How It All Began

Josh and I met when I was 12 and he was 14. I was immediately head over heels. We actually met at church, on the night my youth group was going to a Carmen concert. It was the first youth event I was able to go to, because I was almost 13, so I was super excited to be hanging out with the older kids. Josh didn't actually go to my church, but his church was small and didn't have much of a youth group, so he often did things with ours.

For a couple of years, I did everything I could to get his attention. Some might call it stalking....haha. It worked though! We flirted for quite some time, and then on May 28, 1998 we held hands for the first time. June 13th, not quite a month later, we shared our first kiss. I was completely, ridiculously in love. We weren't allowed to "date" until I turned 16, but we were together every single chance we got until then.

Josh proposed on July 4th, 2001. We were at the park, and he made us a picnic in the bed of his truck. We were snuggled up watching the fireworks when he asked me to sit on the side of the truck. He got down on one knee, and asked me to marry him. The grand finale of the fireworks started almost immediately after I said yes - it was perfect.

We were married on December 20, 2002. We had a beautiful wedding with our families and friends!

The first house we bought was the house that Josh grew up in. His parents were very generous and we got a wonderful deal. We loved the house, but it didn't really feel like "ours". We stayed there a couple of years, and then fell in love with a house that we could imagine starting a family in. We made an offer the same day we saw it, and we've lived here for 5+ years. It's big, and there is lots of room to grow. We can't wait to bring our babies home here.

In September 2005 we decided to start trying for a baby. I was a little concerned when nothing happened the first few months, but my doctor encouraged me to keep trying, and told me that nothing is really considered wrong until after a year. At that point, they consider you "infertile". Yikes. A year came and went, and we started some preliminary testing. I started charting my basal body temperature each morning, and that's when we discovered I wasn't ovulating. Josh had an analysis done, and all was well there. Since we weren't dealing with any male factor issues, we decided to start Clomid, which is an oral fertility medication. We did Clomid for 6 months, increasing the dosage each month, and I just didn't respond. We took about 6 months off, I lost 15(ish) pounds, and we decided to try again with Clomid. We did 5 rounds, but still no response.

I wasn't quite ready to venture into the realm of fertility specialists, so we took a little time off. Finally, in May 2010 we had our first visit with a reproductive endocrinologist. It didn't go very well, and I completely hated the doctor. One good thing came of that visit though - my HSG. During the procedure, they inject a dye directly into the uterus via a catheter. Once the dye fills the uterus, it spills out of the fallopian tubes if everything is clear. It was a very painful procedure, but my tubes were perfectly clear and they got great x-ray images! One more thing to check off!

We are gearing up for a new clinic and new doctor now, so fingers crossed that we'll have a little one on the way very, very soon!