Sock It To Me (Part 2)

Way back in 2006, I started treatments to have a baby. I kept relatively quiet about the whole experience, and the few people around me I did try to reach out to were not much help. Sometime at the end of July, I found my way to my computer and typed the words "infertility and 34 years old" into goo.gle. Through that search, I landed on a community thread titled, "Anyone ttc #1 and over 34 years old?" Thus began my inclusion in the ALI community.

I am so glad that I went beyond my normal MO and reached out to others. I found a wonderful community of women who supported, cheered, cried, and encouraged me while we all tried to get pregnant. They were there through the ultimate BFN my first IUI, my miscarriages, and my IVF attempts. They were they to congratulate me when I got pregnant with the boys. They were there to help calm me during my less than stellar pregnancy. I consider these women true friends, and while we no longer "talk" nearly every day, we still keep in touch through email and blogs. You ladies know who you are. You are true treasures.

When I started my IVF cycles, I continued with my over 34 thread and added a second thread named "Nov/Dec IVFs" (original name, huh?) and found IVFConnections. I lived on these sites. I ate, slept, breathed everything I could about IVF. Again I was accepted wholeheartedly. There I met even more wonderful women. Women who could answer any question I could possibly imagine, not because they were doctors, but because they had lived what I was going through. I knew this community was valuable beyond measure to me and others who struggled with ttc--I was hooked.

I'm not exactly sure what the first blog I stumbled onto was called, or how I even found it, but I do remember thinking that it was something I'd like to try. So, at the start of my third IVF, (April 15, 2007, to be exact) I decided that I would try to document the experience on the off chance I actually was able to get and stay pregnant. (This was my first post.)

I tell you all of this because part of the assignment of this project was to tell about the support this community gave and is giving me. It is hard for me to explain how important you all are to me without explaining how I got here. While I had always been amazed at how the ALI community had embraced me from the start, I didn't truly understand power of the support I'd receive, and I am struggling to put my exact feelings into a mere post.

Because what I feel about how you all have helped me over these years is bigger than what I can express.

How can you tell a group of people how much they mean to you when they've supported you through some of the hardest years you have ever experienced--the highest of highs, the fear so intense it makes you sick, and ultimately the lowest of lows? How can you tell them that without the support they so generously gave time and time again that you don't think you would have made it through and you'd probably never find a way to be as hopeful for the future as you are? How can you tell these wonderful people how good it feels to know you are truly accepted for who you are because here in this land of blogs you don't have to be careful about what you say like you do elsewhere--you don't have to always be the strong one for everyone else? How can you tell them how important they are to you and how much you feel like you know them even if you haven't ever met them in real life?

I just don't know how.

What I do know is that your support and love have helped me make it to where I am now, and for that I will forever be grateful.

So, thank you everyone for coming here each day. For reading. For commenting. For sending updates to the Lost & Found. For being you.

I am truly lucky to have found you.