Recently my husband and I celebrated our fourth anniversary. When we got married, we had no idea that the curveball of infertility was coming our way. Life doesn't look quite like we pictured it would back then, but life is good. We have each other and feel blessed to be facing this challenge together with faith that one day we'll overcome it and our family will grow. I'm so grateful to have Shawn by my side through thick and thin, forever and ever! Even though we wouldn't have chosen to still be childless at this point in our marriage, we have accomplished some good things that are worth celebrating, and I think it's important for us to remember those things. So, during the last four ... read more
42 Inspiring Infertility Bloggers Share How To Stay Positive
I am so excited to tell you that I was chosen to share my advice for staying positive through infertility along with several other amazing infertility bloggers for Ovulation Calculator! Each of us shared a little piece of advice or encouragement about how we keep going and stay positive and optimistic through the challenges of infertility. I loved reading everyone's inspiring thoughts; these ladies are incredible and part of such a supportive community! There are a few of them whose blogs I have read for a long time and were part of the reason I started blogging about my infertility struggle, and it's a real honor to have my advice featured alongside them. There are also several of these ... read more
Husbands Are Hurting Too
It's a no-brainer that Mother's Day would be a hard holiday for couples who can't get pregnant. Reminders of motherhood and babies and pregnancy are EVERYWHERE and for those of us who still aren't mothers and desperately want to be, it's pretty much the worst day of the year. It can't be a coincidence that National Infertility Awareness Week always happens at the end of April--just before Mother's Day in May--and hopefully spreading awareness of infertility through social media just beforehand helps to encourage a little more sensitivity and thoughtfulness towards those who get continually slapped in the face by You're-Still-Not-A-Mother Day. When couples are open about infertility ... read more
What Inside Out Got Right About Grief
I never truly knew what grief was before infertility became a part of my life. Yes, disappointing and sad things happened to me and those I love, and people I loved dearly left this life. But I hadn't experienced a loss that completely turned my world upside down and dumped all the puzzle pieces of my life into a messy pile for me to rearrange. That changed when infertility knocked at my door. The imaginary photo in my mind of what my future family would be like once included me, my husband and several kids (he wanted 4, I wanted 6, just like the families we grew up in). Now, my husband and I are still in the photo, but all the children have been replaced by question marks. It's not a ... read more
Free Printable: Take-Along Medical Calendar
Anyone going through infertility knows that there are lots of unpleasant ways that it affects your daily life. And if you're seeking medical treatment as I have been, those unpleasant-but-necessary changes include keeping a careful record of your menstrual cycles, many doctor's appointments and ultrasounds, a loss of privacy, pills, shots, yucky side effects of medication etc., just to name a few. I remember over two years ago when my husband and I first started trying to conceive, I thought, "I should probably keep track of my periods so that when I get pregnant it won't be hard to figure out the baby's due date." Oh, how naive and innocent I was back then! Of course I assumed I'd ... read more
Merry Christmas 2015
Merry Christmas, everyone! I wanted to share our Christmas card with you. I usually write a letter and print it out to send with our Christmas cards. I didn't get around to that this year, but I feel like the caption I wrote on Instagram when I posted this photo sums up our feelings for the year and so it's going to count as our Christmas letter. (You can read it below the picture.) Thanks so much for stopping by to read my little blog! I'm so grateful for the encouragement and sisterhood that you bring to me and glad that we can all support each other through the "dark street" of infertility. One of my favorite couple traditions has been sending out Christmas cards each year ... read more
Another “Last Christmas”
I haven't written anything for a while, and to be honest, it's because I haven't felt like writing. I started this blog hoping to share encouragement with other women struggling with infertility, hoping that I could find fulfillment and happiness during my challenges and help others to do the same. But lately I haven't felt like looking on the bright side. I guess I'm in a season where when infertility knocks me down, I'm not jumping right back up to my feet. Recently infertility has punched me in the gut, and I've spent hours on the ground sobbing until no more tears would come. Then feeling numb, I start crawling through another day, taking another prenatal vitamin out of the hundreds ... read more
Tour of an Elementary School Art Classroom
Like I mentioned in the previous post, I'm an art teacher, and over the summer I had to move everything from my old classroom into a trailer/portable classroom (a small building outside the main school building). I wasn't too thrilled about that at first, but in a lot of ways it has turned out to be a really good thing! It forced me to start over and really think critically about how I wanted to organize my classroom, and having a year's experience caused me to set things up a lot differently than I did last year. So that was a major project that I kinda put off until August and then school started and so I've been pretty busy ever since! I get tons of inspiration from blogs written by ... read more
Infertility Interview at Petunia Pickle Bummer
Hey friends! It's been a while since I've posted and that is because...school started. I am an elementary school art teacher, and this is my second year of teaching art to about 600 1st--5th graders. New teachers were hired at our school this year since we're in a growing area of town, and sadly my art room had to be given to a regular classroom teacher. Over the summer I had to move everything from my old classroom into a trailer/portable classroom (a small building outside the main school building). So that was a major project that I kinda put off until August and then school started and so I've been pretty busy ever since! I've got a bunch of posts I've been working on that are ... read more
When the Road of Infertility Feels Long and Lonely
During my journey so far, I've noticed that infertility is so underrepresented in everyday life. While infertility afflicts a whole lot of us (7.5 million women ages 15-44 have used infertility services in the U.S., read more about that here), there are still many, many more pregnant women and women who have children than there are infertile women. On top of that, fertility is so much more visible than infertility. The presence of a baby bump or children is much more obvious to passersby than the absence of either of those. Coupled with the personal nature of infertility and an old-fashioned lingering stigma of shame attached to infertility, it makes sense that those of us who struggle ... read more