Thanksgiving Part 2

To complete my 25 days of thanksgiving, here are a few more things I'm thankful for...

1. I'm thankful for the Christian legacy that I'm a part of. I know it's a true blessing to have a family that's firmly rooted in faith! I'm very very thankful!

2. I'm thankful for my husband's job. I know I complain about being in Knoxville, but I really am thankful that he has a job that he loves. We waited and prayed for a long time. I know it's an answer to prayer!

3. I'm thankful for my pretty little home! I really do like our townhouse, it's the perfect size for us and is cozy and cute!

4. I'm thankful for a reliable car so I can travel home to see family and friends! And VERY thankful that I'm leaving tomorrow afternoon to see everyone!!!!

5. I'm very thankful for good friends who have walked through infertility and loss with us. I was blessed to have the support of women who had been through it too and I'm so very very thankful for them!

Very closely related to that...

6. I'm thankful for answered prayers....specifically, I'm thankful for healing from infertility. At our "home" church in Lafayette infertility seemed to be a common issue! There were FAR too many young women who could not have the children that they deeply desired! I'm so very thankful to have seen God answer many of these prayers the past couple years!!! I'm thankful for Cayden and the Peters' twins, I'm thankful for Ryann, Reese, and Regan, and I'm thankful for Peyton and Parker! They're each reminders of the faithfulness of God!

7. I'm thankful for plenty of food to eat. I never go hungry and always have all that I need!

8. I'm thankful for the alone time that moving to TN has given to Jacob and I. We've spent time together that I know we wouldn't have if we had been in Indiana.

9. I'm thankful for my DVR! I love my DVR! It's the greatest!

10. I'm thankful for my iPhone! More specifically, I'm thankful for the "Around Me" app because it's the only reason I find my way around Knoxville! :)

11. I'm thankful for the church families that have poured into our lives. Covington 1st Assembly provided such a wonderful and supportive atmosphere for me to grow up in. I still consider them my family! Lafayette 1st was the perfect place for Jacob and I to start our married life. We were ministered to in countless ways, found our best friends, were mentored by wonderful people, and grew in love with God and each other. And now Fellowship is becoming our home! We're so impressed with the ministries that we've been a part of and can't wait to dive in even deeper!

12. I'm thankful for the country that I live in and the freedoms that I enjoy because of it.

13. I'm thankful for facebook....silly, right? But I really am, I'm thankful that I have it as a tool to stay connected with people.

14. I'm thankful for the people that God puts in my path daily to reveal that He sees me and He's still working in my life!! Over the past two days, I've met three women who dealt with or are currently dealing with infertility and one who lost her twins to stillbirth. What a blessing to be able to talk to women who know and understand how I feel!

15. Finally, I'm thankful for those of you who have emailed me, commented on my blog, or sent me a facebook message. Thank you so much for your support and your prayers!! Thank you for taking a couple minutes to encourage me to keep serving God, keep blogging, keep sharing, and keep hoping! I'm thankful for you!!

Approaching Another 'Day'

Having a child that is stillborn before her due date means that I have two dates that I dread...first, we deal with her birthday, September 24th, then we deal with her due date, December 10th. I realize that a due date doesn't really mean much because babies rarely arrive on their exact due date. That's why it's really more the entire first part of December that's tough.

Last year, I was still very much in the shell-shocked stage. The due date was difficult, but life in general was difficult. I had bad days multiple times a week, so it wasn't that out of the ordinary to have another bad day! My life was just pretty bad!!

This year, on Kinley's birthday, I dealt with the fact that it had been a year. It hurt deeply that she had been gone for a full year. I mourned her and it was terrible. I planned the first anniversary thinking all the while that I should have been planning a first birthday. But, I also had in the back of my mind that I really shouldn't be planning a first birthday yet either.

Now, as we approach the time that we really would have been planning a first birthday party, I find a new pain creeping it's way into my heart.

Today I was working in the nursery at our church with a lady who brought her little boy in. He was toddling around, throwing a ball, and saying "ball" over and over. He was so cute and I instinctively asked how old he was. I knew as the answer was coming out of her mouth that I would regret it. She said "he'll be one in just a few weeks".

That was all it took....I could have estimated his age, so why did I even ask?! It felt like a quick sharp stabbing pain right in my heart. "My baby would be about to turn one too! She would no longer be a baby laying in our arms. She would be toddling around, saying words like 'ball'."

It caught me totally off-guard. I didn't cry, I just hurt. I hurt all the way through my heart!

And so it begins....I approach yet another 'day'. In a lot of ways, that's what my life has become in the last year and two months. I feel like I'm living from one tough day to the next. I survive one and then breathe a sigh of relief and look up to face another one.

I'm blessed to have an amazing family and awesome friends to walk this road with me. I'm even more blessed to have a God who not only sees the pain I'm feeling today, but knows the joy that's still to come. He knows every pain that I'll have from now until my last breathe, and He provides for me all that I need to not only survive, but thrive. He makes a way for me to hurt without giving up hope.

And ultimately I know that even if every day of this life is filled with hurt from morning until night, my eternity will be filled with joy! I don't believe that my life will be filled with pain. I believe He's promised good to me and that my heart will feel an unbelievable amount of joy in this lifetime. But, even if not, one day not too far away, I'll be in the presence of a loving God who will heal my heart completely and for all of time. I'll spend eternity with my daughter! That is so worth it to me!!

"He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." Revelation 21:4

"They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away" Isaiah 35:10

Ultrasound and IUI

Just to update everyone on where we are with our fertility "journey"...

I had an ultrasound on Wednesday that showed that this new medication had fixed the problem with my uterine lining. The lining was very good. However, I just have one good follicle, and it was a VERY good size. There aren't really any other smaller follicles on either side. Although most "normal" people get pregnant with one follicle, and it's completely possible, I still am just not responding well to ovulation induction. We will, however, still have an IUI this month (probably tomorrow morning).

In the bigger picture, the fact that I'm only having one follicle at a time is alarming to me because of the test on my egg supply a few months ago. I sort of went into panic-mode! I had hoped that the scar tissue had been most of the problem and that I would respond better to medication after the surgery, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Jacob and I are considering our options for going forward with treatment and trying to decide how to balance the financial burden of IVF with the scary thought that our time to conceive may be limited. Please pray with us over the next several weeks that God would give us a clear direction as to what we should do next.

By the way, I know that I'm kind of jumping the gun with this since we are still doing an IUI this month, and it's completely possible that I could get pregnant. We just have to plan ahead and decide where to go if it doesn't work so that we can begin the process of saving, getting a loan, finding $15,000 on the roadside, winning the lottery (which we don't play), getting on a game show, you know....that sort of thing!

Thank you all for your support and prayers through this entire process! We can't say enough how much we appreciate it...by the way, we're open to suggestions, advice, and opinions!!! Feel free to comment here or send me an email (ericabcrum@gmail.com) or facebook message!

Oh and....if you're not yet "following" my blog, please become a "follower" so that I know you're reading!! Just go down the screen and click on "Follow" on the right-hand side. :)

Thankful...

Okay, I haven't participated in the "Days of Thanksgiving" deal on facebook or on my blog yet, so I thought I should get caught up. Since today is the 10th day of the month, I'll do a list of ten things for which I'm thankful. Here goes...

1. I'm thankful for a God who loves me despite my imperfections. In fact, he created me WITH my imperfections and can use my short-comings for His good.

2. I'm thankful for a hard-working husband who provides for me, loves me unconditionally, and wants the best for me.

3. I'm thankful for my amazing parents! They're genuinely good people who have always done everything they can to make sure I was happy, taken care of, and loved.

4. I'm thankful for the time I got to have carrying Kinley. I'm so thankful that God saw fit to give her to me! I'm thankful for every time I heard her heartbeat, felt her move, and saw her on the ultrasound.

5. I'm thankful for a sister who is my best friend and a brother who always makes me smile. They are both so very different from me, yet we all fit together so very well. (Btw, I'm super thankful for the relationship I have with Megan. I know that not all sisters have the kind of friendship that we do.)

6. I'm thankful for my two beautiful nieces!! They are precious to me!!! Brenna and Bristol are as close to my own children as I could possibly get without them actually being mine. I love them beyond words and miss them every single day! Bristol is beautiful, precious, and sweet! Brenna is beautiful, charming, funny, and smart. They're perfect!

7. I'm thankful for my parents-in-law. (Is that a term?) Rex and Mary took me into their lives and made me feel like part of their family from the very beginning. They've been nothing but loving, supportive, and kind to me.

8. I'm thankful for my sisters-in-law (Sarah, Becca, and Leah). I'm thankful that Sarah and I have become good friends and that I have been blessed to be a part of Becca and Leah's growing up and becoming young women!

9. I'm thankful for the relationship between my family and Jacob's family. I'm so thankful that we can all spend time together and enjoy each other's company. It was most evident and most endearing through the time that we lost Kinley. Our families truly bonded together. We were able to spend a great deal of time together, cry together, laugh together, and truly ENJOY being together! We even vacation together! :) By the way, this picture is from our joint Christmas party!

10. I'm thankful for my extended family whom I love more than words could express!!! I'm thankful for grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins who are friends. I'm thankful for the relationships I have with each one of them! (I could start putting pictures, but could never fit them all in!!)

I Have A Problem!

Brace yourselves....here comes a completely pointless blog post with no real value to your life!

So, I'm a housewife. Cleaning is what I do! I save money wherever I can, but don't use generic cleaning products because I feel like the "real" stuff works better. Crazy, I know! I have just enough obsessive-compulsive qualities for it to be really bad! I clean all the time. (It does not help that I have no friends and nothing to do all day....by the way, I'm seriously considering getting a j-o-b to help with that problem!)

Anyway, I love my cleaning products. Clorox wipes are great, but PineSol is my ultimate favorite! I love the smell of floors scrubbed with PineSol!

Knowing all of this, you should understand how disappointed I was when I cleaned my bathroom floor with something different and it smelled awful!! (I won't name the product so as not to dissuade anyone from trying it out yourself, you might like it!) But for me, it smelled BAD!

Here's where the problem lies....I seriously considered re-doing my floors because of it! Seriously, I'm messed up! That's just not normal! I had to talk myself out of re-cleaning the bathroom floors with PineSol. Tell me I don't have a problem!!! (Hence, the possibility of me finding a job!)

See, told you it was completely pointless....do you feel like you just wasted a few minutes of your life reading it??? :)

New Medication + Stress = Bad

Hello faithful blog readers!! Sorry I've been so MIA recently. I wish I could come back with an inspiring and encouraging post, but unfortunately you're not going to get that from me today!

I started my new fertility drug and all I can really say is ... UGHHH!! I hope it works, but it's AWFUL! I would honestly rather take the injections nightly than deal with the side effects from the new medicine. I have a horrible headache from the moment I wake up in the morning and spend the whole day waiting for the next hot flash that will leave me drenched in sweat! Lovely, just lovely. And they expect me to feel like..., you know, "TRYING"! Yikes!

So anyway, I only have to take the medicine two more days and then I'm done with it, so I'm hoping that the effects stop when I stop taking the daily dose. I'll have an ultrasound next Wednesday to see how many follicles we're working with this month and if they medication worked to thicken my lining. I'll keep you all updated. Pray, pray, pray for several good follicles!

In other news, my stress level is through the roof! I am really not handling the stresses of life well. In dealing with the infertility and the move to Tennessee (yes I realize it was 4 months ago, but I'm not settled yet), I'm losing my mind....no really, I think I am. I came to the realization today that there's absolutely NO way I'll get pregnant when I'm this much of a mess emotionally. I'm constantly either crying or fighting the urge to cry. I feel sorry for myself and don't understand why nothing in my life seems be working out...something has got to give!!! I'm so very homesick, I miss my baby girl, and I can't believe I'm still not pregnant! Please pray for some relief for me and maybe even a little dose of joy!!

By the way, both my Grandpa Bill and Jacob's Grandma Joan are still in the hospital and could use your prayers as well.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all the prayers and support!!!