Who we are...

So I decided to write our family/fertility history in a nutshell...

My name is Ashlee, I grew up in south Texas and came to DFW 15 years ago to attend UNT. I've stayed in the DFW area ever since.

My husband Roger grew up in Houston and moved to the DFW area about 5 years ago.

We were both previously married, but we didn't have kids in those marriages.

We met a few days after Valentine's Day in 2005. We met on match.com (first email on Valentine's Day) and our first date was at the Starbucks at Mockingbird Station. Coffee turned to lunch and browsing a couple of stores and I looked forward to our 2nd date right away.

A year and a day later we took a gaggle of friends to Las Vegas and got married.

Right after our 1 year anniversary we started trying to get pregnant and got pregnant with our daughter in April of 2007. We had only tried 3 months! My due date was December 26, 2007.

My pregnancy was uneventful until week 30... I was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia and put on immediate bedrest. I had weekly sonograms, daily blood pressure monitoring and 2 rounds of steroid shots to develop my daughters lungs.

Amelia Lynn Fort (Milla) was born on December 6, 2007 at 37 weeks. She was 6 pounds, 10 oz and perfect!

My blood pressure was not and I ended up needing to stay in the hospital for a few days until they could figure out medication that would help control it.

This past May we decided it was time to add on to our family. We have always known we wanted 2 children, it was just the timing we weren't sure about. We wanted our children at least 2 years apart and my doctor had declared me "very fertile" at my annual exam in February, so we got to work.

I'm a planner by nature so we didn't take this lightly. I jumped in with both feet and used the Clear Blue Easy Fertility Monitor (something I did when trying to concieve last time), temped, and all the other fun herbs and supplements that are suppose to help.

I was so surprised to see those negatives in May and June and July... by August I had just about lost hope and somehow NOW it's November!

We've officially been trying for 7 cycles.

I have watched friends who announced their pregnancies when we were starting to try in May and now have their sweet babies in their arms.

The desire to have a second child, to complete our family, to provide a sibling for sweet Milla, is almost too much for me to handle some days. I think back to when we were trying to get pregnant with Milla and how stressed out I was those 3 cycles... I can't imagine if God had given me this journey then... I don't know if I could have handled it.

Now at least I have her smile to keep me going, her busy toddler schedule to keep my mind from dwelling and her sweet spirit to keep my spirits lifted.