Adoption.

Infertility is so heartbreaking. It has meant I am struggling to find a future for myself. When we moved back and gave up so much we knew it was for the greater good of our own happy wee family. I could picture that future.

Now I am lost. I find it so hard that there are so many things beyond us. The loss of control is very hard for me.

Last week spending time with both sides of my family just reiterated how important family is. I realized that I don't want to be 90 and not have anyone to visit me or just listen to my stories.

WeI both took the week to think about what we really want. And a family is still on that list. My husband wants to make me happy but I know that he was disappoint after the dr appointment.

So we have decided to change what we eat. I know that going back to low carb eating, cutting out wheat and sugar and having a mainly veggie diet is the best thing for my body.

We are not giving up on having our own child but it can't be my focus. I know myself and know I get obsessed with things. And it would break me if I changed my whole life to attempt to have a child and it doesn't happen. I was so sad after 2 months of what i thought was cycles and not being pregnant.

So this is what we have decided to do with the support of my family. We are going to hope for a miracle but look for the positive. We have begin enquires to complete our family by adopting a child that needs us.

It can take a year or more before we even get on the adoption register and then it is waiting. We have set a time limit, that if we do not have child by my 40th then we need to move on with our lives. So we have a little while to focus on and changing our lifestyle so the wee one, be it a child of our blood or heart, will have 2 happy healthy parents for a very long time.

So today I called the 0800 number at CYF to start this new journey.
I was given the number of the local contact. I called that number, the answer phone gave me another to call, and then the next voice message told me to call the first. I left a message. Okay so we are off to a rough start. Am not taking this as a sign and will try again in the next day or so.

Sepcailist visit

Finally after 3 years of trying, and 6 months of tracking temperatures, we are off to see the specialist.

I was told I had PCOS when I was about 24, so we have always known that we were unlikely to have a child naturally and drugs would need to be involved. But we had decided to just wait and see what fate had in store for us.

We had made a massive change and sacrifice to have a family... more than most.

In 2009 one of my close friends died, she had Pancreatic cancer and at 38 left behind a husband and 2 young children. Being surrounded by her family and witnessing the embrace of that family, forced my husband and I to reassess everything.

Before this we really had not planned to have our own family. My husband has two children from his first marriage, and didn't really want more. I on the other hand secretly hoped he would change his mind.

And this is the way it stayed until one day in the haze of hospice visits, we took the weekend off to visit the zoo. Here watching families and kids happy and smiling, we realise what we were missing. I still wonder if secretly my dear friend didn't whisper in his ear... wouldn't surprise me if she did. :o)

So 3 years later here we are. We have left good jobs, sold our house, brought a struggling business all in the grandest effort to complete that dream of a family.

We went together. The Dr was lovely. Kind explained things. But the answer in the simplest terms is that it would be a 'miracle' for us to have a child without drugs. And because of my size they would not consider me to even start treatment. He carefully explained that the cycles that I had been so excited about their return, where not real ones at all. And that even though I was getting a temperate spike and a period, my eggs had firmly refused to leave the nest. An ultrasound confirmed that my ovaries were covered in cysts.

If I lost 50kgs I could start treatment. 50kgs!! I sat there and did the maths in my head. To lose that sensibly would take two years. That would make me 39 and my husband 44. The age cut off for IVF is 40.

The walk back to the car was a silent one. We were both shocked that so quickly and with one 20 minute visit everything ... everything changed.

I know a child will change our lives, but if I immersed myself totally in the world of weight loss in the effort to have a child, and the drugs and IVF fail, as we know from sad stories that it sometimes does, I am frightened it will break me forever.

We need to take time to catch our breath. I am going away next week to spend a week with family down south. So we are going to take this time to each think about what we want. And formulate a new plan.