Our first family picture!  (Minus Cali who was too busy burying her bone to join us. Rude. Ha!) We are SO HAPPY to share that everything went wonderfully today! PRAISE GOD! I’m now officially a PUPO. (Pregnant Until Proven Otherwise)
It’s been 1,075 days since our last transfer and to say my emotions were high would be an understatement. (I’m so thankful for Josh’s calm and positive spirit!) We felt your prayers surrounding us in volumes and the transfer was smooth and a surreal, God-given moment. Our 2 babies thawed perfectly, in fact the embryo that looks like 2, is actually just 1, just incredibly advanced and fully hatching out of its shell and ready to snuggle in! I’m now back home on strict bedrest for the next few days. We’re praying 1 or 2 of these peanuts get cozy and implant for the next 40 weeks! 

Thank you to everyone who reached out or were praying for us today. It was incredibly emotional, in the best way, to see how God has provided us with such a incredible community to carry us through and celebrate such an exciting day with us. We feel so loved! (Responding at the moment is emotional and I have to slow down the overwhelmed tears! Please forgive me if I don’t reply right away. Each one means sooo much.)

We are trusting God in whatever lies ahead and know He is standing right next to us. These days ahead are long and we continue to ask for prayers for peace, hope, trust, and comfort for our spirits. We believe in the God who does the impossible! 💛

Lots of love,

Josh and Chelsea 

“I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.” ‭‭Romans‬ ‭15:13‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Guess whhhaaattttttt!?!?!

Remember that new protocol I am on? The one CCRM – Minneapolis cleverly concocted based on our past cycles and their brilliancy? Well, I am THRILLED to share that its working wonderfully. So wonderfully in fact, that our transfer date has been moved up!

YES!!!

So that October 3^rd date that has been burned into your brain? Erase that. Update your calendars my friends …. Our new date is …

THIS MONDAY! YES! September 26^th!

Whoa baby! (Or babies!)

We got the call this afternoon that everything is looking perfect and things are being escalated because this typically faulty body of mine, is FINALLY doing what it’s supposed to do, ahead of schedule at that!

*CUE THE TROMBONES! PRAISE HANDS!*

Friends, GOD IS JUST SO GOOD! Despite the date change, everything has lined up perfectly, from our acupuncturist working us in to her schedule, to my meds being ordered and ready to change up. These prayers are being answered one by one! Prayers we didn’t even know to lift up. Friends, we can’t thank you enough for your prayers.

So, going into our transfer next week, we would love to share some specific prayer requests with you. We are calling it them TOP FIVE.

1 – that the transportation of our embryos tomorrow (Wednesday – Thursday) would go smoothly. We want these precious babies of ours to arrive safely and will feel incredibly relieved once they are at our clinic.

2 – that the new medications work, as we are adding in new ones starting tomorrow. And specifically, that my lining, estradiol and progesterone will be perfectly where God wants it to be so that pregnancy is possible and sustainable;

3 – that our embryos would thaw perfectly on Monday morning. (We won’t find out their status until we arrive to the clinic.)

4 – that the transfer goes well on Monday, exactly according to God’s will. Our exact transfer time is 11:30 am CST. (If you want to make a quick note of that on your calendar, feel free! J). Also, that the hands of our embryologist, doctor, and nurses would be blessed and allow for the transfer to be as smooth and pain-free as possible. (I will be completely alert during transfer, thanks to a mighty pill called Valium, which relaxes the uterus during transfer but allows me to be present.)

and finally,

5 – that our hearts would be filled with joy, peace, encouragement, hope, and trust as we step into this emotionally overwhelming, but exciting path again. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t anxious about the days to follow post transfer and am praying hard that we can walk away with excitement and hope.

I wrote these words in 2013 and reflect back on them tonight:

I am constantly re-reminded of the words in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 (NLT) “Always be joyful. Always keep on praying. No matter what happens, always be thankful, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ.” I am sure we can all reflect back on the troubles in life, the hardships and the frustrations. But the words of Christ have never been more true – Always be joyful. It can seem so hard to find that joy sometimes but I learn and experience more and more each day that our joy is not to be rooted in our wants or desires, our successes and our victories. They are simply to be rooted in Him. Joyful always. No particular circumstances required.

I read this quote from a book tonight: “Today we suffer. Today we don’t understand….Someday all the scattered, broken pieces will fall into place, and we will suddenly understand the hand of God has been upon us all the time. All the tragedy – all the darkness – will instantly be swallowed up by triumph. What a perfect ending to our imperfect stories!”

I love that. He wipes every tear from our eyes, He holds us so close. I have to choose to believe that if I knew everything He knew, that I would choose this exact same journey for us. We are more than conquers in Christ Jesus.

Tonight we are thanking Him for His blessings in this cycle so far and are choosing joy for whatever lies ahead. We pray, that this is our time, a time when all the broken pieces fall into place and we see the darkness swallowed up by triumph. Ultimately, He is the one who writes our stories and can I be honest friends? I am so very thankful He is the author and not me. His endings are always better.

If you are looking for a GREAT message on waiting and the timing of answered prayers, specifically wondering why certain doors open and others feel closed, I encourage you to listen to this message our pastor gave last weekend. My heart was incredibly encouraged by the reminder that God is a BIG PICTURE God. We look in front and all we see is the traffic jam, but God has the helicopter watching over the city, seeing it all. We can trust Him. (I am preaching to myself here because, boy, the nerves are there!)

We are so blessed to call you our friends and supporters. He has placed you in our lives for a reason and we are ever so thankful for that! I will do my best to keep you posted in the coming days!!

PS –

1) Despite the change in dates, I am still heading to San Francisco on Thursday for the FertilityIQ Basecamp! If you haven’t read up on it yet, click here to do so! I have to say – the agenda is PHENOMENAL! A few trip highlights ahead:

• Talking about what you’ve shared for what you would like to see more support with, specifically affordability, finding support groups and getting reliable information.
• Meeting with and touring Instagram to discuss building online communities. (Shout out to my TTC Sisters!!!! Whoop whoop!)
• Meeting with Stanford Medicine, a top RE and Urologist, to look at and discuss the GREAT topics you have asked about, like unexplained infertility, technology progression, lifestyle and BMI, recurrent pregnancy loss, male factor infertility, PCOS and endometriosis.
• Meeting with a RESOLVE Support Group therapist to talk about how infertility affects couples and how you can be supported in the challenges.
• Meeting with Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine to learn about saving money when getting ready for and going through treatment (YES!).
• How to navigate 3rd party reproduction with the founder of Donor Concierge.

and then …

• Working on getting ALL this information back out to you – to offer you support, knowledge and insight!

Want to follow along? Keep an eye on my Instagram page @chels819 for updates and info about some fun Facebook Live activities and also, choosing a $150 Amazon gift card winner based on the survey you filled out! (Not yet entered? Click here to do so!)

2) The TTC Mug Exchange closes at 11:59 CST TONIGHT. (No late entries allowed). I wasn’t planning on doing this during my transfer week so I am going to work HARD to get as much ready as possible. I am hoping the timeline still will fall as planned on when you will receive your partners (9/28). If it doesn’t, I will let you know immediately!

Scratch, scratch, scratch.

I looked up from my book to see Cali standing at the back patio door, begging to go outside to watch for squirrels, her usual daily activity. I grabbed my book and walked over to the patio door, opening it and watching her dart down the stairs, ready to cozy herself into the blades of the grass and snoop. As I walked over to the top of the stairs to sit, I realized my feet were wet.

“Did it rained?”  I asked myself.

It was then I realized it was raining, so lightly, so mist-like, that I didn’t even realize it. I stood there for a while, watching Cali scout out which squirrels to keep an eye on, realizing with a towel, I could stay out there too, as that mist was that gentle.

A few minutes in, I realized while I could handle the gentle mist, my book pages could not, and so I called Cali back to the top of the steps and ducked inside my house door to watch her from within.

It was then I realized how quiet it was.

It was if the world had turned off its noise. The birds, who usually sing and chirp and call loudly in the field and forest next to our house, were silent. The normally noisy neighborhood filled with children’s laughter and parents calling out, were gone. There were no sounds of lawn mowers running, bonfires crackling, car horns blaring or airplanes flying overhead. It was if the whole world came to a halt, all because of this mist.

I sat there, inside my house, observing how wet everything was getting, even though the mist was so fine. I was awe struck at the silence, the beauty of the quiet. The air was still. I couldn’t help but feel God in that moment.

It reminded me of 1 Kings 19:11-12:

“Go out and stand before me on the mountain,” the Lord told him. And as Elijah stood there, the Lord passed by, and a mighty windstorm hit the mountain. It was such a terrible blast that the rocks were torn loose, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire there was the sound of a gentle whisper.”

If you are anything like me, sometimes you look for God in the big places. We expect Him to be loud and forceful, shouting at us what to do next or shaking us so greatly we simply know. But that moment profoundly reminded me of the gift, the importance, the peacefulness of silence and stillness. And how, when things are quiet, our souls tend to notice more. The sounds of nature began to pick up as the mist died down, and I noticed the deep ribbeting of the frogs start first. Then there was a brave bird, who popped out of the bird house in our yard and made the first call out to his friends. I noticed the squirrels began to kuk and soon over it all, I heard a voice begin to perform sporadic, loud, beautiful, African tribal calls. I had no idea what neighbor it was, someone calling out from inside an open window, but paired with the gentle silence, the voice, the sound, the abstractness to my ears, it paired so well with the world around me.

So often, I think we walk into our day and we simply hear noise. The world throws so much at us, blending together phone calls, text notifications, car horns, chatter, phones ringing, minds running, radios playing, tv’s turning on, birds chirping, coffee brewing, dogs barking …. And we simply become accustom to trying to do life over the noise. We cry out for answers to God –

Should we list our house?

What school should we send out kids to?

Are we supposed to be considering adoption?

Do I take this promotion knowing it will be more hours away from home?

Is it time to start volunteering?

Should I marry him?

What do we do if this next fertility treatment doesn’t work?

And then, because we have so much noise in our life, we can’t find His voice. We assume He isn’t willing to get involved or nudge us. Maybe we aren’t spiritual enough. And so we live in a world with a conflicted spirit, searching for guidance, desiring to hear Him, but we get nothing.

Ah, sweet sister, we have forgotten about the value of stillness. Silence. Stripping away all the other noises in our hearts and lives so that we can hear the sound of His gentle whisper. It may take some work, but our God is SO ready to respond. We have just desensitized our souls so much to His nudging that we have forgotten what silence is like.

That misty, rainy Monday reminded me so much. It was a gift.

In Shauna Niequist’s new book Present Over Perfect, she says “He has all the time in the world to sit with me and sift through my fears and feelings and failings. That’s what prayer is. That’s what love is … He is love itself, grace embodied, holding the fullness of who we are – strong, weak, good, bad, wild, fearful, brave, silly – in his hands. He can be trusted with every part of it, the silly and the enormous.”

I want to encourage you today to find some silence. It’s hard in this swirling world. But make the time. Perhaps it’s as simple as driving with your radio off. You don’t even need to pray or think. Just get comfortable with the silence – the buzzing of the cars next to you, the occasional horn honk, the squeal of your breaks. Tune out the big stuff and quiet your soul.

“This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says: “In returning to me and resting in me will you be saved. In quietness and confidence is your strength….” (Isaiah 30:15)

Breathe deeply. He is there.

FET Update: YOU GUYS. This is crazy! I shared with you last month that we have a plan and it is well underway! I am thrilled to share that I am officially weaned off of birth control pills, which make me crazy, and have transitioned to Lupron and the full lining-building regime. A mini summary of everything so far:

• My baseline ultrasound went great. Lining is nice and thin and my labs are where they need to be.
• I have lowered my dose of Lupron to 5 units, where it will stay till we approach transfer.
• In addition to the Lupron, medications this cycle include: Metformin, Estrace 2 mg (estrogen), Del Estrogen 5mg injections (more estrogen), Vitamin E (800 IU daily), baby aspirin till transfer – Lovenox injections after, Viagra vaginally 4×25 mg day (this is SO weird for me, but apparently it produces a rapid and profound improvement in uterine blood flow, which in cases of implantation failure in the past, enhances endometrial development – we will see!), Endometrium (vaginal progesterone), and Progesterone in Oil injections. As we approach transfer, we will be adding in steroids like Medrol and Prednisone, Tetracycline (antibiotic), Pepcid and Claritin (antihistamine protocol). Yes, I do have a daily chart with what to take when, since most of these are administered anywhere from 1 – 4 times daily. My brain forcibly needs to stick to this schedule!
• What all this medicine is doing: Essentially we need to shut down my ovaries from producing any eggs (known as suppression) while making my uterus think I am producing eggs so that it’s thickens my lining for possible embryo implantation. All these meds work hand in hand to put my body in an immediate menopausal mode (no eggs), while getting my uterus ready for our babes. (Hence the immense amount of progesterone and estrogen). The other medications treat my Factor V (blood clotting disorder) and the steroids/allergy meds will help me body from rejecting the embryos once transferred. (This is a new protocol for me).
• How I’m feeling: overall okay/good! I started back up at acupuncture since that seems to help with the terrible Lupron headaches. My lethargy has been through the roof, but it seems my body has gotten used to a slightly slower pace and I am learning in this season that rest is a good thing. I’ve slowed down on intense cardio and have been enjoying daily walks with Cali. My ovary area is very tender and I feel uncomfortable sitting at times. Basically other than occasional headaches, I am mainly just super tired.
• Diet changes: no caffeine (occasional chocolate still okay right now). Drinking coconut water daily to maintain hydration and electrolytes and drinking 1 cup of Pomegranate juice a day (for lining).
• Our next appointment is on the 20^th to see how my lining is doing. Prayers are always appreciated!
• And lastly, I just need to give one giant THANK YOU for those of you who faithfully and routinely check in on me. It’s incredibly kind and overwhelming to see different people message me each day offering their prayers and seeing how my body is doing adjusting to these new meds. It means more than you know. You demonstrate regularly that you don’t need to be going through infertility to support someone who is. You don’t need the “perfect” words to say in order to say “I care, I am praying.” This means the world to me, so thank you. <3
• As of now, we are still set for a transfer in the next couple of weeks! While our transfer day continues to be calendar set for October 3^rd, my doctor has informed me that as soon as they can see everything is ready, it’s time! So if that day changes at all, you will be among the first to know. :)

Thank you for caring as much as you do!

Reminder: Check out this post for a chance to win a $150 Amazon Gift card! #FertilityIQBasecamp

Don’t forget to sign up for the TTC Mug Exchange if you haven’t already! Sign ups close 9/20 and we already have over 500 women signed up! Whoa!

And lastly … because FURst day of school pictures are so important! :)