The. First. Post! Wow, it feels good to be back to blogging again! A lot of you may not have known but I was blogging about my infertility journey at If Gravity Happens – I stopped shortly after finding out about my endometriosis, mainly because my heart started changing then as well. When I read posts that I wrote on that blog I am overcome with sadness. Post after post I searched for hope, answers, reasons to explain the whys; it’s so obvious now. I am also overcome with an incredible sense of straight up awe. I cannot believe how far I’ve come. Where my heart was back then versus where it is now is completely crazy to look back on and see the growth and strides that I’ve made. The strength that I didn’t think I had had been there all along because I kept going. We kept going. And now it all makes sense.
It also made sense to me to start a whole new blog for this journey we are currently on. If you followed along at If Gravity Happens, welcome again and thank you for continuing on! If you are new, thank you for all of your support throughout this crazy journey of life! I honestly can’t say enough how blessed we are for the people God put in our lives; every one having a purpose and having made a difference to me.
I think I’ll start by summarizing this crazy year thus far! In March, I was diagnosed with endometriosis through my laparoscopic surgery with my new doctor. After about a month after surgery, I started feeling normal again! Summer was starting and David and I stood as witnesses to our great friends as they exchanged their wedding vows.
About a week before their wedding, I took our almost 9 year old Maltese dog, Gizmo, for a walk. It was actually the morning of our first IUI after my surgery. Gizmo started acting different on our walk, not quite keeping up – stopping completely in his tracks a few times, refusing to move. I picked him up and he acted really strange. I carried him home and he wouldn’t go up the stairs. Once I carried him up, he hid under our bed until I had to leave for my appointment.
David came home and spent a few hours with him and he seemed back to normal again. Over the next few days he was acting off but then he’d be his playful self again. We kept an eye on him but he wasn’t showing any physical signs of something being wrong and for a majority of the time, he was 100% normal.
A few days later, Gizmo and I were snuggling in bed on a Saturday morning as we always did and he seemed to want to snuggle more than ever! I stayed in bed a few minutes longer to soak it up and then got up and ready for the day as he remained in bed where the sun beamed through the window warming the spot of the bed he was laying on. I was getting ready to go to watch my nephew’s swim lessons when I went to let Gizmo outside to go to the bathroom. He showed no interest in moving from his comfy spot so I picked him up to carry him to the door…when I set him down his legs gave out completely underneath him.
I’m in tears just typing this part; the memory is SO vivid. I rushed him to the nearest vet and within an hour he had left us on this earth to be in Heaven.
It happened so fast, we needed him. Our world crashed down around us. And we’ll never know why. Gizmo was sick and he didn’t want us to know that one’s for sure.
One of my best memories from that week is the night before Gizmo passed. We had plans with friends to do dinner but something tugged at us to spend the night with Gizmo. We asked our friends if they would mind taking their dog with us down to a walking trail and then grab some ice cream afterwards. Gizmo loved it. He LOVED his walks and loved that night, his last night, with us. We were so lucky that we got to spend that time with him as it gave us a lot of closure over the hours, days, weeks, months that followed. The next few months were hard. The silence in our house made us never want to be there and we spent a lot of time at family and friends’ houses or driving around to avoid the emptiness at home.
We have so much love in our hearts to share and knew that the silence would keep haunting us – David searched online for puppies as we grieved. In the meantime, we had 3 failed cycles of infertility treatments, which was our final chance with the doctors. We were ready for hope again; for the pieces of our hearts to be mended back together. As we started to explore the idea of adoption, our hearts found Bentley.
David found a breeder in Minnesota with a litter of Maltese puppies that completely melted us. By the end of summer, our new fur baby came home with us and turned our world upside down! His full-of-life and energetic, playful personality has us smiling and laughing again! He’s also testing our ability to handle a newborn.
After seeing the love we have for Bentley after the loss of Gizmo, our hearts opened up wide towards adoption. We have so much more love to give; God’s perfect plan will always overcome….
More details about our adoption journey coming soon!
nesting heart | motherhood + adoption blog 