Time Warp Tuesday: Hope

Let’s do the Time Warp again!

Welcome to the twenty-fourth installment of my blog hop/writing exercise called Time Warp Tuesday! It has also been a little over a year since Time Warp Tuesdays began here on my blog and I am grateful to all those who have done the Time Warp with me!

For those not familiar with Time Warp Tuesdays, which I host on the 2nd Tuesday of every month, here is the background of how and why I came up with the idea. If you are here to participate and link up, you can do so with the Linky Tools at the end of this post (or if you have any difficulty, you can share the link to your post in the comment section).

The gist of Time Warp Tuesday is to revisit and share some of our favorite blog entries from our archives and reflect on our journeys since we wrote them.

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The theme for this month’s Time Warp Tuesday is: Hope

So much of our lives we spend hoping for things to happen the way we have dreamed they would or could. This is especially true for those in the Adoption/Loss/Infertility community. Look for a blog entry in your archives where you wrote about hope. It might be a post where you wrote about something you hoped for, how hope got you through a difficult or uncertain time in your life or more generally what hope means to you. Then write a new post on your blog about why you chose the post that you did and what has happened in your life since.

Participants can write about whatever you want in your new blog entries. However, for those who might have needed some help and inspiration to get started, here are some questions to consider:

Why did you pick this post? Has your perspective changed since the day you wrote your original post? Do you think you would still feel the same way if you were writing your post today? What have you learned about yourself, your family and your life since you wrote your original post?

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Time Warp Tuesday: Hope

I have written about hope a lot over the years on my blog. From the very first post that I shared in April 2007 (at the beginning of our first IVF cycle, after already dealing with secondary infertility and recurrent pregnancy loss for almost three years) to my most recent Gatekeeping blog entry (in which my focus has shifted from trying to cope with setbacks on our family building journey to using what I have learned as a bereaved and blessed woman and mother to reach out to others who are looking for hope and meaning in their lives), so much of why I write here stems from hoping and believing that we can get what we want out of life (for the most part), even if our path to living our dreams doesn’t go as we planned or imagined that it could or would.

The post I chose to reflect on was written early on during our second IVF cycle in June 2007. Our first IVF cycle had been unsuccessful, other than yielding one frozen embryo. We were encouraged by our reproductive endocrinologist at the time to do another “fresh cycle” in effort to “bank” a few more frozen embryos, if possible, to give us more options for the future (either for more tries at having another child   later on or if one of our fresh cycles was successful, we would have them to try for more siblings later on). That all made sense to us back then. Though we were disappointed that the single embryo transferred during our first IVF cycle did not stick, we were still optimistic that Assisted Reproductive Technology would lead us to having another child, a sibling for our then 3 1/2-year-old son Sean.

I wrote this post the day of my first monitoring appointment that cycle:

Monitoring #1

Please go and read the post that I am reflecting on today (and comment if you choose), if you haven’t already, and then come back here to see what I have to say about my journey since I wrote it.

***Here is where you left off before you stopped to read my old post.***

I feel like a broken record sometimes when I talk about revisiting my archives to do the Time Warp here. I always start this part of my posts with some reference to how surreal it feels to get a glimpse of myself back in the day, before Molly and Abby came into our life.

But it is true.

There are moments when what I describe in this post seems like eons ago and others, especially when I am reading a blog entry like this, when I can go right back there to the thoughts and feelings I had hoping, wishing, praying and desperately wanting more — another child to love, care for and raise, a brother or sister for Sean to grow up with.

Reading a post like this reminds me of how hopeful and at times also hopeless that I felt throughout our five year journey through secondary infertility and loss.

Just this week our now nine-year old son Sean was asking about how hard it is to have a baby. I guess that is a by-product of having been fairly open and honest with him over the years about our struggles trying to expand our family. I did my best to explain that it isn’t hard for everyone. I reminded him, as he has heard before, that we were pretty lucky that it didn’t take very long for us to get pregnant with him (about 8 months of trying), but that it was very difficult for us to have another healthy baby after he was born. I tried to stay general with our conversation, while giving him some insight into why having babies is easier for some people and not so much for others. Though I myself will never completely understand why some women and men seem to be more fertile and are able to conceive more easily than others.

One of my favorite parts of re-reading this post, other than taking in the amount of detail that I shared about my monitoring appointment, which I recall allowed me to feel some sense of control over something that in reality I had very little control over, was when I shared about buying a book about “hope” at our local pharmacy/convenience store.

I even bought a book at Walgreen’s this morning called “HOPE Happens!” By Catherine DeVrye. It is a collection of inspirational quotes that are supposed to help people during difficult times in their life and since at times this cycle I have struggled with feeling hopeful and believing that IVF can be successful for us, I thought it might be good for me to take a look at.

I also love the quote that I chose to highlight from the book:

“‘I tried and it didn’t work’ is a lot better than ‘I wish I tried.’” ~ Anonymous

And how I related it to our experience trying to have another child:

That pretty much sums up my attitude towards our trying IVF and seeing it through until we are either successful or our insurance runs out. I feel like if it works, it would be so wonderful to have another natural child(ren) and if it doesn’t, at least we will know we tried every option available to us before we move on and either pursue adoption or choose to focus our full attention on being the best parents we can to the amazing child we already have!

Knowing what I know now, that only one of our ART cycles (our fourth/first FET cycle) was successful, but that we never got to bring our baby girl Molly home, is still hard for me to wrap my brain around. But I don’t regret using ART to try to expand our family, even though it did not bring us the outcome we had hoped and prayed for.

Had we not “tried” as the quote says, I might have always wondered what could have been. I find peace in knowing that we gave it our best shot and then knew when it was right for us to stop trying.

How on Earth our daughter Abby came into our lives, without medical assistance, after being told we had  1 – 2 % chance of ever conceiving again on our own still baffles me. But I will be forever grateful to have two living children and one who will always be in our hearts, even if I always hoped and dreamed of having a bigger family that included more children who were closer in age.

Thank you for reading and for doing the Time Warp with me this month! I look forward to your feedback about this post, as well as reading and commenting on all of yours.

Please feel free to comment even if you didn’t write your own Time Warp Tuesday post. It is not too late to participate if you are interested, click here for the details.

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The topic for the next Time Warp Tuesday (on November 13th) is: Books

Choose a post from your archives in which you wrote about one or more books that you have read. The post could be a book review, a blog entry that was part of a book tour/book club discussion or just references a book(s) that you love, moved you or that changed the way you think about something. Then write a new post on your blog about why you chose the post that you did and what has happened in your life since.

Participants can write about whatever you want in your new blog entries. However, for those who might need some help and inspiration to get started, here are some questions to consider:

Why did you pick this post? Has your perspective changed since the day you wrote your original post? Do you think you would still feel the same way if you were writing your post today? What have you learned about yourself, your family and your life since you wrote your original post?

Note: If you have an idea for a future Time Warp topic, theme and/or writing prompt, please feel free to share it in the comment section or send me an email. If I choose to use your idea, I will give you credit and link to your blog that month.

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For those new to Time Warp Tuesday, here is a quick recap of how it works:

1) Browse through your old blog entries to find one that fits the topic for the given month. The topic is shared at the end of the previous month’s “Time Warp Tuesday” post here on my blog (see above for next week’s topic).

2) Write a new blog post in which you introduce, link to and then reflect on your journey since you wrote the older blog post and put it up on your blog on Tuesday. Please include this link https://bereavedandblessed.com/projects-regular-series/time-warp-tuesdays/ in your blog entry, so your readers can find their way to my post with the list of other participants, in case they would like to read more or participate themselves.

3) Share the link to your new post here on Tuesday and then visit, read and comment on the other blogs.

4) After you have done all of these things, you are welcome to grab the code for the Time Warp Tuesday button by clicking here and put it on your blog. The link will take you to a Google Doc where you can copy the code. If your browser does not allow access to your computer’s clipboard, you can use Ctrl-C for Copy and Ctrl-V for Paste, or use your browser’s Edit menu.

5) Check back here on the 2nd Tuesday of the month to find out the new topic, theme or question for the next Time Warp Tuesday (I welcome your ideas and suggestions) and then return to Step 1 of this recap to participate. Please let me know if you have any questions and I hope to see you back here next month: Tuesday, November 13th (the 2nd Tuesday of the month), when we’ll “do the time warp again!”

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Thank you again for reading, commenting and participating in my Time Warp Tuesday blog hop. Link up below and click through to visit others who are doing the Time Warp! (If you have any trouble with Linky Tools, please share the link to your blog entry in the comment section.  Also, please don’t forget to comment on my post here, as I do not have a link to this (my own) post below, but I would still really appreciate your feedback. xoxo

1. Stumbling Grace

2. missohkay

3. Lavender Luz

4. The IF Voice

5. Hope Lost

6. Half-Baked Life