Background

So where do I start....John and I got married on June 30, 2001. We met at college where we were both Resident Assistants...we were friends for a few months, then started dating in March of 99. In June of 2000 we bought our first (fixer upper) house and he proposed right after the closing on the front stoop....awww. He started his new job as a programmer and I finished up school while planning a wedding. :)

A year and a few months later (November 2002) we decided to start trying to expand our family. We were very excited and anxious to see what the next month would bring. Little did we know at that time what a long road ahead of us we had....

Month after long month, we had negative tests. We tried SO many things...among them are: standing on my head 'afterwards', feet in the air, vitamins meant for old people (a friend said she knew 2 friends that got pg taking them...not so much me), charting temps, charting cycles, ovulation kits, herbal teas and vitamins, acupuncture, progesterone supplements, clomid, Follistim with insemination, no hot tub for John, limited caffeine intake, no alcohol (for me), relaxing vacations (Florida, Italy, Aruba), 'Not thinking about it'--bad advice,-it's impossible, 'listening' to my monthly ovulation pain I've gotten since I was a teenager, reading books and websites, PRAYER, I got a new 'less stressul' job (although I do travel with it, which makes it tough with doc. appts.), we got a dog (it 'worked' for many of my friends), we moved to a much nicer neighborhood, we have had doctor visits on and off...just letting nature do its 'thang'...

But we have since grown impatient. Getting pregnant is the one thing that is literally out of our control...we can only do so much (as shown above)....but it is all up to God. We've decided to help our chances a bit more and we are just finishing up our first IVF cycle. I never thought that I would conceive a child without having sex....but hey, it will make it easier to explain to our kids where babies come from, right? "Just go downtown Chicago and pick 'em up" :) Yeah right, it's not that easy....