Here I am again, just over a year later, still trying for what is starting to feel like an impossible dream.  The dream of another baby, the dream of carrying life inside of me, 10 tiny toes, and the dream of becoming a mommy again.

Friday morning I had my first of several ultrasounds over the next week and a half.  My lining looked great, my follicle numbers are high and by all accounts, my body is ready to start over.  Mentally I’m prepared for the shots, the pills, the patches and everything else that comes with starting over.  Emotionally.…I’m not sure yet.

Starting over is draining.  Realizing that I’ve now been through this procedure 5 times with only 1 success. Accepting the fact that statistically, I’m more likely to fail than succeed and knowing how badly failure hurts.  I have to be prepared for that failure and pain again and right now I don’t know if I am.

But right now, I’m choosing to be “high on life” {or maybe the excess hormones circulating my body} and excited about the chance of success!  The idea of “what if it does work?!” has me too encouraged to second guess what we’re doing and the report from Friday is motivation to move forward.

Starting over looks different than the last 3 attempts.  When I started this blog and sharing this walk in our lives, I was preparing for my 2nd frozen embryo transfer {FET}.  This is different {and honestly, much less work} than the “fresh” transfer.  This time, rather withdrawing an embryo from the freezer, we have to first create the embryos.  This starts with me shooting up twice a day with different hormones to induce the growth of several follicles.  The higher number of follicles correlates with a higher number of eggs to harvest and then fertilize.  Having more than 1 or 2 mature eggs in a single cycle is very unnatural for the body {but with IVF, very necessary} and also very uncomfortable.   As crazy as it may sound, I can already feel the drugs working after only 1 1/2 days.  The bloating is real and I can actually feel my ovaries stretching 😦 ! But I know this is a good sign and all part of the process.

I have another appointment on Tuesday and then another on Thursday this week.  They anticipate they’ll be harvesting the eggs next week and then depending on when that occurs, 5 days later would likely be the big transfer date.  Crazy to think I will be pregnant {even if only temporarily} in just a few weeks!

So we continue to pray that this time will be different, that God will bless us with another miracle.  I can look back on the last year and have anger and frustration with God {and some days I do}, or I can look back at it as another year to grow in my faith and dependence on him.  As we start over on this journey again, I’m trying to choose later and push forward with hope.