Manual Not Included Ep.1

Becoming a parent is often a journey filled with unexpected twists and turns, and for many, it can be a complex path. In this post, I want to share my personal experience navigating the challenges of parenthood, particularly focusing on our son who is a special needs kid, I call him an “in-between.” To get there we have to start our journey from the beginning and the daunting word…infertiilty. If you’ve ever faced obstacles in starting a family, this story might resonate with you and offer a glimmer of hope.

Sharing personal stories can provide hope to others facing similar challenges. Support and understanding are crucial for families with special needs children. You are not alone out there.

Want to hear more about our journey? Subscribe to our podcast for more insights and stories about parenting and family life.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Personal Motivation

00:30 Lynnette’s Family and Personal Background

01:27 Fertility Challenges and Medical Insights

03:14 The IVF Journey: Procedures and Emotions

05:10 Vancouver Trip and Egg Retrieval

06:36 Embryo Transfer and Waiting Game

06:56 The Birth of Their Daughter

10:34 Second IVF Attempt and Challenges

12:25 Dealing with Disappointments and Emotional Impact

12:53 Vancouver Trip and Unexpected Fire Alarm

14:40 Deciding to Stop Trying and Embrace Family

15:38 Considering Adoption and Family Expansion

16:36 Closing Remarks and Call to Action

keywords

fertility, IVF, adoption, family, personal story, hope, parenting, special needs, emotional journey

key  topics

Fertility struggles and IVF process

Emotional impact of infertility and pregnancy loss

Adoption as an alternative path to parenthood

Supporting children with special needs

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Transcript

0:00

Hey, this is Brian again. And I'd like to ask you to do a favor. We can't do this work without people like you. So if you can, please. Like, share, subscribe, tell your friends about bring back the porch. Life just doesn't work that way sometimes. As lots of us know. Sometimes it throws you curveballs. It throws you bumps in the road. But you can either. But it crush you and defeat you. You can put your head down and push through this episode to bring back the porch. Brought to you by Bernie Leahy, River Street Realty. Let's get you home. So when I first came on to Bring Back the Porch podcast, they said, Curtis, you can go ahead and do a podcast about whatever you like. So I thought about it, and I'm a pretty nerdy guy. And I thought to myself, hey, you know what? I could do some boat movies, you know, that kind of thing. Entertainment news. And which is fine. I have a vast knowledge of nothing nobody deems important. But then I thought, well, I want to try to do something that might actually reach even a handful of people, help them out in any kind of way. So I wanted to talk about, my son and my family. And the reason why I say my son is because he's deemed, quote, a special needs kid because of a learning disability that he has. And when I see that, it's kind of I call him an in-between child. He's not quite so far as special needs that he's in a specialized classroom with, you know, kids that are autistic, non-verbal, that type of thing. But he also doesn't quite fit the regular classroom environment. That's why I call him. And in between, because lots of these kids kind of slip through the cracks without the right supports. So when dealing with this for the past few years, my wife and I and my son at this point have found that talking about it and getting information out there, what we've been through, it seems to be a little more helpful. There's nothing worse than being in a stressful situation where you feel lost, and even worse when you feel alone. So finding somebody else who is going through the exact same thing just fills you up with that little bit of hope and push that you might need to get just through that next bump in your life, something that will make you feel okay. You can do this. You're not the only one out there. So that's the point of this podcast, is maybe I can reach the select few who might need that little bit of push, the little bit of hope in their lives. So the story of my son actually goes way, way, way, way back to, right after I got married, which is a long time ago. My wife and I wanted to start a family, and we were having problems. And the doctor said to even see a fertility doctor, a specialist. You have to be trying for at least a year with negative results. So. Okay, we did that. Negative results, not pregnant. So we get to see a fertility doctor and they get you through the tests and everything like that. And the way he explained it to us was my wife has endometriosis, which kind of makes it. Well, it doesn't kind of make it. It does make it much more difficult for her to get pregnant. So he rated her maybe a C minus. And apparently my swimmers aren't so speedy, so I got about a B minus, which by themselves not too bad. It's manageable. People might even get lucky and get pregnant in those circumstances. But he said, together we make an F great. The two together make an F grade. So there you go. We were in trouble and we needed help. So there's a few procedures that we went through with him. And the ones the most extreme is in vitro fertilization or IVF. And that's kind of a last resort type thing. So we went through all the other ones. They didn't work. So guess what? It's IVF time, which is a little daunting. A little scary because at the time there's was no government help like there is today to pay for it. And there's a lot of meds for your wife, and there's the cost of flying to Vancouver, and you have to stay in Vancouver. And the price of the fertility clinic as well. But we did it. We wanted to have a family. So we're going to do this. And my poor wife has to go through these injections. They're hormone injections. They make her emotional, sad, extremely happy. On the same day. It's a roller coaster of emotion for months for her just to build up the right hormones to get this procedure done. So the time comes when you fly to Vancouver. Like I said, you have to stay for a week. So when you go to the, fertility clinic, they have to retract the eggs that she has been harvesting over the past few months. So they have to get as many, as many of good quality eggs as they can. And I have my sample. And the next day you come in, they're like, oh, we got so-and-so. So many eggs, and we'll try to use those. So then you wait the I think there's an incubation period of four days or something like that. That's why you have to stay a week. So we get the eggs. They go through this crazy procedure where they can show you, fertilizing the agri in front of you. They kind of pass along this camera in this petri dish, very high security, so they know what's your your samples the whole way through, which is very good to know. So we get the eggs fertilized in a week in Vancouver. You know what? Not so bad. I gotta tell you, they got great places to eat and was nice and warm outside. Wonderful to walk around in, but I will. Side note, when you look at a map of Vancouver, something may seem walking distance, but take it from the guy who decided to wear flip flops and walk to Granville Island for four hours. Not the greatest idea, but beautiful nonetheless. So we got to spend our time in beautiful Vancouver. And then on the second or third last day we were there, he had to go back to the fertility clinic for implantation. Okay, get that done. And you got a wait. You got to stay off your feet for 24 hours. We just hang out in the hotel room, and then they send you on your way, and you wait for a call, and you just hope for the best. That's all it is. It's just a huge gamble, a very expensive gamble. But in the end, of course, it'll be more than worth it. So we wait and wait for the call. And I don't remember the day, but I remember what happened. My wife got off the phone and she ran and jumped in my arms. It worked. We couldn't believe it. It actually worked. And we got a little extra attention because, you know, it's a high risk pregnancy situation, which was very nice. We got to see doctors all the time, which is great. And the doctors were wonderful and lovely. And the pregnancy goes full term. My daughter was born a few weeks early and the day she was born was interesting. None the less, I believe my wife woke me up at four in the morning telling me that her water broke and my smart response was, all right, let's go back to bed. Forgetting that you have to go to the hospital to see where you're at. So we do that, and I, we come home and they tell you, well, don't come back till the contractions are about four minutes apart, which they clearly weren't at this time. But let me tell you, around 6 or 7 at night, they were getting pretty close and fast and furious nonetheless. So it was time to go. And to this day, my wife still questions my judgment in driving because apparently I took the furthest way possible to get to the hospital. But we all know it's Medicine Hat. It wasn't that bad, but at the time, I believe she wanted to scratch my eyes out and punch me in the face. Okay, but here we go. We're in the hospital room. She's doing her thing. No drugs, by the way. She wanted to see how far she could get. And doing a drug free what she was doing, which was insane to watch at the time. And the doctor comes in and he's checking or she's checking. Sorry. It was a female doctor at this time. And they tell you to push or like, okay, need a big push. And I'm watching the monitors and it has my wife's heart rate, and it has my unborn daughter's heart rate. And every time my wife pushed, you could see the baby's heart rate drop about 20 to 30 beats and he'd push again and it drop another 20 to 30 beats. And the doctor says, okay, that's it. There's no more pushing. This is now an emergency C-section. So my poor wife went through all that pain of pushing just to get a C-section anyway, which could have been scheduled in advance. So good for her. She is one tough lady. So we're in the operating room, and I don't know if you've ever seen a C-section before that, it's, I'm not going to see traumatizing, but it is eye opening because she can't see what's going on. They have a sheet in front of her chest, and I'm kind of holding her hand and looking at her face while they're working on her, and I can see her head, like getting shook around and like, what the heck is going on down there? And I look over and they are literally taking pieces of her inside out and putting it on her chest. And the look on her face or my face, sorry, made her question what's happening? And I said to her, because I'm an idiot, I say, I don't mean to alarm you, but some of your insides are now sitting on your outside. But she didn't care. She just wanted a healthy baby, which we got. Our daughter was born. I remember looking at the clock at exactly 1050 in the evening. She was healthy. A few years pass and we think to ourselves, you know, what? Is it time to try again? Are we ready to be a parent? Parents for the second time around. And we were we were practically pros at this point, you know, how hard was it to raise a child till two years old? Answer is it's very difficult, people. But you get through it. So it's back to Vancouver. But this time you don't have to stay a week. That part's done is just kind of go there. You take your hormones before and then it's back for implantation. So you go back to that beautiful Vancouver again. We get implanted bedrest for 24 hours, come home, get the results. It didn't work this time. Now, at this point, I believe the expectation is, well, it works the first time. Why wouldn't work the second time? And life just doesn't work that way sometimes, as lots of us know, sometimes it throws you curveballs, it throws you bumps in the road, but you can either let it crush you and defeat you, or you can put your head down and push through. And I'm not saying me and my wife were completely optimistic at this point. Of course, anything like that can just defeat you, especially my wife. She got pretty down about it because, as she told me at one point, that she wasn't sad like when she saw other people get pregnant. She was savage because she when she could see other people getting pregnant. And of course, it was a bit of jealousy, like she said. But she almost also felt bad about herself as she explains it, that it felt to her that as a woman, it was just something you're supposed to be able to do. You know, that's what women do. You people get pregnant. No problem. It's easy. Right? You don't use any type of protection and it shouldn't take very long. Might take a few tries, but it's just something you're supposed to do. And she said she felt like a failure because she couldn't do what she was supposed to be able to do. And of course, me being the loving husband I am ignored her. No, just kidding. I gave her a big hug and told her it's fine. I would never hold anything like that against her. It just is what it is. It's life. Right? So that round doesn't work. So more hormones again a few months later and we're going to try again. Go back to Vancouver and like I say, implantation 24 hour bed rest. But this time there was a little bit of a snag. And let me tell you about it, our hotel in Vancouver was about the 10th floor up or something like that. And it's late at night, like midnight, one in the morning and we hear the fire alarm go off. And I'm thinking to myself, is this the type of thing they would they would never do a fire alarm test. This is either a real fire or some mistake. But nonetheless, the first thing that runs through my mind is there's a fire in a hotel. You cannot take the elevator. That means my wife, who's supposed to be on bed rest for 24 hours now, has to walk down ten flights of stairs outside. So the whole time I don't see any smoke or anything like that. And I'm thinking to myself, we'll just take it slow. We'll go down the stairs, we'll meet outside. We do that. We're taking it easy. We're not rushing. There's no panic or anything like that. And we get the news from one of the firefighters there that there's a Christmas party or something going on, and some dummy set off like a fog machine. When the hotel specifically said nothing like that because it could set off the fire alarms, but these jackasses decide to do it anyway. And at that point I was absolutely fuming. I was so angry at the situation because in my head, I was thinking if some drunk jerk just ruined our chance and the cost of having this child like the flight and everything like that, because he decided to go against the rules, if that person would have walked by me, I swear I would have clothesline number. Deck them right in the face. But I didn't. And for the weeks leading up to it, I thought the same thing. I was like, if I swear this happens, I'll sue. I'll sue, and we get the news for our second boat. A second pregnancy negative. It didn't work again and I even phone I. I was very mad. Then I even phoned the doctor. I said, would this be situation have anything to do with it? And he assured me it didn't. So I can't blame the dummy with the fog machine I guess. But nonetheless it didn't work. We're, said at the time, and then we had to think, is this something we're willing to keep going? We have this beautiful baby daughter that we're very happy with, but maybe we're just not the people to have two kids. And after some soul searching, we agreed that, you know, we're fine. One kid, we were lucky to get her. We were extremely lucky to get her in that situation because lots of people don't get that situation. So we're fine with one child, okay? My sister in law gets pregnant. We said, take all our baby stuff, we're done. Cut to a few weeks later and I'm sitting at work and one of my coworkers gets off the phone and is talking about the situation where this family, they know who foster their foster parents, but they've also been known to adopt a few kids. And they said one of the the lady who, they adopted one of her kids is pregnant again, and they can't find a anybody to adopt the child. And this is the beginning of September, and the baby's due at the end of October. So less than two months, they can't find any. Something fell through, and they're going to have this foster baby. And I look at her and I say, interesting. And I text my wife. And this is another situation where it said, apparently this is a faux pas. You don't text this for some reason because then I couldn't respond, because where I worked at, we did live news, so I couldn't respond for at least an hour till I got home. And I text her, hey, I think I just signed us up for a private adoption. And that's where I'll leave it for the first episode. So if you want to hear more about her journey to our son, I'll have more next week. And don't forget, I know you've heard it a million times before, but please, please, I'm begging you to subscribe and like especially subscribe. The more people subscribe, the more we get to do things like this. So subscribe to bring back the porch on any where you hear your podcast, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram. We got it all and I'll talk to you next time.