ARE YOU KIDDING ME VITAMIN LADY???

I had a run-in this weekend with an older Russian woman who approached me at a funeral, as I  finished sharing my condolences with the grieving family. I have to say, this incident is one for the books! It goes along with what NOT to say to someone struggling with infertility! As a matter of fact, this goes along with what NOT to say, EVER! 

 This lady approaches me and says she really needs to speak to me about something. Here goes her opening line, “I have these pills, they can help you take care of this area,” as she points at my stomach and waist. “You’ll have results in no time! You will actually have a defined waist line.” I am obviously a bit stunned at this point and explain “I’m sorry, but I don’t believe in diet pills.” She continues to tell me they are NOT diet pills, they are vitamins .“Krystyna, you obviously need them, your immune system is not working correctly.” I proceed to explain I believe dieting consists of eating right and exercising.

As if pointing out that I should lose weight wasn't bad enough, she proceeds with more offenses.  I should have ditched the conversation, but this lady was not backing down! “Krystyna, I noticed you don’t have children….” (THANK YOU CAPTAIN OBVIOUS!) “I really believe it’s because your immune system isn't working correctly, you really need these vitamins!” Instead of listening to my instinct and just bolting for the door at this point, I continued to politely explain to this acquaintance that I have a medical condition I've been struggling with for years. I work with some of the best reproductive health doctors in Northern California and I already take lots of medicine, therefore I don’t want anything to mess with the plan my doctors have me on, yada yada. She interrupts me, "What is your condition anyways? What's the problem? Maybe I can help.” Yes, I’m sure you can. Please show me your PhD - then maybe we can talk!

She continues...“Krystyna, do you want to be healthy? These vitamins can help you. You think you’ve tried everything, but obviously you haven’t. If you fix your immune system, you’ll be able to have children. Why aren’t you trying more? Do you think you have all the answers? That’s it, come to my house, I live a few minutes away, you need these pills!”

ARE YOU KIDDING ME LADY? Yes, you are right! I don’t have children because I don’t want them enough. I had surgery and have taken a dozen medications at a time for fun. I should have just tried your vitamins instead! They are miracle vitamins, they are for losing weight, gaining weight, healing infertility, ulcers, etc!   I’m sorry if I’m not willing to try every pill offered to me by doctors. WAIT, you AREN’T a doctor? That’s right, you are just trying to make a sale. Thank you very much for offending me in every way imaginable in a matter of minutes! Nice sales pitch! Does that really work on others? ARE YOU KDDIING ME VITAMIN LADY????  NOT COOL!

Waiting Sucks!

Waiting is all I seem to do lately. I’m sorry  for being a Negative Nancy, but it’s been a hard couple of weeks for me, and I told you all I’d let you in on the highs and lows of infertility and adoption, so here’s the honest truth. I’ve began looking to God for supernatural patience and peace, because I can’t seem to get a handle on those myself. Perhaps Mother’s Day, baby showers and the newborn babies in my life have added to my impatience, but none the less, it’s been difficult.

Waiting sucks. We're almost on month 5 of the adoption wait. Back when we were filling out the pages and pages of adoption paperwork, we had to reveal every personal detail of our lives, medical history, financial history, etc. Now that we haven't been chosen, I’m starting to wonder what about our lives is so unappealing (I know, this is irrational)!  It's teaching me to have more patience, to realize that sometimes the good things that happen in life are the ones worth waiting for, and that I can't force something to happen that's not quite ready to occur. None the less, I still hate waiting. 

  
The only way I can describe this point of the process is that it's a lot like getting picked for the kickball team when you're in elementary school.  As the months go by with no call, it feels a lot like being one of the last two kids left to be chosen for the team-the one who has the crappy reflexes or the chubby kid who can’t run fast.  I keep trying to tell myself that the longer we wait, the better the match will be, because God’s going to send us our child, but the feeling that perhaps they won't find a match (which I know is irrational, but who said any of this is rational to begin with?) still tries to grab hold of my psyche.  That is the danger of this whole waiting game-that you have too much time to over analyze everything.

Did I mention that I hate waiting? Please keep us in our prayers, as we may have a long wait in front of us and we’d like to stay as positive as possible. I personally pray that God uses this time to prepare us for parenting (I hear you need lots of patience) and helps me focus on the blessings in my life. Thanks in advance! 

Husbands - Beware of The Following Statements

Husbands, we love you, but there are some things you should avoid saying to your wife throughout infertility.  Some of these are too funny!

1) My mother wants to give you some fertility advice so I told her you’d call her.

2) It’s a buddy’s fishing weekend so I might have to miss your ovulation period this month. Is that okay?

3) The fertility clinic called with your test results but I accidentally deleted the message.

4) You look bloated. Are you getting your period or could you be pregnant?

5) I told my sister you would be happy to plan her baby shower.

6) Why are you crying? It’s only a period.

7) Did you gain weight this cycle?

8) I heard if we just relax, it might happen.

9) I told my sister you’d take her shopping at the maternity store.

10)  Check out my ex-girlfriend’s cute maternity photos on Facebook!

11)  Are you crying AGAIN? Maybe you are pregnant! 

12)  I think you’re too obsessed about getting pregnant.

13)  Why do we always have to talk about getting pregnant?

14)  I invited your mother to our fertility appointment. 

15)  Don't worry honey, you wouldn't look good as a pregnant woman anyways.

16)  Why are you crying? It’s only a baby shower.

17)  Let’s go on vacation and maybe it will just happen!(I personally love this idea! J)

18)  I told my pregnant sister all our potential baby names and she might use one. Isn't that exciting? 

Celebrating (or simply surviving) Mother's Day

Unless you've struggled with infertility, you've probably never looked past the gifts, flowers and lovely mother’s day brunches. The truth is that Mother’s Day is one of the hardest days for most struggling with infertility. It’s a double whammy - Another anniversary of a year gone by without a baby — and a holiday that specifically excludes you.

Mother’s Day often means getting together with family members to celebrate their motherhood. This can be very difficult for a woman who is trying hard to have a baby but hasn’t yet succeeded, leaving her feeling isolated and alone. I’ve spent many mothers’ days holding back tears after church service and wondering why life is so unfair. But guess what, I survived, so will you! There are two ways you can generally cope with M-Day.

Sitting Mother’s Day Out

You should take your emotional temperature before deciding to sit out and go into hibernation for the day. Ask yourself, “How does Mother’s Day really make you feel?”. If it’s just awful and you won’t be able to contain  your emotions, then have a talk with your  mom and let her know you need some space and would love to celebrate HER another day, away from all of the commotion. You can “sit out” Mother’s Day with an activity you enjoy that is completely unrelated to the holiday.  But beware, It’ll be hard to avoid the festivities all together; as you will be subjected to Mother’s Day photos and Mommy-related status updates on facebook. 

Jumping into Mother’s Day

Let’s say your temperature about Mother’s Day is just mildly elevated to slightly unpleasant and difficult. (OK, let’s just say the holiday doesn’t make you want to stick needles in your eyes.) Then, celebrating your own mother could be the coping strategy that works for you.


You can take the bull by the horns and plan a brunch or dinner to celebrate your mom, after all, that’s what the holiday is about in the first place. Keep busy celebrating her, and you may forget your sadness for a while.

Making your mother the center of attention (thus taking the attention of yourself) may work, particularly if you and your mother are close and she has been supportive throughout your infertility battle. Use this as a chance to thank her for her support.

The main thing is to recognize that you have a right to feel upset about this holiday, and every right to manage it in the way that is least painful for you and is respectful to others. 

Bottles, Tears and Babies R' Us

Sorry for the delayed post.  I was in Mexico celebrating our 5 year wedding anniversary. I've been truly blessed to spend the last five years with my prince charming by my side! I love you honey!!!

Everyone is so excited for us and always asking if we've heard anything.  The truth is we’ve been considered by several birth moms, but haven’t heard anything concrete yet. In the meantime, we are preparing to have a child in our lives, just like any other expectant parents would. Instead of Lamaze and doctor's visits, we are keeping up with our adoption classes, reading a lot of adoption books and getting our finances in order.  We have started to spend a little time preparing our home for our baby and a few months ago I started to take a look at all the stuff that's available for a baby.  All that I have to say is good grief there's a lot of baby stuff available!!! Because our placement can happen very quickly, we need to be prepared to bring our baby home on short notice. We were instructed to have basic baby essentials ready to go: diapers, bottles, formula, first few outfits (both boy and girl), car seat, crib and stroller. Sounds simple enough... YA RIGHT!

My first visit to Babies R Us ended with me practically in tears hyperventilating in the bottle aisle. Why are there 400 different bottles to choose from? What bottle is best? Why are they so expensive? What’s the difference between the affordable brand and not-so-affordable brand? Am I a bad mother if I want to save a few bucks and go with the affordable bottle? My head was spinning!!!! I started questioning how ready I was for motherhood. Had I just spent the last 5 years dreaming about being a mommy, only to find that I’m not even ready for this responsibility? Were these feelings of inadequacy normal or induced by being an adoptive mother? Luckily my wonderful sister, an experienced mom, came to my rescue and saved me from this whirlwind of anxiety. She picked out a few things for me and told me every mom feels overwhelmed at first. 

Luckily, shortly after my Babies R' Us experience, I was blessed by my ladies’ home group, which surprised me with a basket of all the baby essentials. Boy, was that a relief! My parents are also amazing and surprised me with a stroller as soon as we were officially on the waiting list!

This is all becoming so real! I can’t wait to start decorating the nursery! Most importantly, I can’t wait to meet our little baby, where ever he or she may be! 

Now, time for some feedback from other mom’s out there. Were you overwhelmed before you had the baby? What scared you most about motherhood? Any anxiety? How did you handle it?

Why We Chose Adoption

Just recently, someone asked me why I've started this blog in the first place. It’s definitely not because I’m aspiring to be the next Jane Austen (I wish!).  I started the blog for the following reasons:

1. To share our story of infertility and adoption
2. To educate our community about infertility and adoption and bring more awareness to these sometimes taboo topics
3.  Therapy! It’s therapeutic to write about what I've experienced in the last few years. Infertility and adoption come with a lot of unwanted emotions and sometimes it’s just best to lay them all out in writing. Also, it’s great to keep my mind occupied as we wait for the phone call that will change our lives forever!

Here is some background:

After talking about it for years, Roman and I started our adoption journey in August 2011.  After lots of paperwork, adoption classes, CPR classes, financial and medical assessments and our home study, we were finally approved in early February for a domestic newborn adoption. We've been eagerly waiting for a call from our adoption agency. While preparing for adoption, we were often asked why we were adopting.  So here are some reasons we decided to adopt:

Adopting a child is a calling

First and foremost, we didn’t chose to adopt, God chose us for adoption.

Ultimately, this process has been God leading us (and teaching us) and we are merely following.

I wonder what would happen if everything happened according to my life plan? I guess I’d be an attorney, living in a beautiful 4 bedroom suburban home, with three beautiful and perfectly disciplined children who all cleaned and read their Bibles- just for fun! Ya right! How often does that happen? Thank God he’s led us by his plan (although I’m still not opposed to the other plan eitherJ).  It’s amazing to take part of God’s plan and see how he uses our lives to glorify HIM!  As Christians, we should be honored to take part of God’s plan to care for widows and orphans! And although you might not be called to adopt, you can be a part of loving and supporting another child through supporting adoption. Adoption can be scary sometimes, but it is a beautiful journey. We’ve learned to trust God in ways that we could have never imagined.

The concept of adoption originates with God

God shows us the first and most meaningful example of adoption. When we humble ourselves and ask for God’s help and forgiveness, we are adopted as His children. We are God’s adopted children despite of our background and our blemishes, we are his and he loves us as a father loves his son.

There are many orphans in this world who need a home

While we can’t help them all, we can open up our family to the few that God leads us to, with the resources He provides. We have been abundantly blessed in so many ways and we have the means to adopt and provide a safe and loving home to a child in need.

An example of this is illustrated in the story of a man, walking along the beach, at low tide.  He observed that the beach was littered with starfish, stranded by the receding ocean, all doomed to die.  At one point he encountered a child picking some up and tossing them back in.  “You can’t possibly make a make any dent or difference, with so many,” he noted to the boy as he passed.  The boy held one before throwing into the sea and responded, “It matters to this one.”

So even if we can’t make a huge impact and help all the orphans in the world, we can adopt one (or more).

When we began to consider having children, we realized that it might not be easy for us. We decided, early on in our marriage, that we’d love to adopt some time in our lives. Once I was diagnosed with infertility, we both agreed we wouldn’t spend thousands on infertility treatments and we’d adopt. Whether a child had our DNA or not wasn’t a priority. In our assessment, you are a parent based on how you love them, not how they joined the family. Children are a gift from God, even if they are delivered in different packages.

We Wanted to start a family

We were devastated that we couldn’t have biological children and coping with infertility isn’t easy. We knew without a doubt that we wanted kids, lots of kids! We also knew that adoption would never fill our desire to have biological children, but it would give us a chance to start a family and love a child like our own. We decided that once again, God gave us the opportunity to start a family through adoption. We want a baby and a baby out there needs a home. What a perfect match! J

Adoption is worth the financial expense

Adoption is financially expensive, no doubt about it. We could have spent the money on a dozen different things, like a law degree or voyage around the world (which was tempting). The money could have been saved for the unknown future or been invested to earn more of it. Yet, all of that is temporal and fleeting. In God’s economy, a person is both eternal and of inestimable worth. In God’s economy, children are an asset and not a curse. In God’s economy, it is better to give than to receive. We chose to swallow the $25,000 cost of adoption and invest in our family and God’s eternal plan. We haven’t regretted yet. J

In conclusion, adoption is definitely a challenging and rewarding experience. We would encourage anyone interested in adoption, both international and domestic, to please do your research. It's not a perfect system and there is corruption in some countries or by some individuals. That said there are many reputable agencies and individuals out there who truly have the best interests of families at heart and do their best to keep their costs reasonable. Ultimately we trust that when the Lord leads us to adoption He will provide. Please feel free to comment or write if you have any questions or comments! Thanks for stopping in!

Stop Waiting… Start Living!

 Speaking from experience, when people struggle with infertility, it’s often too easy to stop enjoying their lives or put things on hold waiting for the day they get pregnant.  I'll be the first to admit that it's far too easy to start living your life, two weeks at a time. Two weeks waiting for ovulation, then another two weeks waiting for a pregnancy test. You wake up daily with only that on your mind and it’s hard to move past that hurdle. 

 I’ve been told a few times “If I was in your situation, I don’t know what I would do. I would be so devastated.” One person said “If I couldn’t have kids and went through all of your health issues, I’d probably stay in bed and cry all day.” Although I did have days where all I wanted to do was hibernate in bed, where I could avoid my surrounding world of happy families, beautiful children and SUPER fertile family and friends, that wasn’t the case every day. I'll admit there were days where I was devastated and just sick of waiting for my turn to be happy. I felt like God was punishing me and I had to wait out this horrible punishment until it was time to start living the life I had always wanted. One day when I was overwhelmed by self pity and sorrow, I heard Laura Story’s song Blessings. The lyrics rang in my ears like they were being spoken directly to me. I pulled over in my car and began to weep.  

“Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops?

What if You’re healing comes through tears?

What if the thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You’re near?

What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise?”

I had been waiting for a huge miracle in my life. I was waiting for pregnancy in order to celebrate and enjoy my life. At that moment I had realized God was truly trying to bless my husband and I through the struggles of infertility. I had realized that the time Roman and I had was actually a blessing in disguise. I had an “ah ha!” moment once I realized that we were abundantly blessed through our time of struggle. We had been blessed to discover God’s love and rely on him in a way that was raw and genuine. We had been blessed to build a marriage that was bruised and scarred, but was stronger than we had ever imagined. We had been blessed with supportive family and friends who cried and prayed with us.

April 28^th will be our five year wedding anniversary and when I look at our last five years together, I’m in awe of how much we’ve been able to experience together. When Roman and I were engaged, we always shared our dreams of traveling the world. God blessed us with the gift of time and gave us the opportunity to explore the amazing world around us. We’ve made memories we will cherish forever. I was also able to pursue my educational goals freely and start my career. I have also been given countless opportunities to share my testimony that I wouldn’t have otherwise.

Also, my husband has always been in touch with artistic side. The last few years, he’s been given the opportunity to pursue his passion of music, photography and art (check out  blog.infocusphotography.us for his work). We don’t know if he’d ever have such an opportunity otherwise. When I look back over the last five years of our journey, what stands out most is the out pour of blessings on our life. And most interestingly, we were blessed with the gift of exploring adoption and the beauty of starting our family through the gift of adoption.  We weren’t being punished at all, we were given unique blessings, that may look different than the norm, but it’s the path that God has paved for us. Who are we to question that?

So if you are experiencing infertility, don’t sit and wait for your life to start!!!! Pursue your passions and take advantage of the gift of time. Couples can lose years of their lives waiting in limbo.  It can also rob you of your happiness, which is a key component of good health and it makes the whole conception process tougher emotionally and increases stress levels.  So Go ahead and plan that vacation, start that ministry, go back to school, or take a job or make that change you’ve wanted to make and move forward in your lives because your life has meaning and purpose already.  God has given you a unique purpose and you need to start living in order to fulfill that purpose. Putting your life on hold “just in case” you are pregnant will make you miserable and you’ll lose sight of the blessings in your life.  If you pursue you desires and passions, you have nothing to lose because you will be improving your overall health and happiness.