Family Pictures

I may get an award for the worst blogger.  Trying to write a book and keep up a blog is for the birds.  I am not a good multi-tasker.  I can either write a book or a blog.  Not both :)  The good news is that I am actually rocking the whole writing a book part.  I have a few marathon writing sessions where I have penned quite a bit in the last few weeks.  I am on target to finish the writing part in the next month!

When I write I usually like to look for a time in my schedule when I can at least get a couple of hours that are uninterrupted.  Not an easy feat for me at all!  I spend some time in prayer to get in the right mind set.  Sometimes I look back through journals or old pictures to help bring my memories to the front of my mind.  My editor, Rachael, says she can tell when I am literally taken back to a moment in time.  My writing will go from past tense to present tense without me even realizing it.  Have I mentioned that I have an awesome editor that works like a dog to turn my ramblings into a masterpiece?  I am sure you can tell because I don't bog her down with blog posts.  This is Steph Unfiltered...Unedited.

Anyway...today I had an entire day while the kids were at school that I could devote to writing.  It was my day off from teaching, no volunteering at the kids' school, no groceries that needed to be bought (thank you very much Eric!)  The house needed to be cleaned, but we have learned to live in filth already anyway.  I had a whole day to focus on finishing up my 7th Chapter of "Full Heart Empty Womb."  Hear the angels sing Hallelujah!  Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

I spent the majority of the day taken back to the hell that was my life last year.  Stress, surgeries, failed cycles, failed fertility treatments all while trying to be a good wife to Eric and a good mother to the three children that I did have.  (What??  You are doing fertility treatments and you have three kids??  Are you crazy????  It's a long story.  Read the book ;)  I finally stopped writing about an hour before I had to go to pick up the kids from school.  I had to have time to pull myself together so I didn't roll up to the school looking all Night of the Living Dead.

When I got the kids home, I pulled up a slide show my sweet friend, Ginger, made for me.  She took family pictures for us on Saturday night.  We were long over due.  The only professional family picture we had was before Matthew was born.  Ethan and Ella weren't even walking yet.  I was going to get Ginger to take family pictures a couple of years ago but decided to wait.   I just knew that 2013 promised a new baby (or 2!) for us.  I didn't want to have a family picture instantly outdated again.

I sat and watched the pictures of my sweet family scroll on my laptop with "Hallelujah" by Johnnyswim playing in the background.  What were once sad tears from a couple of hours before turned to happy grateful tears.  I looked at Ethan's beautiful smile that literally lights up his entire face.  I looked at Ella's beautiful eyes that go straight to my soul.  I melted at Matthew's sweet dimples and saw his little personality shine through.  Then I saw the pictures of Eric and I and felt the love between us.  She even took a couple of head shots of me for the Author's page and a possible shot for my book cover.  Tears openly fell down my cheeks as I looked at the pictures with them.  We had a nice chat about happy tears after that!









The tears transformation was kind of like quick snapshot of the healing that has taken place in my over the last year.  I never lost sight of the blessings that God had given us even during the hard times last year.  Even on the hardest of days, I could hold and snuggle one of my sweet babies and thank God.  But it took me a whole year to understand and accept that although there are blessings there is also pain in life.  Everyone goes through hard times and everything won't go the way we hope, plan or even pray for.  We are imperfect people in an imperfect world.  I can choose to stay in the sadness of last year and be bitter or I can move forward.

Through a lot of prayer I decided this Spring to write a book about the near ten year battle that my husband, Eric, and I have gone through with Infertility.  Infertility is a taboo subject for some reason. Which I find interesting because it affects 1 in 8 couples.  I understand that it is too painful for many who are going through it to talk about it openly.  Here is where I come in.  God has somewhat divinely removed my filter on the subject.  Quite Simply - I DON'T CARE.  I get the approval of my God and my man before I share anything I write and that's all I need.  There are lots of people out there who are hurting and feel alone.  Heck I was one of them this time last year.  I was hurting. I felt like no one understood the unique pain I was going through.  I felt so alone.  Once I got to a place of healing, I vowed to help women who are dealing with Infertility.  No one should feel so alone and misunderstood.

After I watched the video for the umpteenth time, I sent Ginger a text thanking her again.  She replied, "The Lord has kept you and carried you through the lowest of the lows.  Yet as the sun came out and warmed our faces at the end of our session...He shined so brightly on three of your greatest gifts!"  Hallelujah. :)

Chapter One Preview

I started working on my book "Full Heart Empty Womb" this summer.  It chronicles my journey through infertility, how I coped, and what I learned through all the trials.  I hope to be finished writing the book in the next couple of months and have it published by early 2015.  I am very excited about the latest step in my journey.  Enjoy!

Chapter 1 – Boy Meets Girl

Spring 2005

Another night with a tear streaked pillow.  My hair is matted to my face where the tears have soaked my brown hair.  I have given up even wiping them because they are flowing so fast.  Occasionally a sob will erupt from my lips. I clutch my belly.  Half a prayer and half just to myself I cry, “Why can’t I be normal?  When will it be my turn?”.

Eric lays a supportive hand on my back.  I can tell he wants to say something but is at a loss for words.  So he just rubs my back and tells me he loves me and our day will come.  This goes on for hours.  Eric’s hand stays on my back but goes limp.  My tears slow until they are just all cried out.  Eventually exhaustion wins the night’s battle and I fall into a restless sleep.

I wake up the next morning with my eyes swollen from the night before.  I shower and dab some eye cream on my tired eyes in hopes that it will help them feel just a little better.  Eric looks at me and I can tell he wants to say something but just doesn’t know what to say.  He kisses my head, rubs my back and tells me to have a good day.  He assures me that today will be better and suggests that we go on a date this weekend.

I trudge down to my office wishing I was a coffee drinker.  Surely a jolt from a cup of joe would improve my morning.  I fire up my email ready to start my day at work.  I see a string of emails from girlfriends.  Apparently I am the last to see it.  The subject line: “Guess who is expecting??”.  And I am pulled right back under.  I have never been so thankful for my home office as the sobs overtake my body again.

January 1998 – University of Tennessee

Statistics class in college.  At respectable dinner parties that is where I tell people I met my husband, Eric.   It is what I hoped to tell my someday, maybe, hopefully, pretty please God, future children.  That isn’t a total lie.  We were in statistics class together but our first meeting was quite different.

Football season was over so the normal barrage of parties had died down.  After a month at home with our families for Christmas and an intense start of the Spring semester, my girlfriends and I were excited for a Saturday night of band parties on fraternity row.  It was one of those nights that you look back on ten years later and think, “That is what college was all about.”.

Always the planner, I was talking to my girlfriends and trying to figure out which houses we wanted to go to and the order in which we would hit them.  That was when Marguerite spoke up about making sure we hit the KA house before the night was over.  Word on the street was that late at night they would strip and go tarp sliding in the back yard.  Hello?  How could we pass that up?   Tarp sliding sounded like so much fun.  Add into that some naked co-eds?  Slam dunk for the evening!  There also happened to be a cute KA that I often saw around campus.

Our first and only stop that night would be where I met my future husband.  We got our off-brand red cups and went straight for the keg.  There was a great 80s cover band playing so we were in heaven.

And then there he was.  KA t-shirt guy.  Tall, dark, and handsome.  I tried to will him to look at me.  Please, please look at me.  Another song came on and I got the sense that someone who smelled very good was right behind me.  KA t-shirt guy?  Nope. He was still across the way completely oblivious of Steph.  My friends nodded in another direction, gave me an encouraging look and mouthed, “He’s cute!”.

I turned around and looked up into the most beautiful pair of green eyes I have ever seen.  He smiled and I was gone.  An adorable dimple appeared and his smile went straight up to his eyes.  I never understood how eyes could smile until I saw him.  Those eyes went from beautiful to amazing.

The rest of the night was a blur. I quickly fell head over heels for this guy named Eric. I learned Eric was from the same hometown as my friend, Sherrell, and also happened to be in my Statistics class.

Until now, Statistics class had been a means to an end.  But now…now I was absolutely giddy about going to Statistics class. 10:10 couldn’t get here quickly enough.  I actually showered and got dressed for class!  No ball cap.  No Nike pants and sweatshirt.  I was dressed to impress.

We dated until I graduated from the University of Tennessee a year before him.  We dated long distance for two years while he pursued his Masters in Accounting.  I moved to Louisville, Kentucky were I got a job in sales with General Electric. 

It was tough having a long distance relationship.  Especially since he, like most males, isn’t the best communicator. Back then it wasn’t as easy to communicate as it is now.  He didn’t have a cell phone.  There was no texting.  I had an email through work but he didn’t email that much.  Don’t even get me started on the old fashioned letters that I hinted for but never got!  We were pretty much left with the telephone that he shared with four other guys in the house in which he lived.  But we knew we were meant to be together and God watched over our relationship.

The Greers, Established 2002

In August of 2002 we got married and settled in Nashville, Tennessee.  I didn’t think I could be any happier.  We had our whole life ahead of us.  We both had a good start to our careers.  We were happy and madly in love. We spent every weekend trying to make our house a home.  And if we weren’t at a football game, we were at a wedding.  We were at the age that all of our friends were getting married.  And since we lived in the heart of the Southeastern Conference, one didn’t get married on a game weekend!  We went on dates and fun trips when we could afford it.  It truly was the honeymoon period.

My maternal side emerged after only a few months and I begged to get a puppy.  After little persuasion, I convinced Eric to let us get Majors (named after famed UT football coach, Johnny Majors).  He was my baby. 

As I mentioned before, I am a planner. When I first started with GE, I went into a Franklin Covey store and spent my paycheck on a beautiful planner.  A planner that could not only help me plan my day in A, B, and C order, but I could plan six months ahead - even two years ahead!  It served me well in my career.  I planned meetings.  I planned contests for my sales team.  I planned trainings.  I made plans about plans.  I always had a plan and that kept me sane in a stressful, high demand workplace.

I also had a plan for the Greers.  Get married.  Enjoy being newlyweds for two years.  Have our first child.  Wait another couple of years and have our second.  If we have two kids that are the same gender, then try for a third in another two years.  It would be that simple, right?  For some, maybe so.

It took a little more convincing than I anticipated to get Eric on my plan’s timeline.  But after much campaigning, I got him on my timetable.  I couldn’t help it.  I was so ready to become a mother.  All my life I have loved kids.  I made all my money in high school babysitting the kids in my neighborhood.  I never had a lot of clarity on what my career would be but I always knew I would be a mother.  And I was ready now.

One of my good friends, Kristin, was a great resource to me.  She had already had her first child.  She was a nurse and she loved to help people. I wanted to know everything I needed to know about how to get pregnant and she was ready and willing to help.

I learned about tracking my temperatures to figure out when I was ovulating.  I learned what ovulation is and why it is so important.  She told me when we should and shouldn’t try.  She even shared with me some old wives’ tales like how long I need to stay lying down so the sperm could do their job. We were going to hit the ground running.  I was so excited.  I just knew that we were going to start trying and instantly get pregnant. 

It was exciting at first. When I told Eric we had to have sex every other day, he wondered why we hadn’t started trying sooner!  I lingered in the baby aisle at Target.   Need this. Need this. Must have this!!  Oh I can’t wait to register! I passed through the maternity section and imagined my growing belly in the different outfits.  I calculated due dates.  I imagined clever ways to announce my pregnancy.  I even picked up the book, “What to Expect When You are Expecting.”  Can’t be too prepared!

Our first attempt to conceive coincided with a trip to New York City for Thanksgiving.  I didn’t even have a glass of wine because I was SURE that I was pregnant.  Granted, the sperm hadn’t even had a chance to fertilize the egg, but I just KNEW I was pregnant and wasn’t going to take a chance.

Diagnosis:  Infertile

That is the way it was for a couple of months.  Then my obsessive nature took over.  I started not only checking my basal body temperatures each morning but I put the results in an Excel spreadsheet and even made a graph!  As silly as it was it gave me the first indication that I was INFERTILE.  As I looked at my temperatures it became clear that I wasn’t ovulating until very late.  I didn’t ovulate until day 28 and my cycle was only 34 days long.

Being a take charge kind of gal, I made an appointment with my OBGYN.  I went in armed with my graphs so we could figure out what to do. I went through a battery of blood tests to figure out what was going on with me. I will always be grateful to my doctor for listening to me.  Traditionally you have to try unsuccessfully to conceive for 12 months (a full year!) before you are given a workup and treatment for infertility.  We had only been trying to get pregnant for a few months. But it was quite clear that my body wasn’t doing what it needed to do for us to get pregnant. 

I was so frustrated.  Something was wrong with me.  Why can’t my body do what it is supposed to do?  I mean, I am a woman, right?  Had I done something to cause this? Was I just getting what I deserved?  I did have a little wild phase in college.  Why couldn’t I just be normal?  Everyone was getting pregnant around me!  No problem at all.  They just went off the pill and poof!  They were pregnant.  And then there were those who weren’t even trying that were getting pregnant too!  I felt like a failure.  And it didn’t seem to bother Eric that much and that made me mad.  He didn’t understand why I was so upset.

The blood tests confirmed everything that my temperatures indicated.  I needed help to get me to ovulate on time.  According to my doctor, I needed to take Clomid to help me ovulate more regularly.  I also needed to take progesterone after I ovulated.  I had what is called a Luteal Phase Defect which means that the time between ovulation and the start of my next cycle isn’t long enough. My uterine lining would shed before an embryo even had enough time to implant.  The progesterone would prolong the luteal phase (keeping my uterine lining intact) so that if I got pregnant the embryo would have enough time to implant.

It felt good to have a plan. My OBGYN said she would let me cycle like this for a few months but after that she would refer me to a reproductive endocrinologist (RE) for further evaluation.  That was fine by me because I was going to get pregnant the first month.  If not the first, then certainly the second!  She also wanted Eric to go to an urologist to be evaluated as well.  This proved to be a vital step in our diagnosis.

So that brings us back to me sitting in my office chair after getting another pregnancy announcement email.  Bawling my eyes out and hugging Majors, my fur baby, for dear life.  I went from a life that was living wedding shower to wedding  ceremony of all my friends to a life of weekly pregnancy announcements and baby showers.  That is where we were in life.  A time when even a simple question like “Guess what?” got an excited “You’re pregnant!!!!” in return.  No…I just found a good pair of jeans.  While all of my other friends in their mid to late 20s were deciding to just “go off birth control and see what happens”, I was taking drugs just to give me a prayer of conceiving. 

Little did I know that this would be a nearly ten year journey for us.  It would be a journey that would bring me a lot of tears but even more strength.  A journey that against all odds brought me closer to my husband and taught me that I had to trust and lean on God.  Through much of the journey I felt like I was all alone.  Unless you have been through infertility you just cannot understand how isolated it makes you feel.  I have many reasons for writing this book.  The first and foremost one is this:  YOU ARE NOT ALONE.  Please join me on my journey.  If you are infertile I think you will be able to identify with some of it.  Hopefully that will help you to know that you aren’t the only one who feels this way.  If you happen to have a loved one who is struggling to conceive, perhaps this will give you a small glimpse into the trials and agony of infertility.

Happy End of Swimsuit Season!!!

Labor Day weekend is my favorite long weekend of the year.  I am always ready for a little break from the craziness of back to school.  Eric is always ready to head to Knoxville for the first University of Tennessee football game.  I also love it because it is my official kick off to decorating my house for Fall.  I have so many fun Fall decorations that I like to get them out early so I can enjoy them.  (I do the same with my Christmas decorations and get them out at Thanksgiving!)

But my favorite thing about Labor Day weekend is that it is the closing of swimsuit season.  Yesterday at the game I polished off a little bit of everything at our tailgate. I even finished Matthew’s touchdown dog after he took one bite and declared he was done.  I will do it all over again next weekend and the following and every other weekend hopefully through the SEC championship.  I can do this all guilt free because there is ZERO chance that Steph is going to see a swimsuit until next May.  Holla!!!  As long as I can still zip my jeans on Monday, I am golden.

Honestly how many women can say that they just love the way that they look in a swimsuit??  If you can seriously, awesome for you.  Over the last 10 years, my body has literally been through hell and back.  Years of fertility treatments, shots, surgeries and being restricted from exercise are not kind to your body.  When I did finally get pregnant with twins, I was in the hospital on bed rest for 11 weeks.  That is 77 long days of lying down.  The only time I was allowed to get out of bed was to go to the bathroom and to take a shower…and that was only if I was not having too many contractions that day.

My family and friends all felt sorry for me so they always came bearing edible gifts so that I would be spared one hospital meal.  I ate every single bit with a smile.  I was eating for three, right?   And some days, Arby curly fries were the highlight of my very boring day.

I remember lying in my bed at Women’s Centennial hearing the squeak, squeak, squeak of the scale making its way down the hall closer to my room.  Each week they would come around and weigh us on the high-risk maternity floor.  Week after week, I would lie in my bed and cry to see what that number had crept up to this week. 

Before I got pregnant, I was a petite girl who weighed 110 pounds.  I gained over 60 pounds during my pregnancy with Ethan and Ella.  I don’t say that out of vanity.  I say that to mean that is a lot of weight on a small frame!  I was beyond uncomfortable.  I hurt all over and there was nothing that I could do about it.  There were two positions that I could lie in and after 5 minutes, I got uncomfortable.

One day late in my pregnancy, the lady that cleaned my room came in to mop.  I had been crying a little bit and was embarrassed.  There was no such thing as privacy when you lived in a hospital.  I quickly wiped my tears so that she wouldn’t feel uncomfortable.  I painted on my happy face ready to shoot the breeze as she mopped away. 

I leaned over to grab my water off the table.  She said “Shooey Girl!  I didn’t realize you had those!!”  I asked her what she was talking about and she said “All those stretch marks on your hips!”  At that point I wasn’t concerned with making her uncomfortable and I just let the tears roll. 

So fast forward several years, and another pregnancy later, then you can see that swimsuit season is not my friend.  The last several years I have found a nice “slimming” tankini that hides most of my stretch marks and wobbly bits.  Since I had Matthew almost six years ago, I have become very good about exercising four to five times a week.  Unfortunately, that does nothing to erase my stretch marks on my hips.

Last summer we were at the beach.  The kids were actually playing well together in the sand, so Eric and I were able to sit back and relax.  I loved to people watch and I watched all the people walking in the surf.  After a few minutes I pointed out to Eric that every single lady that passed by was wearing a bikini.  Some rocked it and some thought they did.  And some just didn’t care. …heck they were at the beach!  The only lady that was wearing a swimsuit close to mine was 30 years my senior.  I turned to Eric and said, “Next summer I will either be in a bikini or a maternity swim suit.”  (We were in the middle of fertility treatments with our frozen embryos.)

After we had our last failed Frozen Embryo Transfer and we made it through the chaos of the holidays, I got serious about reclaiming my body.  I exercised and I watched what I ate.  Then I decided I liked to eat too much, so I compromised by eating a few more salads and exercising a little more.  As we got closer to Summer I spent way too much money on two bikinis that were supposed to be just perfect for my body type.  I sat out in my backyard wearing them to get a little color.  Because who doesn’t feel better with a little color??

When I took my kids to the pool for the first time this summer it required a pretty big pep talk to myself.  I felt pretty good but I was still self-conscious.  It didn’t matter if I had lost weight and got in shape.  I still had these stretch marks on my hips.  They had faded but they may as well have been bright red in my mind.   I put off taking off my cover up as long as I could.  And dang it if a kid didn’t ask me to take them to the potty as soon as I disrobed!  Now I had to walk across the whole pool deck in a bikini to take their little bottoms to pee.

My sweet little Cassonova, Matthew, would tell me every now and again how beautiful he thought I was.  It was such a good reminder.  My babies thought I was pretty and most importantly, Eric, thought I was perfect the way I was.  That was all in the world that mattered.  If anyone was looking at me and putting down how I looked, it was because they didn’t have a high enough opinion of themselves.

I decided that I am going to be healthy.  I am going to eat healthy so that I have the energy I need to take care of my family and myself.  I am going to eat a few more salads, so that I can devour half a pizza with Eric every Friday night.  I am not going to cut out all the fun stuff because life is too short to not have Arby’s curly fries.

I decided that I am going to exercise so I can be healthy.  I am not going to kill myself for hours at the gym.  That isn’t for me.  I will exercise a reasonable amount of time and then do the other 80 things on my to do list so I can have plenty of time to spend with my family.  I may not have a six-pack, but I am strong.  Last night I carried Matthew from the top of Neyland Stadium down to the bottom of the parking garage.  I held 45 pounds of dead weight, sweetness through crowds and down steep ramps.  I didn’t break a sweat or miss a beat until I had him buckled in ready to go back to the hotel.

I finally, at 37 years old, got to a very comfortable place in my life and it took a very uncomfortable piece of clothing to get there.  I will never be in the same place that I was 10 years ago.  Thank God for that.  Today I am stronger mentally, spiritually and physically.  And I will never be a size 0 again.  I will gladly leave that size to the teenagers of the world.  I am a gladiator Mama with the stretch marks to prove it.  Holla!!