so close, but so far away.

We've had quite the week. As many of you know, we've been TTC (trying to conceive) since 01/07 without much luck (obviously). I finally made an appointment with my OB/GYN to talk about fertility issues and find out where we should go from here. Last Wednesday Heath went for a sperm analysis (SA) We got the results Thursday and found out that while everything else was normal, he had 0% morphology. This means that none of the little guys were shaped correctly, thus making it nearly impossible for them to penetrate the egg. Heath took it pretty hard, but I was actually relieved. I'd been worried that we would find out he was sterile and I'd never be able to have a baby that was 1/2 mine and half his. So, while we might not be able to get pregnant naturally, at least I know it will be our baby. Heath has an appointment with a urologist at the end of this month and a re-peat SA. There is a chance that the morphology is temporary, but in the case that it isn't, we'll most likely move on with in vitro fertilization (IVF).

We had another curveball thrown in our direction Monday morning. A friend of mine called to let me know that her dad (who is a pediatrician in Arkansas) had a woman at the hospital who had just delivered a perfect baby boy and wants to give him up for adoption. She is 19 years old and hid her pregnancy from her entire family. You can imagine their surprise when they took her to the hospital for "cramps" and she delivered a baby. After all of the praying that we had done, we felt like this might be an answer to our prayers. Because this was all so last minute, the adoption can be done very quickly and very cheap (about $1,500 as opposed to $30k). We prayed a lot about it and decided that if this family wanted to give the baby up for adoption, we were going to adopt him. I figured if they chose to keep him, it was God's way of telling us that this wasn't the right thing for us. So, yesterday was quite an emotional day. In the end, the grandparent's decided to step up and care for the baby. Of course, this is the best case for the child and we know that it was not an easy decision to make.

We're doing okay, but we had allowed ourselves to get emotionally attached to this child that we knew nothing about. I didn't know my heart could break for something that was never mine to begin with. I'm not sure what God's plan was in bringing this baby to our attention. Maybe he wants us to open our hearts to the possibility of adoption. We're just trying to be patient and wait for this all to be a little more clear to us.

So, where are we now? We back at square one. We've found out that our insurance won't cover IVF, but some of the infertility clinics in town offer financing. We would like to hurry up and get the ball rolling, but we know that our doctor will want to wait until Heath has his appointment with the urologist. So, we'll try to be patient.

Until then, we keep praying. And trying to make a baby the old fashioned way.

Oh, and I just realized I wrote a whole post without mentioning match/rank lists/etc. We're still praying about that one too. With all of the recent developments, we wonder if it would be financially and emotionally to our benefit to stay close to friends and family. So, no updates on this one.