Intro to ICLW

This is going to be a little weird. It's International Comment Leaving Week, which is where a bunch of bloggers leave comments for each other the last week of every month. Most of the topics on these blogs involve something to do with infertility, but there are various topics. So, I signed up to get more readers and to offer a fresh perspective on the whole thing, because, let's face it, I'm pretty unique.

So, not only can my 653 Facebook "friends" read this posted as a note, but also my IRL friends and new readers finding me through ICLW. How to tell this story to all these audiences and maintain a decent level of privacy and not make people uncomfortable around me..... Let's see.

I'm a 32-year-old Jesus-loving Air Force Reservist. I've been married to my wonderful John for 4.5 years and we've been TTC (trying to conceive) for 3 of them. I don't have a dramatic story as far as that is concerned. In May 08 we both went through IF (infertility) screening and my ob/gyn indicated there was something a little off in both of us, but that we'd need more testing which our insurance doesn't cover. So we went through one round of Clomid (a popular fertility drug) with no result, and haven't felt led to do anything else medically yet. Then, in Nov 09, after a few other dr's appointments we found out that there's nothing wrong with either of us, and sometimes these things just don't happen (or they do. whatever.).

You can read more about how we feel about the waiting process here.

Meanwhile, in Dec 08, we decided to pursue foster care as a way to "give out of our need" and help other families while we waited for our own. We started the classes in Jan 09 and after procrastinating getting our paperwork turned in, our homestudy was approved Aug 09. I blogged about this here.

Bringing us all up to speed, we got our first placement on Feb 4, and you can read about the lovely Baby F and her mom here, here, and here, then she's mentioned in pretty much every other blog since.

There's alot more to me than IF and foster care, but that's probably what brought most ICLW readers over, so I'll be blogging about Baby F and the foster care process for the rest of this week. I hope to keep it interesting enough to keep you coming back.

PS: I call her Baby F online because she is not our baby and it's not my call to make to put her name with her pictures. I know some parents who refer to their own children that way and I think it's a great idea. She does have a lovely name that starts with F that means happiness or good fortune, so you can figure it out if you want!