Perspective

I am officially 6 months pregnant and its a crazy and exciting feeling! 😄 I will have another update post up soon about how we are doing at preparing, recent doctors appointments, and due dates but that’s not the focus for this post. I learned an important and interesting fact recently that literally stopped me in my tracks and I feel like I need to talk about it.

Even at 6 months along, I am still having to do my daily shot. 💉 Today will be shot #390 actually. If you know anything about me, you know how much I absolutely hate shots and that I have complained about them numerous times over the years. Every night I cringe when the alarm on my phone goes off at 8:30 to remind me its time to stab myself once again. I started counting them in the beginning with a “look what this ridiculous infertility nonsense is making me do” attitude and never dreamed I would be about to cross my count into the 400’s.

My daily shot is a blood thinner that my infertility doctor first put me on back when I had surgery #1 to remove fibroids. Apparently I am prone to blood clotting and all the hormones/medications I have had to take over the years increased my chances of getting a blood clot. After each of my surgeries, my doctor always made sure someone was going to be with me while I took the after surgery meds because my chances increased so much that if I felt even a hint of a sharp pain (for example, in my leg) I was going to need to go to the ER immediately. It was that serious.

For at least the first few months of shots, I cried through each one. 😥 It was terrifying and as strange as this sounds, crying was the only way I would stop shaking long enough to give myself the shot. During the down times when I wasn’t recovering from surgery or on multiple fertility medications, I was able to stop the daily shot and I was in heaven. I felt like I could breathe again but once our next infertility treatment started, so did the shots. It was a never ending cycle that I complained and cried my way through and just kept telling myself it would all be worth it once I was finally pregnant and could stop the daily torture.

Or so I thought..

Once we found out we were pregnant, the first thing I asked was if I could stop my shots. My infertility/IVF doctor told me that to be on the safe side, I better stay on them for now. The first 12 weeks of an IVF pregnancy has a super high risk of miscarriage so I assumed my doctor was just being extra cautious and not changing anything so as to not shock my body during this critical time. Totally understandable. After that initial 12 weeks, we graduated to a regular OBGYN and one of the first questions I had for her during our first appointment was if I could stop my shots. She told me she wanted to look more into why my first doctor had me on them before changing anything. This was also when I found out that your chances of getting a blood clot increases when you are pregnant. When she told me that, my heart just dropped because I knew that most likely, I wasn’t stopping my stabbing routine anytime soon. That fear was confirmed the following day when she called to say I needed to stay on them and I got a pick-up notification from Walgreens. *sigh* Another refill of shots was ready for me. 😞

As I got bigger from growing baby, the shot increasingly bothered me because I hated the idea of stabbing myself in the stomach where this precious child was growing. Each doctors appointment started with the same question, “can I stop them yet?” And each time I was told no. I was assured that the needle wasn’t long enough to even get close to the baby but that really didn’t make it any easier for me. It started bothering me so much that it was making my shot harder and harder to do each day. I felt like I was reverting back to the beginning where I just wanted to cry my way through it and that made it even worse.

I have always been a firm believer that everything happens for a reason and I was seriously struggling with any reasoning behind my shots. It felt like my own personal daily torture until one day recently when my entire perspective was turned upside down. I was told the story of a woman who carried her healthy baby to term, got a blood clot, and the baby didn’t make it. They discovered after the fact that she had an undiagnosed blood clotting issue and a daily blood thinner shot could have prevented this devastating tragedy.

I get tears in my eyes thinking about that again now because that very easily could have been me. I was just lucky enough to have been tested before we got pregnant because of all the infertility issues. I had no idea.. I honestly had no idea that was what I was preventing every time I gave myself a shot. I thought I was just doing it as a precaution for myself but no, its keeping our baby alive.

So how selfish do I feel right now?? 😕 The second this baby decided to hang on and fight this infertility battle with us, my body became his too. I prayed and promised him that I would always protect him from day 1 and this whole time I have been complaining about doing just that. In my defense, I had no idea until now that my shots were for his benefit too but that in no way makes me feel better.

I know this newfound knowledge isn’t going to change my hatred for shots overnight. What it has done though is change my attitude and complete perspective towards my daily 8:30pm routine. No more complaining or whining or deep sighs with this face –> 😫 every night. Instead of cringing when my alarm goes off, I now just take a deep breath and think about how happy I will be when I get to meet our healthy baby in May. Because honestly if its for him, I would give myself 100 shots every night if that’s what it took to keep him alive and healthy.

If I calculated correctly, Ill be pretty close to 500 shots by the time our baby is born. Before now, that sounded like a whole lot of torture but that number no longer scares me. It doesn’t seem like very much for what I am getting out of it. Bottom line.. I felt before that I could somehow get through it but now I know without a doubt that I can do this. I can do this for our healthy baby boy! ❤️