Growing Our Family - IVF Round 2
It's been a long time since this blog has been anything other than an online scrapbook of Clark's life. I'm not a natural blogger, but I love being able to share his updates and hope he enjoys looking back on these memories some day. But today I'm pausing on the Clark updates to share some big (but not so secret news), we have started our second round of IVF!
Over the last year we have been discussing trying to grow our family. As an infertile mama, it may surprise some of you that it was even a discussion, but I honestly felt like maybe our family was complete with one child. I love being Clark's mom, and could really envision my life with him as an only child. I've even had feelings of, 'what if I don't love another baby like I love Clark?' Logically, I know these feelings aren't realistic, but new mama hormones made them even more strong. While I am still content being a mom of one, Robert and I both feel like we want to try and add another fun, puppy-loving, cuddly, quirky tiny human into our family.
I got my cycle back almost a year ago, and after a few months of regular cycles we met with our fertility doctor in March. We spent a few more months trying naturally in hopes of making a free baby this time, but we continued planning for an IVF cycle as it takes lots of medical and financial preparation. Our plan was to shoot for IVF in late summer, and thankfully everything lined up perfectly for us to start in August! It's hard to think that this time three years ago we were still considering whether we were going to pursue IVF, and here we are starting our second round. Unlike our decision to try IVF last time, this time it just seemed so logical. It was a much less emotional process, and more of a 'this is how the Tugwells have to make babies' thought process. I also just felt a peace from the Lord that even though we have unexplained infertility, we need the help of IVF and that's ok.
Lastly, some of you know we have been considering adoption to grow our family (to the point of almost having our home study complete), and wondering if that is still a path we would pursue to grow our family. Before Clark, we were working on an international adoption from Taiwan. When we had Clark, we completely paused any adoption plans since our agency requires that a child be at least one year old before you can continue with your adoption process. When Robert and I began to talk about whether we should adopt or try IVF again, we just felt like for us financially and physically we should do IVF. IVF is much less expensive than adoption and since our last IVF cycle, pregnancy, and delivery were successful, we wanted to try again while my body is still young and healthy. Also the Taiwan program with our agency (that we really enjoyed working with and would use again) had no infant/toddler adoption referrals in 2018 and matched only older and special needs children. While we still have a heart for adoption, we didn't feel ready to pursue a special needs adoption at this point of our lives. Ultimately I believe that God planted the seed of adoption in our hearts and while I don't know how he will grow it, I trust that he will bring fruit from it in some way.
Here are some pictures the wonderful Lorie Nida took the same day she took our pregnancy announcement photos for Clark. I've been holding onto them for a long time, but I feel they are too sweet not to share!
Thank you for loving and supporting our family!
With Love & Ever Expecting
Ashton, Robert, and Clark
