The beginning of our journey.

Let me first start by saying I'm not pregnant yet. I hope to be soon. In January of 2008 my husband and I decided to start trying to get pregnant. We were at a great point in our lives. We had bought our first house about two years earlier. I was settled into my job as a teacher. My husband was at a job he didn't love (in sales) but the company was really good to work for - he made good money doing and had a little freedom in his schedule. Of course, after one month of trying it turned out we were relieved that I wasn't pregnant...

Due to some random events in my life my body decided to go haywire and I "developed" an auto-immune disease, called sarcoidosis. Although for me this has been a relatively benign disease, it took them almost six months to come up with a diagnosis. My beta-2 glycoproteins were really high (over 4 times the normal limit) and this meant that we couldn't try to get pregnant. Not to mention that I was taking 800mg of Ibprofen 4 times a day, which you can't do obviously when you are pregnant. I needed this to relieve the pain I experienced in my elbows and ankles as well as to make the swelling go down. We had to wait eight months before I was ready for them to test my blood again. The news came back good - the beta 2 glycoproteins were back within the normal limit. Yay! Before we could even start thinking about it again we had to go to Maternal Fetal Medicine (which means High Risk Pregnancy). That freaked me out a little bit. People with sarcoidosis can have really rough pregnancies and my rheumatologist felt that it would be best for us to see Maternal Fetal Medicine. This was in mid-September after I had ovulated. They cleared us! Another road block down.

So what happened next? Nothing. As a teacher I want to be able to spend as much time as possible with our baby. This means not having a baby during the summer. A lot of people probaby think this sounds a little selfish - like I just don't want to work. That is, honestly, a little of the reason, BUT, not the full reason. We thought, eh, it's just a couple of months. No big deal! We decided we would start trying again in December.

So, it's December, the week of Christmas to be exact. Just as we were going to start trying again Mark lost his job (like the same week). With the downturn in the economy his company needed to cut back, as the low man on the totem pole Mark was let go first. We made a major life decision at this point. Mark hated being in sales. We thought he would go back to marketing or underwriting, however, both of these jobs would take away his ability to coach. This is non-negotiable (I'll talk about that later). So Mark decided to fill a lifelong dream, to become a teacher. Through a program offered in our state he could convert his four year business degree to a teaching degree. It would take about 10 months. We decided that he would go on unemployment instead of working full time, so that he could be focused on his education. This was a big step for us. We had always been opposed unemployment and thought many took advantage of the system. Well, here we are taking advantage of the system. So, we're sorry. This will be the first and last time. Mark will find a job as a teacher because he has everything you need to be a great one - upbeat attitude, love of kids and teacher (NOT the same thing), and a great work ethic. The question is, when will this happen? No idea!

Because of his uncertain future we didn't want to take any chances so we decided to wait. So now we had summer vacation to work around and Mark's work circumstance and basketball season. That leaves, well, a teeny tiny window of time. Before we could start that though Mark and I decided that we would like to go on one final vacation together. We LOVE Disney World and knew that once we have a child vacation we be very different from what we do now. So we waited some more...