stressed out that it didn't know what to do with itself. I told myself that the school year of 2011-2012 was going to be the "Year of Me." It started with me getting healthy. I dropped about 45 pounds in that year, ran three 1/2 marathons and one full marathon. I cut sugar, went to boot camps, made friends and looked for something that would reduce my stress. I found my new job and decided to give it a shot. This was all so that my body would even itself out and allow my husband and I to try to have a family.

My husband and I have been trying to have a family for going on eight years now with no luck. I have had some issues with my body since I was 16 years old. (Obviously before I decided to start having a family) and no doctors could figure it out. They just put me on birth control to regulate things until I was ready to have kids. Once I was ready and off of birth control, the issues continued. Every doctor I talked to looked at me like I had three heads. I even had one doctor say "You are just a medical anomaly, I have no idea what is wrong with you. You just don't ovulate." REALLY!? What kind of investigative doctoring is that? Isn't it a doctor's job to figure out what is wrong with a patient and help them fix it? It would be like me, as a teacher, saying, "I don't know what is wrong with your child's ability to read. They just can't read and there is nothing I can do about it." NOT acceptable! It is my job as a teacher to HELP a child in any way possible. It is a doctor's job to help a patient know what is wrong with them so that they can fix the issue. OBVIOUSLY.

By the grace of God, I had a mixed-up appointment date and they had to schedule me with a different doctor for one of my more recent visits. I saw this doctor and she was like, "It has been far too long for you to not know. We are going to figure this out and get you pregnant!" How long did it take her? One visit. ONE! She took some blood, saw my hormone levels were slightly off in a couple of areas, sent me to an endocrinologist, had more blood work done, saw what I had and diagnosed me. Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). Why had they never found it before? I had had multiple ultrasounds, blood tests, unnecessary exams and more with no results in the past. They had never asked the right questions. She asked me questions I had never been asked before. I had never had the cysts, which makes it really hard to diagnose, but she asked me about my weight, my acne, my cycles, everything. It turns out that weight stays on patients with PCOS, often no matter what they do. Acne is a part of the package, so it is like puberty never goes away. AND, a side effect of this lovely condition is that I don't ovulate.

I made it my goal to have a baby. They said that they would not put me on Clomid (A fertility medication) unless I was healthier. At the weight that I was, I would have been considered a high risk pregnancy. The other day I went back into the doctor's office and she was blown away with my progress. She was stunned that I had lost so much weight and she said I was ready. We are ready! The year of me is over (which doesn't mean I will stop taking care of myself!) and now it is the "Year of My Family." In order to start my family I still need to care for myself. I need to be healthy for my future child and for myself.

I guess that I can say that I am asking for prayers for my family. We want to be parents so badly. I have worked so hard to get to where I am and now it is time for our family to be complete. I know that it will be a stressful journey, and I know that there will be a lot of tears and anxiety, but the final outcome is a joy that we will have that is so great, that it will trump any of the emotions that come along the way.

We can't wait for our family to go from two to three. God is blessing us in ways that I cannot even come close to describing. He has shown us the way and now it is time for us to take it.