We want the world to know our story and to reach as many as possible. We want other couples facing infertility to know they are not alone and we want birth mothers to know how much love we have to give to a baby :-) My name is Kate and my husband Skyler and I have been married for almost 4 years and are also high school sweet hearts :-) (Awww I know right?!). Skyler and I first started dating right before my 16th birthday. He was one of the lead karate teachers at my little sister’s karate school and it was love at first sight! Like any young romance, we spent every day together and got to know everything about each other. It was within the first few months into our relationship that Skyler explained that he was adopted by his grandparents at the age of three. This revelation is most likely where our adoption journey begins. Skyler was adopted by his grandparents because his biological parents were abusive and neglectful. Although his parents (from this point on when referring to his parents I will mean his grandparents) had to make a lot of sacrifices to adopt and raise Skyler, they were able to give him the love and nurturing he needed to help make him the successful man he is today. My adoption experience was very different, however. When I was about 11 years old my mother was the Director of Religious Education at our local Unitarian Universalist church. During her time there my mom became friends with a lady well call K and her adopted daughter M. K adopted M from a Russian orphanage when M was three years old. Sadly, though, K was diagnosed with cancer shortly before adopting M. K went through with the adoption, but M had to learn at a very early age how to be a caregiver and take care of her mom. When K and M met my mom at the UU church K explained that she felt an immediate connection with my mom and felt that when she passed away she wanted my parents to adopt M. At this point, my world got flipped- turned upside down (insert the rest of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air lyrics here). Up until now I was the baby of the family with two older siblings just about to enter my crazy pre-teen years. Upon revealing to me that my parents were going to adopt M if K passed, I went numb. I was upset, sad, hurt, angry, confused, and distraught. I knew in a matter of years my life would change and I didn’t get to have much of a say in it. So from age 11-15 my parents and I spent holidays and other important events with K and M so that M could get to know us. K went in and out of different treatments and M would stay with us from time to time and basically associated our family with the decline of her mother, which I can’t fault her for. Sadly, K passed in June of 2003 and M came to live with us. Being a 15 year old, I was hormonal and moody, and angry that I had to now become a big sister without any preparation our guidance. Throughout our first year as a family we all learned about Reactive Attachment Disorder and the trials M would have for the rest of her life. In going through this with M, I convinced myself that I would never adopt. I would never put my own family through the heart ache and pain that RAD can cause. I would either have my own biological children or no children at all, or so I thought (again lets clarify here- I was an illogical 15 year old who saw what my little sister was going through along with what our family was going through. Over time Ive learned more about the disorder and know how it develops and why it does and how its not the childs fault one bit.). Or so I thought… meaning that at 15 years old, most teenage girls don’t think anything about having an irregular period when that’s the norm in your family. So when I didn’t get a period by age 15 I wasn’t too worried, I just figured it would come when my body was ready. But then it didn’t come at age 16 or 17 I began to worry. When I was 17 I went to the doctor and their solution was to just put me on birth control to induce a period without further looking into the reason why I had never menstruated on my own. So from age 17-22 I was on birth control and pumping in hormones into my body that I’ve later learned only made my condition worse. At age 22 I went to a gynecologist expressing my concern about not having a period on my own. At that point I was told not to worry about it and to come back only when I wanted to get pregnant. Luckily I had a friend refer me to another gynecologist who actually took the time to look into all my symptoms and diagnosed me with Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). Once given the diagnosis, I was taken off the birth control and closely followed by my doctors and a diabetic educator to address my symptoms and my syndrome. The hang up, however, was that the normal treatment for PCOS didn’t work for me. The Metformin didn’t help regulate a period. I was not insulin resistant. Nothing worked on my androgen hair growth. And I was now labeled as the “hard case”. From age 22 to right before my 26th birthday I was put on all different kinds of medicines and saw countless professionals to try and help me understand if I truly had PCOS or if something else was going on. I was given many explanations, from having the wrong diagnosis to being “just too chunky, but what it all boiled down to was that no one could ever find the exact reason for my symptoms, and that the end result was always that I would have a hard time getting pregnant, if I could get pregnant at all. In hearing at such a young age that you cannot get pregnant, many women have the feeling of being broken, unable to fulfill the role God has set before us- to bear and raise children. So not wanting to believe the infertility predictions, Skyler and I decided to try Clomid to induce ovulation at the beginning of this year. The hardest part about my Clomid cycles, however, was that I had to also induce a period with Provera before starting Clomid- basically I had to pump my body full of hormones before I was able to pump my body full of more hormones. From January-May of this year, we did 3 rounds of Provera and Clomid, and it changed me forever. In putting high levels of hormones in my body that I normally didn’t have I went through huge hormonal mood swings and even became majorly depressed during my last cycle. I began to tell Skyler and my family that I didn’t know who I was anymore, that I was beginning to have suicidal thoughts, and that I couldn’t keep doing this to my body. Luckily, my older sister convinced me to look into healthier more holistic options, and right after my 26th birthday, I stopped all of the medication I was on. This is now the first time in 9 years that I have not been on any infertility medications. I’ve been off all medications for about 3 months now, I see our local naturopath every month, and slowly I can feel myself getting back to normal. When my head began to clear up and with the guidance of my doctors and naturopath, Skyler and I tried one last time to try to conceive as naturally as possible with the help of our local reproductive endocrinologist (RE). The RE talked with us and explained that I would have to go back on the medications, but would be closely monitored. Long story short, even with different medications, I still didnt ovulate and they didnt know why. Again I was an emotional wreck, but luckily my knight in shining armor put a stop to the emotional havoc- he decided we were done pumping chemicals into my body. We both agreed that my sanity and our marriage was worth way more than any medical intervention. At this point in our story most people think, oh, so you just decided to adopt then, which is definitely not true. Throughout this whole process we have been talking and researching different adoption agencies and options. I just believe God needed me to go through this to help me see the beauty of adoption and how lucky we would be to offer our home and hearts to a mother and child in need. Sometimes things need to be broken to be fixed properly, and I know thats what happened with my heart. We know this is the right step for us and couldnt be more excited to change a childs life!
Posted on: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 14:21:42 +0000
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