FROM THE START...

Twelve years ago on the 5th of this month, Bart proposed to me for the second time (this time with an engagement ring), and I said yes for the second time (more enthusiastically with the ring!).  We didn't know each other very well, it was a short courtship over mail and phone since he was in Basic Training most of the time and an even shorter engagement... we were married just two and a half weeks later! 
We knew we wouldn't try to start a family for a few years, since our first few years of marriage would have to count for our "dating" time.   We needed those few years too, I'm not going to lie when I say it was the hardest couple of years of my life (he would agree!).  But after those initial years, we were finally warmed up to the idea of being married to each other for eternity and we really did like each other enough to talk about starting a family.  Bart was going to school full time and working part time, while I worked full time, sometimes two jobs.  We knew it would be a sacrifice to have me not work as much if we had a baby, but we also had faith that if/when we were to get pregnant we would be okay.  So we went off birth control thinking we wouldn't TRY to get pregnant but if we did it was meant to be.  We thought we were pretty crafty using "other natural" methods of birth control, but that was before we knew we couldn't get pregnant... and after I had informed a few of my newlywed friends that these "other" methods work like a charm & there was no reason for them to mess with their hormones to get on birth control.  They both have beautiful children thanks to us!
So after a few years of being so crafty we decided we could really start making an effort.  After all we were finally falling madly in love and actually in a happy place in our lives.  Bart graduated with his BA through the ROTC program and was now an officer.  And we were so excited to move to our first duty station far away from home!  After a couple years of enjoying "trying" to make babies we decided maybe there was something not quite right.  Bart was getting ready to deploy in the next nine months so we were on a mission to find the problem and fix it before he left.  Doctors couldn't really explain much, other than maybe I had a little endometriosis.  They weren't in a hurry to fix anything until I went in after a weekend of excruciating pain.  If any of you have been through a ruptured cyst, you know what kind of pain I'm talking about.  So maybe there was cause to run more test and go in surgically to remove the endometriosis.  Most of the tests ran normal, but the endoscopic surgery was still on the calendar (a week after Bart deploys).  I went along with the plan, hoping that by the time he came home on leave we would be fixed and pregnant and having babies when he got home.
I have to add this part of the surgery, because it holds a very dear place in my heart...
I have a very good friend, Jodi, who's husband also deployed about the same time.  I think for the most part we have very opposite personalities, but I have always had a feeling about her- that she was placed in my life for reasons I wouldn't understand until I could look back and say "Oh, yeah.  The Lord knew what he was doing putting her in my life".  Jodi is an Oak!  Very few things make her emotional, and very rarely does she need any help.  If she has to ask for help with anything it's like physically ripping a limb off her!  She is always quick to take on projects or responsibility without hesitation.  She's also very quick to help someone in need.  Well, she let me come stay with her after our husbands left since I was packed up and ready to go back home to my family for a few months while Bart was gone.  But I needed to have this surgery and I would need about a month to recover and be checked before I could move.  Jodi had a two and three year old at the time.  She was very busy with the the boys, running a household & without a husband there to help her, she didn't need to have one more person on her list to take care of.  I was very grateful!  Day of surgery she asked a friend to watch the boys so she could take me to the hospital and do some shopping before she had to come back to pick me up.  Doctor said it's a standard procedure and I would be out in three hours or less.  Jodi didn't feel like she could leave, so she stayed.  Six hours later and only one trip to Costco to get me some juice, she was so relieved when the doc told her they were able to get all the endometrioma out, but one of the worst cases she had seen.  I will never forget this- the first thing I saw and heard coming out of anesthesia was Jodi's face popping around the curtain, bright and smiling and saying to me "you get to have babies!!".  It was the best thing I needed to hear at that time.  She was such a blessing, and I needed her so much right then!
Well, seven months later Bart came home and left again.  Not pregnant.  Came home after a fifteen month deployment (total), and hopes were high to get pregnant.  Nothing after a few months.  My doctor thought maybe I needed a little "jump start", so I went on ClomidClomid, but along with infertilization or IUI.  This was when I was convinced that the medical facilities needed to create a group therapy for the husbands who had to live with wives on Clomid.  That drug is straight from the devil!!  I know because I'm pretty sure I became the devil after a few months of being on it!  Anyway- May 13th, Mother's Day, we did our last round of IUI.  I was emotionally exhausted and physically thrashed from the hormone peaks.  Again, we were so hopeful that maybe the date (being Mother's Day) would be our sign...it didn't work.  We were crushed.  We were angry.  We were drained.  That was also the day we got to pick out our puppy we had been waiting for, for seven weeks- since he was born. 

Major.  He was such an ANGEL in our home! 

* Most people assumed we named him Major because Bart is in the military, but we were actually listening a lot to Truman G. Madsen's discourses on the Prophet Joseph Smith.  Good ole Joe Smith named his dog Major and I loved it.  So that is where we got the name Major. *

He was such a love to us.  He was potty trained in a week (thanks to my client who was a dog musher), and he was learning how to sit, roll over, and give five in less than a month.  He became our baby, our therapy, and the best thing that could have happen to us at that time in our lives.

For the next year we weren't able to do much with doctors and baby making.  We moved across the country twice and we were going through a lot emotionally.  During that year we went through a lot of blame and anger with the Lord, doctors, ourselves.  We didn't really know who or where to go for advice or answers.  We didn't know if adoption would be the next step.  We didn't know if we wanted to go through any more emotional distress.  So we prayed... harder.  We asked our friends and family to help us pray to know what we needed to do next.  We prayed until we got an answer.

... to be continued