2010, a year of joy and heartache.

In late January of 2010, I discovered the BEST news ever! I was pregnant, and we did it all on our own, no medication, no help from doctors, just the good old fashioned way. It was perfect and we were so happy that we decided to do something big to announce our great news. His parents come to visit every year in March and we decided that we would get the baby room ready and show them the room as part of our recent renovations to the house and hand them a "best grandparents ever" card with a picture of the ultrasound. The plan worked perfectly! The room was painted a lovely yellow and decorated with Winnie the Poo decorations (we figured this was pretty gender neutral) and it was beautiful. They were SO surprised and that weekend was the happiest weekend of my life.

Monday morning came and showed her ugly head with some unpleasant feelings and shocking news after a rush to the emergency room. The baby had stopped growing at 9 weeks. I was supposed to be 11 weeks that day. There was no heartbeat. Nothing they could do. I was thrown into and emergency DNC the next morning. His mother got a phone call that day that her mother was seriously ill and in the ICU so she left that day to tend to her. His dad stayed behind for comfort but we weren't very accommodating.

A month later his great grandmother died while her daughter was still in the ICU unconscious and could not attend her funeral. We flew in for that. More heartache. She was the "mom" of the entire family and was just a wonderful woman that I am very thankful to have known.

When we returned, we found that my dog of 10 years, Angel, was deathly ill, she died the next day. More  heartache. We placed her in a wooden coffin in our back yard under a tree. I was sad but still so numb over the miscarriage that I don't think I was even really crying for the dog so much as I was crying for the loss of the baby still.

One week later, to the day, our other "old faithful", Annie, died peacefully in the back yard while we were away at work.  Once again, more heartache! This was getting ridiculous! Seriously, we didn't think we could take anymore of it and begged God to not test us anymore.

God must have been listening because just when his grandmother was about to be taken off of the ventilator, she woke up, on her own accord, asking for a coke! A coke of all things! She was promptly put into rehab and I got to spend some time helping her get stronger that summer.

I was devastated still from our loss and my husband was just as devastated and then we were angry and then numb. We tried an IUI again in May out of sheer desperation but of course, it didn't work. We did another two more in the Fall of that year too but to no avail and then finally after being given several monetary gifts, we tried IVF.