Our journey of trying to get pregnant

I have talked about how Kevin and I met, now I can talk about our marriage and all that has come with it.
Kevin and I bought a house in Montevallo. After a year or so of marriage, we started talking about adding onto our family. We started trying and nothing happened. In 1998, unexpected circumstances in his family had us under a lot of stress, so we both quit school because it was just too much to deal with and be in school at the same time. Fast forward over the next few years, we continued to try to have children but nothing ever happened. We finally decided to go and see a fertility specialist. We went through all the tests, both of us, which was stressful enough. We found out the issue was that I wasn't ovulating regularly, so that is what was making it hard to get pregnant. The doctor started me on medication to help me ovulate, Clomid. I took that for several months, increasing my dosage each month. Anyone who has ever tried to get pregnant understands the stress involved with hoping month after month that it worked and you are pregnant. I think we continued this for about 6 months or so before I had enough. I was emotionally and physically drained with keeping up with body temperatures, medicines, wishing and hoping and being let down month after month. So, we took a break.
Over the next few years, we still longed for children. We continued to pray that God
 would bless us with children someday. Of course friends of ours had children by now and we felt like we were the only ones without them. We went through the pain of not being able to have children and how the world around you just has no idea what it is like for someone longing for a baby. I went through the "It will happen one day", "You are just trying to hard", "It will happen when you least expect it". Note, all these things are NOT the things that someone wanting a baby wants or needs to hear. It makes you feel like what you feel is right is wrong.

I struggled a lot of days and didn't understand why it wasn't happening. I mean, what was I doing wrong, why me? I would say that most people would agree that Kevin and I are good people. Why does stuff like this happen to good people? My way of dealing with the pain was to buy something for our baby. Nothing major, just small stuff like a onesie or a small toy or outfit, etc. Something had came across to me a lot about envisioning the things you wanted in your life and placing them in front of you. I set up a little small room in our house and that was our BABY ROOM. I kept anything that I bought in that room and setup a small shelf with baby quilts on it. I had half of it decorated for girls and half decorated for boys. Sounds crazy, but that was my comfort. Something about seeing it in place made me know that one day it would happen. It helped me keep the faith.

Time went by and we thought about going back to see the fertility doctor. By this point the dr we had seen before was no longer at UAB. Time went by and eventually, I came across him. Dr Steinkampf had opened his own practice on 280, Alabama Fertility Specialists, so I felt I was ready to try again. Again, we just picked up where we left off. We tried the highest dosage of Clomid I think one time before we decided to do something else. We talked about doing fertility shots using a medicine called Follistim. Basically I just injected myself daily for about a week with medicine to make me ovulate, meaning produce eggs so I could get pregnant. This of course takes a lot of dr visits to monitor you very careful to make sure the process is going smoothly and you don't need extra injections, etc. These injections were also very expensive, so we were spending about $300 for one round of shots. After the injections, we had 6 eggs that had been produced, so we let nature take it's course from there and we sat and waited to see what happened. We go in for our appointment to check my bloodwork and TADAH, WE WERE PREGNANT! Needless to say we were soooo excited. Karen was the nurse and the dr office whom I had become very close to because I saw her all the time as she monitored my treatments. We scheduled a sonogram and we saw a very tiny heartbeat at 7 weeks. Our little peanut was growing and was alive with a heartbeat. While seeing a fertility specialist, you are watched very carefully, so we had an appointment the next week. At 8 weeks, I went back in the office and there was no heartbeat. Our little peanut was no longer growing and at that point was gone to heaven. We were devastated and heartbroken. Of course we had no idea why this had happened to us.

Time went by and I was finally ready to try again, I don't remember how long, but we tried the shots again since they had been successful before we wanted to stick with what worked. More injections and a repeat of the same process as before and we waited. This time we had 3 eggs generated. Another blood test and the second time WE WERE PREGNANT AGAIN. We felt like yes, this is it, finally. Another scheduled sonogram and we had no idea what we were in for. We had the camera ready, it records, so Kevin was ready to record the sonogram on the camera. The video tape machine on the sonogram machine didn't work, so seeing we didn't have anything recorded for the 1st baby, we wanted this on tape. Karen, the nurse started the sonogram. She started looking around and started seeing sacks with multiple babies. That is right MULTIPLES! Well, I know twins run all over my family and my brother had natural twins, so I wasn't surprised really. She started counting and she asked Kevin if he was recording and he of course said no, even though he was. She said good and he really wasn't sure why. Karen started counting, 1, 2, 3, 4 heartbeats. What????? 4 babies!!!!! I started cackling and laughing because I was thinking how I had prayed that God would give us double for our trouble from our 1st miscarriage. We were ALL believing for that. I had no idea that God would answer both mine and Kevin's prayers and give both of us DOUBLE! Karen called the dr in to let him look at the sonogram. The dr came in and found another sack but no heartbeat, so that baby never developed, but he confirmed we definately had 4 babies living with a heartbeat. The neat thing was that we only had 3 eggs, so one of those sacks must have split and we most likely had a set of identical twins in the mix also. So, I left the office pregnant with 4 babies and a set of identical twins in that mix of 4 babies. The dr of course told me this was a serious pregnancy and when you deal with higher order multiples, you are given the option of selective reduction. Kevin and I of course were like NO WAY! All 4 of those babies were alive and God had given them to us, so it was our job to keep them. We knew he was with us. We had no idea what a quad pregnancy would have in store for us.......