After we lost the twins, we had to test the hormones out of my system every week until they were back to zero. It took a little over a month. Eventually, they were at 4.5 which is in the negative rage (anything under 5), but the doctors still wanted to test one more time to make sure it was exactly zero. Well, a week later I had my bloodwork done again and it came back at a 7. As far as I knew your hormones can't actually raise unless you're pregnant so I immediately freaked out. The nurses and my doctor all assured me that when the hormones are that low, they tend to fluctuate. It was absolutely nothing.
Well two days later, the hormones were up to 34. Somehow, while my body still had the pregnancy hormone in me, I became pregnant again. For most of the time we were pregnant we tried so hard not to even acknowledge the pregnancy because we didn't want to be heartbroken once again. Wishful thinking. One night while I was organizing our bathroom closet I sunk down to the floor hyperventilating and sobbing. I was terrified of losing another one of my babies and as much as I didn't even want to achnowledge the pregnancy, in my heart I was hoping more and more every day that this baby would make it. This could be our gift. I will be forever grateful for one of my closest friends who I was able to text and cry out to that night. She prayed for me and offered me a sense of comfort that I wasn't able to feel anywhere else. We lost our fifth baby at about 6 weeks.
It's ironic.... when what you want more than anything in the world is a baby, yet when you are pregnant your strongest emotion is fear.
After that miscarriage we once again tested the horomones back to zero. Then we went ahead with another IUI. Failed.
After month after month of negativity, we stopped everything and just prayed to God to lead us in the right direction to be able to grow our family. If you (and many of you have) asked us 6 months ago if we would ever adopt our response would have been maybe in 10 years if we're still at this. It would be a last resort because my heart was NOT in that place. At all. We too badly wanted our "own" baby. We prayed so hard on what to do next. For Him to lead us down the right path. So we were at church one Sunday and I just knew. God spoke to my heart and made me realize that any baby placed into our arms would be "our own" and we would love them the same, regardless of where they came from. And so we began the discussion of adoption.
I met with a former teacher and friend to discuss their journey with adoption and I left feeling so excited and elated! This is our next step. This is how we will grow our family. We called probably close to 15 different agencies and decided on a well praised agency out of Buffalo. But we still needed to figure out how we were going to get approx. $30,000 to cover the costs when we have already used most of our savings and thousands of dollars on fertility treatments.
We don't want to ask people for money. This is our child and we most definitely didn't want and don't want a hand out. So, this past weekend we decided to have a garage sale to earn some money. Needless to say, it was incredibly successful. Our best friends (Brooke and David) live in Florida and weren't able to be a part of our garage sale so Brooke took it upon herself to create a gofundme page to help contribute to our garage sale. Well we are in COMPLETE AWE and incredibly humbled by the response. We have received an outpour of love shown through so many people and the support we have received has truly brought us to tears. We want to genuinely thank every single person who has donated to both the gofundme page as well as to the garage sale.
Last night, we were able to afford the first step of the process and fill out the application. This is so huge. We sat our our kitchen table with tears in our eyes as we hit 'submit'. We still have a very, very long and expensive road ahead of us, but for the first time in a very long time, we are feeling so hopeful and can see Baby Gudselak in our future. Thank you, thank you for the love❤️
