Another Baby Shower and Praying for a Friend

This past weekend my wonderful friend who I will call K threw me a baby shower at our church. We had a wonderful turn out, I got even more stuff than I did at my family shower!  My Pastor always says whenever God orders something in your life He will always pay the bill and leave a tip, and that has surely been the case for us, I have gotten everything I needed and wanted for Jacqueline, which when we first found out we were having a girl I was nervous because everything I already had that family and friends had given me was all for a boy, but the Lord has provided! We have been busy washing clothes and putting the finishing touches on the nursery, I will post pics of the nursery once it's all done.
Now on to a prayer request. I would love for you all to help me pray for my dear friend K. She is the one that threw me the baby shower this past weekend, she is struggling with infertility caused by severe endometriosis. We actually became friends because when Roger and I started to try for a baby K was just diagnosed with endo and her and her husband were told by their OB to try to get pregnant naturally for a few months before moving on to fertility treatments. There were also like 4 other couples trying to get pregnant at the same time we were and at the end of 6 months everyone was pregnant except for me and K, so we became quick friends, she seemed to be the only person who understood how I was feeling. We have supported each other for almost 3 years now, I know the Lord brought us together to help each other through some really hard times, like it says in Proverbs 27:17(KJV), " Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend." She has been a real friend to me but lately her life has been especially hard. Looking back at the beginning of last summer I really thought life for both of us would be totally different than what it has turned out to be. Last June K and her husband took a step of faith after being told by her OB dr that she really need to do IVF and do it soon if she ever wanted any children, so they decided to take some loans and go for it. She started her 1st IVF cycle in July and they transferred 2 beautiful embryos. The Dr. was so sure that their 1st try was gonna work, she was actually nervous they would end up with twins, but sadly K called me on Aug 18 to tell me that her 1st cycle had failed, and by that point Roger and I had already shared our good news and I felt terrible that her cycle didn't work, we soo wanted to be pregnant together. K was so devastated that she and her husband decided to take a month off and try again in October for a FET. That time they only had 1 good embryo and 1 that wasn't that good but they transferred both anyway and K was just so sure it wouldn't work, and she was shocked when her 1st beta was positive! Roger and I were so thrilled for them, and I couldn't believe we were gonna have a baby just months apart! All of K's numbers looked good, her betas doubled and she went in for her 1st ultrasound and they couldn't see the heartbeat but the Dr. basically said that it might have been just too early. So a week later K went in again and I will never forget the text she sent me, all it said was, "I can't talk right now, but I just wanted to let you know our baby is dead. There hasn't been any growth and still no heartbeat." I was shocked and my heart just broke for her and her husband. She wanted to be able to miscarry naturally but a small piece of the sac didn't come out and she ended up having a D&C not that long before Christmas. It was heartbreaking because she was so excited when she found out she was pregnant that she shared the news with everyone and even did a FaceBook announcement, and sadly just a few weeks later it was all over. And as if this all wasn't bad enough for them they got even more bad news during one of the ultrasounds that she has a huge fibroid on her uterus and before they can try IVF again she has to have major surgery and recover for six months. So the fertility Dr. she sees has recommended that K do 2 stimulating cycles back to back to have some eggs frozen and ready to go for their next FET. Then she is a teacher in our church's christian school so she doesn't want to leave the kids in the middle of the school year, so she is gonna wait until July to have surgery, so they are looking at next spring finally being able to transfer another embryo. She has been so strong through all of this. After finding out about her miscarriage I asked her if she was sure she still wanted to throw me a baby shower because I know how hard it can be, but she insisted that she wanted to do it and that even though it wasn't her time she was still happy for me. She threw me such a beautiful shower but the whole time I could see that she was hurting, so I pulled her to the side to make sure she was ok and of course she said, "I'm ok, I just started my period." Isn't that how it always works out? I felt really bad, but she seemed excited about it because now that she has started she is going to be starting her stimulating cycle and she is excited to see if they can get more eggs than they did last time.
I don't know why God gave K a baby and then took it away so quickly, there are just some things that we aren't supposed to understand. All I know is that God is God and God is Good all the time. Romans 8:28 (KJV) says, "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are called according to his purpose. " Please help me pray for my friend K as she goes through these stimulating cycles, I pray that they get lots of good embryos. And pray for her strength as she gets ready for this major surgery this summer.  God made a miracle happen once and I know that He will do it again for her.

My 1st Baby Shower and lots and lots of Dr. appts

Sorry this is such a long post!
Last Saturday was my 1st baby shower that my older sister Misty threw for us and it was truly amazing, Roger and I are so touched by all the support and love we got from family and friends who came to celebrate our little miracle on the way. I'm so glad that we had such a good turn out because of course it had to snow on the morning of our shower and it has not really snowed all year thus far so I was totally stressed out that no one was gonna come. Luckily though everyone came and we all had the best time together eating and laughing and thanking God for our miracle. Misty even made me a sugar-free cake in the shape of a lady bug (Jacqueline's room theme is lady bugs,) it was so cute and tasted even better! With having a home day care I luckily have alot of baby stuff already but we did need some bigger things and I felt like such a burden asking for some things that were a little more expensive, but my family is so excited over this little girl that they bought us basically everything we needed, we are so thankful to them. To list everything we got would take forever lol but my top three favorite things that we got for Jacqueline are:

1. Pam Grace Lady Bug Lucy 10 Piece Nursery-in-a-bag Set. This set is so cute and it matches the green, pink and brown color scheme we are doing in the nursery. It comes with a mobile, all the bedding stuff (I won't be using the bumper pads though), a matching valance, a diaper stacker, and wall decorations. Basically everything you need to decorate a nursery!
2. Angelcare Deluxe Movement Sensor with Sound Monitor. This monitor is amazing! With being a home day care provider I have taken many, many classes about SIDS and how to prevent SIDS and I am so thankful to have this monitor. Roger and I are also getting ready to renew our CPR certification because I know there is no way to stop SIDS from happening but having a monitor that will sound an alarm if my baby stops breathing will give us the best chance to start CPR as quickly as possible, which may save her life, if God forbid something like that were to happen. And this will definitely help Roger and I get more quality sleep!
3. Tons and Tons of adorable baby clothes and big flower hand bands. I simply cannot wait for my little girl to get here so I can dress her up and put a huge flower head band on her, what's more fun than that? lol

Here are some pics from Saturday:

Thanks again to all our wonderful family and friends!

Please keep Jacqueline and I in your prayers, since I have gestational diabetes and I am now 32 weeks pregnant I have started to see my OB Dr. 2 times a week until I deliver to have monitoring appts. Twice a week I get hooked up to the monitors to check Jacqueline's heartbeat and to make sure I'm not contracting and once a week during a monitoring appt I get an ultrasound to check my fluid levels. So far everything has looked great! I love seeing my baby girl on the ultrasound, she is finally head down, which I hope she stays that way and last week we got a really good look at her little face, we could definitely tell she has put on weight, her little cheeks were looking chubby! My Dr. was telling me today that she believes that I am diabetic outside of pregnancy as well which I just don't understand because the fertility clinic I was going to checked me for diabetes before I started treatment and my glucose levels were fine. She told me she is hoping that once I deliver that I will be one of the luckily ones that controls my diabetes with just diet and exercise. My Dr. said though that she is very proud of me because I have done very well controlling my sugars during this pregnancy and I am actually down 15lbs from my pre-pregnancy weight.  Once Jacqueline is born I am definitely going to continue with my diet and losing weight because I don't want to be 25 and on meds for diabetes, I gotta get healthy once and for all!

~Jessica

Can't wait for this weekend!

I've had such a good Monday, but that's only because I actually ended up with a surprise day off, and it's been awesome! I love when there's a holiday that I don't have listed as off in my contract but all of my day care parents have off and then they just decide to keep their kiddos home too. The only thing about days like this is that none of my day care parents ever call me and let me know there not coming, so I get up as usual and then I usually figure out by like 9am that, " ooh, today must be some sort of holiday, yay, I have a day to myself!" I actually got alot of much needed cleaning done, I scrubbed the upstairs bathroom and  I scrubbed the kitchen down, everything from the fridge, to the stove, the microwave, our kitchen is finally spotless. Now to just keep it that way at least until Saturday because we are having a ton of people over for my first baby shower :)!
My older sister, Misty, is throwing this shower for me which will mostly just be family coming to this one, but I do have a huge family and since Roger only has his Mom and Brother we decided to throw like a co-ed shower so there are gonna be tons of people jammed into our little townhouse. I still can't believe that this is going to be my baby shower, I haven't been to many baby showers in the last few years just because of how sad and heartbreaking they were for me, I truly never thought it would be my turn to celebrate such a precious gift. We have revival at our church this week with evanglelist Dean McNeese who used to be my Pastor's Pastor, he is an amazing preacher. Yesterday he preached on looking back and seeing where God has brought you from and look at where God has you now and hasn't God been good? Then our youth choir sang this song and it's been on my mind all day long! God has been so good to us!

Nesting

           I have been starting to nest now for a few weeks and I just feel like my house is never gonna be clean enough, lol! I am so thankful for the husband that I have who tries to understand me and he is just so laid back he never argues with me he just does what I ask and doesn't say a word.
          I am happy to say that Jacqueline's nursery is almost done, we are just waiting for our baby shower because my mom and dad are buying the bedding set I want for her room, so once we have that, her room will be perfect! We decided to paint her walls a really pretty light green and we are doing pink and brown as accent colors and all her bedding stuff is lady bugs! It's gonna be so cute when it's done.
         As for the rest of the house there is still alot of cleaning and organizing I want to do. I had the last week off in December and my plan was to take a room each day and clean it and organize it, but all I ended up doing was watching a ton of movies and shows on our instant netflix, lol. Which don't get me wrong, I really needed the break! So I have been trying to slowly organize the house on the weekends, which it's getting done but not as fast as I would like to especially since we are gonna be busy every Saturday from now until Mid-February! Oh well. But we did get our 2 bathrooms in our house nice and organized and cleaned, lol, I always say we, but what I mean to say is my husband did all the work and I just supervised, haha. I am a home day care provider to 4 boys and I really love my job and I love the kids I watch and all of their parents are very generous to me and they all gave me wonderful gifts for Christmas, among the gifts was a few hundred dollars for a bonus, so my husband and I decided to redecorate the bathrooms with the money, and they turned out soo good! I have always hated our bathrooms ever since we moved into our townhouse and I could not wait for the day that we could afford to redo them! So we chose to paint the walls in a really pretty light yellow called Gold Buttercup, then I found a cute new shower curtain on Walmart.com from better homes and gardens that is black and white with a floral pattern that goes perfectly with the yellow. We decided to accent with lavender colors which is just gorgeous and I finally found an affordable over the toilet storage unit for $29 on walmart.com that actually has cabinets. Then I just added a new black bathroom rug and tooth brush holder and wow what a difference in each room! I love that we were able to redecorate two bathrooms for such little money, so at least that's 2 less things I have to do!

~Jessica

I can't believe I'm finally starting a blog!

Follow my blog with Bloglovin I have been wanting to start a blog for quite some time now. I have been reading lots of blogs, especially about infertility over the last few years and I finally decided to start one myself because after over 2 years of struggling to get pregnant, God finally blessed us with a little girl that we have decided to name Jacqueline, I'm due March 15th. When I was struggling to get pregnant I would read so many blogs because I would get hope from each lady that I was reading about who finally was blessed with a child, so I feel I should share my story so that it might give hope to someone out there that is struggling as much as I was. Thanks for reading!

~Jessica