Wow, so I haven’t posted on here since FEBRUARY!  I haven’t posted in so long because there has been a lot going on with me…but, where do I begin?  From the beginning, I suppose…

First, I want to say that I’ve debated about sharing this much of my life on here but then I figured that maybe it will help someone else who might be going through something similar to know that they are not alone.  If you know me personally, you know that I’ve been very open about what I’ve been going through this year and it has actually connected me to other people who also have similar struggles; it has been nice to talk with others who fully understand.

It all started in January where I suffered my 3rd miscarriage, followed by a 4th miscarriage in April.  I was about 11 weeks along for the one in April and it was extremely difficult on me both physically and emotionally.  As it turns out, that was easy in comparison to what I was about to go through less than a month later.

                                                         [So thankful for these two]

In May, I began to have some very scary symptoms including: extreme lightheadedness/dizzyness, chest pains, numbness in my arms and hands, and headaches (NASTY ones).  At one point it got so bad that I ended up in the emergency room.  I was missing so much work and was really worried about my ability to continue to hold down my job.  I saw so many doctors and underwent SOOOOO much testing and everything came back NORMAL!  I couldn’t even walk from my house to my car without feeling like I was going to pass out and die, how could everything be normal????

After seeing about 5 traditional doctors, I decided to see a doctor who specialized in functional medicine (read more about that HERE).  Prior to making the choice to see this doctor, I started to experiment with my diet and found that when I ate foods that had gluten in them, I felt so much worse.  I really started to focus on eating a ridiculously healthy diet and working out 4-5 times a week and I definitely started to feel better but still not great.

[putting on a happy face]

After seeing this new functional doctor she put me on a whole regimen that includes: no dairy, no gluten, no sugar, exercise 5x/week and taking a multi-mineral supplement every day (on top of the other vitamins I am taking).  After starting the multi-mineral, I began to see a noticeable difference the very next day!  Based on my conversation with the doctor, I believe that the miscarriages robbed me of my nutrients (particularly calcium) and caused me to develop an intolerance to gluten.  I am happy to report that today I am about 90% of my normal self.  I still get the bad headaches but I think I need to focus more on being better about eliminating sugar from my diet (that gluten free granola is SO GOOD!).

In terms of my fertility issues, I have had every test under the sun and all those came back normal (“unexplained infertility” is what they are calling it) so the next step is IVF.  Thankfully my insurance covers a large portion of the cost so I don’t have to stress about that piece but I’ve read horror stories about the process so I’m a little scared but also very excited!  The first stage is to take birth control for 10 days; which I started last week.  The next step will be to take hormones that cause me to develop a boat load of mature eggs at once.  Hopefully it works!

In other news, since February here’s what we’ve been up to…

[Chicago]

[Chicago]

[Charleston]

[Charleston]

[Charleston]

[Charleston]

[trying to stay cool during our first summer in Ft. Lauderdale]

[Family/girl time]

[trip to LA]

[trip to LA]

[trip to LA]