Okay.  When we left off, I’d just met and married the Best Man on the Planet.  Hubby himself.  We were wed in July of 1995.  I had been teaching by then for hmmm, 4 years I think.  I was working once again with the EI (Emotionally Impaired) kids, in a middle school setting.  I’d just had a pretty bad year.   There was a full-time aide in the classroom, and it was our second year together.  The woman had a heart of gold, but just did NOT belong in that particular assignment.  She battled with the kids and inadvertently made my existence tremendously difficult.  I had begun campaigning at the beginning of that year for her to transfer elsewhere, and by June the stress was pretty high.  In addition, I had my one and only experience supervising a student teacher that year.  That was a huge mistake on my part.  I was assigned a man who was probably 30 years my senior, and he also had no business in a middle school EI classroom.  My kids ran rings around him and I wound up refusing to sign his papers to pass the last week he was there.  I just couldn’t say that he knew what he was doing.

That same year something strange was going on with me physically.  I had started seeing a neurologist for my headaches (they can last for weeks at a time) and he was trying different meds as prevention but none of it was working.  With the stress of the schoolyear, the doc became convinced that I was depressed.  I also started having hot flashes in March, and by May it was out of control.  I literally changed color when one hit, and I would spend half the hour teaching in a heavy coat, and the other half of the hour sweating.  When the students noticed and asked me what was wrong, I decided I’d better start seeing more medical professionals.  I visited the allergist, and then tried to get in to see a gynecologist.  Since there weren’t any appointments with docs available for months, I begged to see at least someone and got in with a nurse practitioner fairly quickly.  She did the routine exam, took blood, and prescribed birth control.  A week or so later, she called to give me the results and wasn’t tremendously specific with me but did emphasize over and over the importance of seeing the doctor that fall.  The meds took care of the hot flashes, I was feeling better and busy getting married.

In the fall of 1995, I was blessed with a new aide in class who was just wonderful.  Terrific.  Couldn’t have had a better partner than Margaret.  Things were looking up, the stress was down.  I had gone off all the stuff the neurologist had tried and was just dealing with the headache pain with ibuprofin and life was good.  I didn’t bother to go see the gynecologist.

By the summer of 1996, I had to make that appointment since my prescription was running out.  That was when the doctor told me there was likely no chance of my having children on my own.  She told me that when we were ready we could try for a year, but she was pretty sure nothing would happen.  If after a year we weren’t successful, I was to let her know.  I was shocked, but at the same time I knew in my heart that she was right.  I went home and called Hubby, who immediately told me that he still loved me.  I was very surprised that he needed to tell me, as it hadn’t occurred to me to doubt that.

I mentioned the whole medical situation to a friend at school a few weeks later, and she insisted that I go see a specialist immediately.  So, I did.  Hey, I take direction pretty well.  :)  The specialist did all sorts of testing and confirmed the diagnosis: premature ovarian failure.  It’s believed that the cause is an autoimmune disease of some sort.  All the tests came back clear, and the only way to investigate further would have been invasive so I decided to live with the mystery.  The clinic happened to have an egg donation program so we signed up.  In the summer of 1997, our name came up on the waiting list.  After a lot of prayer and consideration we decided to go ahead.  I underwent in vitro fertilization that fall and a few weeks later was informed that I was pregnant.  With triplets.

That was when I mentally quit my job.

When I was about 8 weeks along, we lost one baby.  The other two developed very well and I gave birth to a healthy set of boys in the spring of 1998.  It was kind of neat time-wise because I’d finished my Master’s Degree in December of 1997.  I even was awarded a business card sized copy of my diploma from the university.  Laminated.  Lol. I carried that around for a while because it amused me.

Four and a half years later, I gave birth to a second set of twin boys who were part of the original egg donation and had been cryopreserved until we were ready to try for the second pregnancy.  We’d moved across the state by then, so the clinic actually FedExed the embryos.  That was nerve-wracking, let me tell you!  Another difficult moment was just before the second pregnancy when the doctor told me that clinics across the country had been following certain protocols for cryopreservation in 1998 that had later been discovered to be flawed.  He said the success rate had dropped from about 18% to 4%.  My stomach dropped to the floor, then I realized that percents didn’t matter.  It was either going to be 100% or 0% successful, and I was going to have to leave it in God’s hands and not worry.

I figured out the odds when the first boys were born, and we were out there in the one-in-a-million category.  There was only a 20% success rate with establishing pregnancy at the time, and then the fact that I had gotten pregnant on the first try, with multiples, and carried them to 35 weeks was pretty rare.  Consider that whole process happened again with embryos that had been frozen (with faulty protocols), FedExed across the state, and that pregnancy went to 37 weeks, and you can see why I consider myself an amazingly blessed woman.  There’s no way that whole thing could have played out without some Divine intervention.

When the older kids were 7 months old, Hubby got the job he has now.  It was a 100 mile commute for him, so he stayed with my sister and her family and came to see me and the boys on Wednesdays and weekends.  That went on for about 11 months.  I was trying to sell the mobile home we lived in, but the park standards were so high that very few buyers could even get in.  The park only wanted people with platinum credit to apply.  Who with platinum credit wants to buy a used mobile home?

Eventually we found a manufactured home dealer who was willing to take the mobile on trade.  He promised that the house would be ready in 3-4 weeks after it came off the factory line, so we moved out of the mobile home and in with the in-laws.  Since it was only temporary.  Yeah.  That took another 7 months.  Turns out the dealer was having a bit of trouble with the whole concept of truthfulness.  It was a difficult time, because I hadn’t learned yet how to get along well enough with people.  My in-laws are so incredibly sweet, but we still managed to disagree on several points.  I’m very glad I lived with them, because I learned a good deal about myself and made what I think are improvements to my personality.  I’m even gladder that we made up and are closer than ever.  In fact, I dearly wish that when they get to the point of needing assistance that they’ll move in with us.  Between my increased maturity and a larger house, I think we’d get along fine.

We moved into the house in the spring of 2000, just a week before the boys turned 2.   Got involved with a church about a half hour from home, but it was the only one we really felt settled in.  The following year, that pastor announced that he was going to plant a new church in our town, so we signed on to be a part of the launch team.  I kept myself busy with the boys at home, pursued my sewing/quilting hobby that was really starting to become a passion, and various small home improvement projects.  A big thing for me at the time was stuff management.  There was just so much stuff in the house, and I spent a good deal of time sorting and packing and trying to organize the house.  That was also when I first started doing the books for the church.  I thought I’d be keeping track of a checkbook register.  Instead, I found myself learning how to run payroll and file employment taxes and forms.  It was difficult, but I had help and managed not to land anyone in jail for tax evasion.

I honestly thought I could finish this saga in 3 parts, but I guess I’d better go to 4.  :D  Next time, I’ll try to wrap this up.  Honest.