1 in 8

1 in 8. That’s what they say.

You ever hear stories and stories of different things happening to people and you quietly think to yourself, “oh that’ll never happen to me – there’s no way. The chances are so low and I already know somebody that it’s happened to. It won’t happen to me!”

Yeah, I definitely thought that. And nearly 3 years later, I’m knee deep in this thing called INFERTILITY. Never in a million years did I think I’d ever have trouble getting pregnant and growing a little family (or big – I’m the girl who wants 1842083 kids). But here I am!

Now, I haven’t wanted to open up about our journey on this – not because I’m embarrassed necessarily, but because I didn’t want the attention. I didn’t want people constantly asking when, what, how, why regarding baby making. But now that it’s been so long, I know people are already wondering, “look, y’all have been married for 4 years, what’s the hold up?!” So, I’m ready to discuss – lay it all out there on the line because honestly, the more people who DO KNOW our story, the more people there are who can pray with us, send good vibes/thoughts our way, or whatever it is that you do. Because we need every.single.one. But also, if there’s anyone else out there that has dealt with infertility (or may deal with it in the future), maybe my journey can be someone else’s survival guide one day.

Let’s back up just a bit to 2017. April 7. Funny, that’s tomorrow and I’m actually sitting down writing this “on paper” the day before our 4 year anniversary. We got married. It was a beautiful day, couldn’t have asked for better weather. I had the prettiest dress ever and Jason wore his blue J’s (his only request). I actually didn’t even want a wedding. I wanted to elope – save the money, put it down on our next house my daddy would build in one of the new subdivisions in Madison, and live there with our 4 kids, happily ever after. Jason talked me into the wedding. I don’t regret it but I’d still choose elopement if we could do it all over.

So, we get married and had a long discussion about no big changes our first year. No new house. No new cars. No job changes. No. Babies. Just enjoy each other for our last year of just us two. 6 months later, we got a call. A call I never expected to receive. You see, Jason has worked for his current company for 13 years when we got married. He got the call that if he wanted to grow in the company, we would basically need to move to Dallas, Texas. I laughed and cried. More crying than laughter. All of my friends and family are in Mississippi – I knew not one single soul in Dallas, how would I make it? I had so much anxiety over this. I’m talking anxiety that kept me from eating, kept me from going into work. You see, I’ve had anxiety my whole life. I used to call my parents in the middle of the night when I was staying with friends (and even my grandparents) because my anxiety made me sick. But it’s always been easier to deal with because I could rely on my family who were right down the street. This was different – we would be moving 7 HOURS AWAY from family. That first year of marriage was hard. And not only did Jason have to deal with his stress completely on his own, he was worried about my stress. my anxiety. my fear. my worry.

Long story short, we made the move. Within our first year of marriage, he changed job positions, I changed jobs and career field completely, we sold our house in Mississippi, rented an apartment in McKinney, and bought a house in Texas (that’s THREE addresses in a year). Funny how God works when you say you WON’T do something.

While we drove away from our small town of comfort, we would begin a journey that taught us our life lesson #1 : Life often only makes sense in reverse, but it’s made to be lived moving forward.