Once upon a time....

I am not really sure where to start. My heart tells me to start with Adley but my mind tells me I should share some of my background, just in case someone actually decides to read my blogs.

I married my soul mate in 1997...I knew before I met him that I wanted to be a mom and in order for me to be a mom we would most likely need to search for a infertility specialist. Jay and I started fertility tx's one wk after we were married. Talk about an emotional roller coaster...injections with several different kinds of drugs, pills, sex by the calendar, 3 ivf's..one ending in a miscarriage, and several iui's. (btw, an ivf is invitro fertilization and an iui is intra-uterine insemination).  After almost 5 years of doing fertiltiy tx's, we felt like we were being led down the road of adoption. This process was supposed to take 9-18 months.....well, not for us. We did our home study in July of 2000 and rec'd a phone call from our case worker three months later telling us they had a birth mother who had chosen us to be her child's parents! Of course we were estatic but we had to scurry around to come up with the rest of our money to finance the adoption. I had quit my job as a chiropractic assistant while doing the fertility tx's and had decided I would go back to work to save money for the adoption..didn't happen that way, nothing ever happens the way you plan. Something I am slowly learning and you will hear more about. Avry Claire was born March 7, 2001. (we sometimes call her AC) She was the most beautiful baby I had ever seen, a miracle...so dainty. I remember the day we walked into the hospital (we missed her birth by 20 min), her birth mother had her propped up on her knees just staring at her, my heart dropped as I thought "she's decided to keep her".  We walked up to the bed and she handed AC over to Jay. It was all so surreal. I camped out at the hospital with AC's birth mother for the duration of her stay. What amazed me about the birth of our daughter was that the hospital staff waited for us to arrive before they cleaned AC up, we were able to watch them weigh her for the first time, measure her head for the first time, wipe the "black stuff" off of her, and Jay watched them hand her to me for the first time. She was OURS, no one else's, OURS. We took in every minute of it. The day came to take Avry Claire home, I had no idea as to what to say to her birth mother, I mean what do you say to a girl who is giving you her child, a part of herself?!? I turned to hug her as tears streamed down my face and hers and simply said "Thank You". 

We moved to KY in January of 2004. Up until then, we lived in Columbia, MO (well, technically it was Ashland but most ppl know of Columbia..only 15 mins from Ashland) I had no idea that Louisville had all of these little towns like J-town, Fern Creek, and Middletown. I was thinking "big city, i want no part of that" so we moved to Shelbyville where, oh my gosh, it was horrible! I'm telling you, we felt like if you weren't a "shelbyville lifer", you were a nobody. I endured that for all of 9 months, I think. We then moved to Louisville...we were already attending a church there, shopping there, all of the friends we were making were there so why not? During this time there was a lot of depression and homesickness (me not Jay) but I made it. Before we knew it 2005 was upon us. Jay and I had been talking about another baby. Jay wanted to adopt as he wasn't sure he could go through the roller coaster ride of fertility tx's again but I told him we were in a new city with new dr's and it had been several years so who knows, maybe there was something new we could try. Sooo, we agreed we would chat with a fertiltiy specialist. We also agreed that we wouldn't do as many tx's as we had in the past. There was a new drug! It's a breast cancer drug called Letrozole. The dr wanted to start with IUI's, we were fine with that knowing that if it worked, great and if not, we were okay with that too but we wouldn't go any further than doing IUI's. I think we started tx's in July of 2005. If you have never gone through this or you don't know anyone who has then you won't know the devestation of starting a period. The first IUI didn't take so we agreed to do one more..ONE more. We did the second one in September of 2005...early October we were pregnant! Pregnant and scared. I ran upstairs to tell Jay as he was still asleep and to this day, I'm not sure he remembers me waking him with the news. I cried tears of joy and I called one of my best friends who was driving and nearly wrecked her car from crying. I didn't know it then but Jay told me not long ago that he was scared to death, scared of losing the baby, scared of losing me..he said he was a nervous wreck. I was put on bed rest at 22 wks and was on bed rest for 15 looonnng wks! Jayden was born June 17, 2006 via c-section due to me having some health issues. He was the tiniest baby we had ever seen. He only weighed 5lbs 12oz. You wouldn't know that by looking at him today! Jayden Conor, our second miracle.

During both of these births as well as everything leading up to these births, there were many tears and other heartaches in which I won't go into. Just know that while all of this was going on, Jay held me, cried with me, got angry with me, and just simply loved me.

March 2008--Jay lost his job after only being with the company for a short time. The company called it quits and that left us wondering "what now". Honestly it freaked us out. I immediately sent out an email asking for prayers. I called my dad and he said what any father would say "move home", home being MO. We didn't have the money to just up and move. My brother called with an offer and we took it. We moved back to MO over Easter wkend in 2008, moved in a day! It was a horribly sad day, Louisville was our "home" now...how were we going to do this? We moved in with my brother and his fam (Boonville) for about a month or so then decided it was time to find our own place so we moved back to Ashland. We found a duplex..ugh, it was a new duplex but not the same as a house. Jay and I began arguing with each other, Jay couldn't find a job making anything more than unemployment, our van was breaking down and it was our only form of transportation. AC was going to be in her 4th school since kindergarten and she was only going to start second grade. Jay was becoming depressed...we finally decided to sell pretty much everthing we had and move back to KY. We moved back to KY on $400! We were lucky enough that our friends mom knew someone who wanted to rent out her condo..in Crestwood. It meant another new school for AC but if it meant we could be back in KY, by all means, YES, we'd take it! So, we moved back to KY over Labor Day wkend 2008. (we were only back in MO for 6 months) I started a new job that following week while Jay still collected unemployment as employment was hard to come by. Let me state that we lived on a mere $415/wk during that time. I will never understand how anyone can support a family off that kind of money but God provided everything we needed. Not sure how we made it sometimes other than having Faith. We lived in this condo, a condo on the third floor, mind you, for about 9 months before Jay told me the house we moved out of was available. The exact house we left when Jay lost his job!  Talk about a God-wink! We left Crestwood to move back to Middletown in May 2009. I fought with the school system and finally got AC back into the school she had been in when Jay's job loss came about. She has now been in 8 different schools since kindergarten..she's in the 5th grade now. I quit my job at the pre-school to open my home daycare in September and Jay found a job in October...things were finally beginning to fall into place!