About my Family

Thanks to my friend Shannon I am starting a blog. I am not sure how or what to do so here goes. This is the beginning to the story of our family.
Mike and I began dating in January of 1995. He is 10 years older than I am and had been married before, he also had two daughters from that marriage. Kelli was 5 and Taylor was 3. Mike and I quickly became close and a I fell in love with him and his daughters. We joined New Hope Friends in 1996. We were married on August 17, 1997 at New Hope Friends. A year after we were married we wanted to have an addition to the family. That sounds easy enough right, well after a while of trying on our own we needed help. We started going to a fertility clinic at UNC Chapel Hill Womens' Hospital. We tried treatments for a few months but then I decided I was happy with the family we had so we stopped the treatments. My decision was also because there was a lot happening and it was too much to handle. My Grandpa was sick, he had cancer. We lost our home in the flood that came after Floyd, which was both a disaster and a blessing. We were blessed to have Friends Disaster Relief help build our house. And our Church family helped us so much. So for a while I had convinced myself that I was content with raising our girls. Because that is how I think of Kelli and Taylor and I dare anyone to try to say they are not my daughters. They just have a 2 moms. Well, in 2001 I realized that I wanted to have a baby, I could not fight that feeling any longer. We prayed and started that on a long journey to have a baby again. Some of you may not understand what I mean by that, but hopefully I we be able to explain it to you so you can grasp how difficult the journey was. I began taking the fertility medicines again. We should have owned stock in the pregnancy test and ovulation test strip company because was used lots of each. It has been several year so the details are not clear but this is how a typical cycle would go. I would start one medicine and 8-10 days later I would test daily to see if I was ovulating if it was positive I would go the next day to UNC I would have an ultrasound to verify I was ovulating and then I would start the second medicine to help the implantation process. I would have myself excited each month thinking that I felt pregnant this time so I would start 9-10 days after ovulating taking pregnancy test until I would start my period. I would be cry and cry until I could not cry anymore. Then I would start the 1st medicine again and that would continue for months. So the emotional roller coaster was horrible not to mention the hormones that I was putting into my body just added to the emotional nightmare. Then on April 17, 2002 I had a positive pregnancy test. We were so excited. That night I told everyone in our Sunday School class (the girls used to get together to play cards once a month). I had started a journal for the baby,(that I just knew was a girl) telling her how much we had waited for her. I remember that I went to The Christian Soldier and picked out a pink journal with the words "This is the day God has made let's be glad and rejoice in it" on the cover. I saved all five pregnancy test that I had taken. I wrote to "her" everyday. I went to the doctor and everything was great until May 3, 2002 when I got the call that may test results were in and I was having a miscarriage. I remember going to my knees and crying. It was the worst call I had ever gotten. I was so upset. That weekend our youth group at church was going to Camp Don Lee for a retreat. We still went but I was not really there. I just remember crying all day everyday of the trip. When we got home I went to doctors appointment and was scheduled for a hysterscope for May 30, 2002. During the surgery they removed two containers of polyps from my uterine wall which the doctors said was causing the embryo not to implant. The following week we were on a family vacation. Mike's entire family was there, Milba and her family had one half of the duplex and we had the other there were nearly 30 people. It was a very nice vacation. Michelle Mike's sister came to me some time that summer and let me know that they were planning to have another child. I think is was very sweet of her to be so concerned about my feelings since she didn't have to let me know anything. But of course her plan worked perfectly. She planned to stop taking the pill and be pregnant by August/September so the baby would be born in May so she and Cierra (her daughter) would both be out for the summer. In August we were at Ham's for Brian's (Mike's brother Jerry's son) birthday when Cierra came running in making the announcement that they were having a baby. I am not proud of my reaction. I went to the bathroom and cried uncontrollably. It was not because I was not happy for them because I was it was just that we were having such a hard time. I decided that after the current cycle we would have to take a break I just could not handle to emotional strain. Mike's grandmother Goldie was sick, well she was dying. Betty flew out to spend time with her and during that time she told Betty that she had a vision of her holding 2 baby boys. So everyone was talking about Michelle having twins since she just found out she was pregnant. Well on September 7,(Betty's birthday) 2002 Goldie passed away. How terrible for you to lose her mother on her birthday. Mike flew out to be with his mom for the funeral. While he was gone I had a dream that I was pregnant, so the morning September 13, 2002 I took a test and you guessed it, it was positive. I called Michelle because she worked at our doctor's office. I went in to have the test confirmed and yes, I was pregnant. It was the best news ever. I called Mike we were both so happy. I told my Mom and sisters our whole family. We were scared to tell everyone because of the miscarriage. I remember going for my 7 week ultrasound and leaving to go home and Dr. Rothling called me, his voice is so calm I just knew he was calling to give me some bad news but he was calling to say that everything looked fine that the embryo was implanted and that it looked healthy. Brett Michael Forbis was born May 20, 2003 at 2:43am.

Well, I pretty much a rambled on there, but it was my 1st post so not to bad.