Why so secretive?

I've been pondering this for the last couple days. I started this blog as a journal for myself, call it therapy. But one thing I did was leave out the details of our IF...it took me a while to even share that we had IF. Why, you may ask?? Maybe out of denial, pride, but a big part was I didn't want people to know exactly what was going on in our IF life. Not many people know about our journey, let alone the "details" of it. I think I was trying to shelter myself from questions/comments by not even blogging about it. Well, I feel that needs to change. I realize that I find so much comfort in reading other IF blogs...the details help me. I feel that blogging about our journey can not only help me, but God can use it to help others as well.

So, as a start, I will at least blog about our IF history.

2004: ttc on and off (depending on the month...I was crazy enough to not try on months where the due date would be around our anniversary or Christmas.)

2005: actively ttc

2006: worried why we weren't pg yet, talked to OB. Had HSG, dh had SA, all clear. Went back to NFP to chart to see what may be wrong.

2007: tried 6 rounds of clomid, responded great. Labeled "unexplained infertility"

2008: end of the year, did 2 rounds of clomid/IUI, 1 femara/IUI, saw RE first time, recommended progesterone support and injectables with IUI, then IVF.

2009: 3 rounds of injectibles/IUI and felt led to look into IVF. First IVF in November

2010: 2nd IVF in February and now looking forward to 3rd IVF in July.

Looking back, I honestly never thought it would take this long, or we would have to go through sooo much treatment. I mean, people must have some serious fertility problems to have to do ivf, right??????

Well, dh and I are thankful for the opportunity God has given us through IF and our IVF journey...we have grown SO much.

We have experienced love at first sight (our embabies) and experienced great loss as we realised that none of them were meant to be born into this world.

We have been blessed to see God's hand create LIFE!!

We have been given wisdom that only comes from God.

We have gained empathy and knowledge that we really have no right to judge people that are having to make hard choices if we ourselves have not been down that road. I'm not talking about choices that go against the Bible, but choices that can fall in the "grey" area of life.

I have learned to have compassion for people because everyone is going through a struggle/journey.

So, our journey has been long and bumpy. We have experienced almost EVERY emotion that is possible. But, we wouldn't be who we are today if God hadn't chosen us to be blessed by IF. So, that's my story, and I'm sticken to it!