We started our first attempt at IVF in the spring of 2006.  We went all the way up to egg retrieval, only to hear that my follicles and eggs weren’t doing their thing properly.  Cancelled cycle.  Waiting waiting waiting for a full natural cycle to swing through, then in the summer, back on that horse…or more accurately, back on the needle.

Halfway through August, hopped up on copious amounts of mood altering drugs, I decided to start a journal filled with all the things for which I was thankful.  It was burnt orange, my favorite color, and I started it with an incredibly spiritual line: “grace from the Father through Jesus, and the Holy Spirit as Helper indwelling me.”  Give me a cookie and call me Sunday school champ.  By the end of the first page, I was already getting into my actual brain, with “flip flops, carpet that doesn’t show dirt, Calder’s mobiles, non-shedding Yorkies.”  Later on, “swashbuckling butt-kicking fantasy adventure stories of super-heroicism, weird words…ceiling fans…punk…my neti snot pot…weird humor, well-developed characters with lots of quirks.”

Looking back over my long list, I see that apparently I was very thankful for my neti pot and anything weird, because I wrote about them several times.  At the end of August, the doctors took out my eggs and combined them with Alex’s sperm, and every day we’d get a call with an update about our offspring in the little tube.

It’s strange.  What happened in that tube is similar to what happens in uteruses all over the world, but we got to hear about every step.  What we wanted was a Day 5 blastocyst.  (People I was a THEATRE major so if you don’t know what a blastocyst is, you are not alone!)  Those are the strongest embryos and our chances of a pregnancy would be 50% with one of those.  Each day they’d give us the update.  We started with 20 eggs, 15 of them getting jiggy with sperm.  Wow.  Okay, yes, since we had committed that any embryos we made we’d come back for, even if it took us a decade, we were like WOW!  We’re going to have a giNORmous family!  One of the women who shared her wisdom and experience with me had told me that they ended up with 7 healthy embryos.  Seventh Heaven here we come!

But then each day, the report would come in, and there would be fewer and fewer thriving embryos.  This happens in the body naturally and most women never know that they have tiny 2-day-old pregnancies that don’t thrive.  Hearing about it with a blow-by-blow every day was weird.

Fewer.

Fewer.

Fewer.

On day 5, I woke up excited for the call to tell me READY!  Come in and get test tube LAID!  The call came.  None of our remaining little guys were ready.  In that moment, our statistics dropped to a 30% chance.  Lying in bed with Alex that night, I started praying out loud.  I sobbed to the Lord, wretched, exhausted woman.  Alex held me, didn’t say a word, and just let me cover my pillow in tears.

And when I was done, God spoke back.  Not audibly, but very, very clearly.  My child, when did this become about numbers?  This is about Me.  Do you trust me? He seared Judges 7 into me and I opened up my Bible.  Gideon.  The story of Gideon’s army.

‘The LORD said to Gideon, “You have too many men. I cannot deliver Midian into their hands, or Israel would boast against me, ‘My own strength has saved me.’”‘  Gideon started with 32,000 men.  Unbeatable.  Again and again God whittled down his army until he was left with 300.  And God won that battle His way and for His glory.  I’m getting chills again just thinking about it.

In my thankfulness journal, I wrote the following entry on September 5, 2006:

Judges 7.  Today God reminded me in a big way that He’s in control.  Not just saying it, thinking it.  Knowing it.  Humbled by it.  I thought in vitro was in His hands.  I thought I trusted Him.  I did.  But when my safety net of frozen embryos and plenty of healthy ones just waiting to be babies was ripped out from under me, I got scared.  And I realized that I shouldn’t have a net.  I didn’t know I did until it was gone.  I still had 22,000+ battle-ready soldiers with weapons to fight my Mideonites, and today God reminded me that I just need Him.  Three hundred exhausted soldiers wielding torches and trumpets.  And the God of the universe calling the shots.  Truly, “an army of One.”  I’m glad my safety net got yanked.  Rip it to shreds; throw it away.  Tomorrow I go into battle with God.  My enemies don’t stand a chance.

Not by might

Not by power

But by My Spirit, says the Lord.

I’m so grateful for a Day 6 blastocyst transfer.  That God knew I needed to remember that I didn’t trust in statistics.  I trust in Him.

And after the transfer of 2 little embryos, as I laid there still NOT being allowed to pee after they pushed and pushed on my extremely full bladder, we signed a form and halfway down the page, it said that we had 2 embryos to freeze.  A surprise.  We didn’t think we had any.  But that’s another post.

In my thankfulness journal, several pages over from my Judges 7 entry, after “chocolate brownies, good coffee,” but before “being by myself so I can fart,” I entered this: “9/18: I’M PREGNANT ahhhhh!!!!!”

God had chosen to defeat my Mideonites.

After laparoscopy and 4 IUIs failed, we took several months off to seek God separately and pray about in vitro.  At the end of our seeking time, we took a trip to Florida.  I watched as Alex built a sand castle with a stranger’s little boy, tears stinging behind my sunglasses.  Alex is such a good sand castle builder.  Lord, is he really never going to have a sand castle cohort of his own? We talked.  We both felt led to pursue IVF.

It was a tough decision.  We prayed a lot.  I talked with reproductive endocrinologists, read book after book written from a Christian perspective about reproductive technology.  I worked to get an understanding of the science to the best of my ability as well as a handle on my own faith and what gelled with my understanding of the Bible.

Our amazing couples’ small group voluntarily fasted and prayed with us.  I spoke with several Christian women who had been through the process.  Alex and I talked through what we would and wouldn’t do.  And then we went for it.

I experienced both judgment from people I didn’t expect to judge me and complete support from people I did expect to judge me.  Many people think you’re playing God.  I don’t think that’s possible.  The thing that I love and in which I take great comfort is that truly only God can create life.  Doctors can stick sperm inside an egg, but only God can make it grow.  Doctors can stick an embryo in uterine lining, but only God can make it attach.  That gives me comfort.

So.  We made the best decision that we could make with what we had.  And I don’t know what God would have said along the way, but I felt His presence in every moment.

Here’s the thing.  We all judge each other.  Whatever your story, whatever your situation, it’s unique.  It’s yours.  We need to support each other in these moments, offering advice and perspective, turning each other to the Word of God, and in the unfortunately very very gray area of reproductive technology, we need to extend grace to hurting sisters.

There were some things that we would not do.  We forfeited a round of IUI because I ovulated too many eggs and they were asking us to kill off some of our embryos if we ended up with too many.  They call it “selective reduction.”  We were not comfortable with that at all.  And many people wouldn’t be comfortable with IVF at all.  One person in my life was very hurtful in her criticism about our frozen embryos.

Some women have natural babies naturally.  I live vicariously through their stories of squat bars and water births and hypno-birthing, hanging on their every word.  Am I jealous?  Totally.  Some women have babies with epidurals.  Some women have c-sections.  Some women conceive in a candlelit room with John Mayer on the iPod playing in the background.  Some women can actually say things like, “We’re going to wait till the summer to get pregnant so the baby will be due in the spring.”  People can do that?!?  Amazing!  Some women conceive via any number of reproductive technologies.  Some women head straight for adoption.  Some women have a blend of biological kids and adoption.  Some adopt domestically, some internationally.

We need to stop judging each other and start supporting each other.  I sought out opinions while trying to make a decision.  It’s okay to give solicited opinions.  But let’s do it with gentleness and respect.  I have plenty of opinions (Doesn’t anyone who has a blog have a host of opinions that they’re completely willing to splash across the internet?!?).  I’m happy to share them, and I hope that I can do that gently.  And the decisions that we made during that time were to the best of our ability, hopefully led by the Spirit.  Our desire was to please the Lord.  But there is no verse that says, “Thou shall/shalt not proceedeth to in vitro.”

My advice to anyone considering reproductive technology is to question question question.  Learn as much as you can about the science.  Learn as much as you can about what God says.  Pray and trust that your decisions will land where those two worlds overlap.  Decide with your spouse what you’re willing/not willing to do at the beginning, so that as you’re sitting on a cold metal table feeling dejected because your ultrasound did not bring good news, you already know what the next step is and you’re not making a snap decision in the dregs of the moment.

To all my sisters out there who are facing enormous decisions about their next step, I’m praying for you.  Please feel free to contact me privately if you WANT more of my opinions.  I don’t even have one quarter of all the answers, but I’m so grateful for the women who stepped up and shared their struggles, their faith, their decisions with me as I navigated everything.  I’m grateful for the countless people who prayed for us through the whole thing.  God guided us and sustained us through those prayers.

Lord, lead them.  Guide them through these murky waters.  Un-murk them, clear everything up so that my friends can see Your will.  We want to see You.  We want to bring You glory.  Give us strength to put Your glory, Your name, before everything else.  I pray for womb-healing and heart-healing and that You would glorify Yourself through answered prayer.  Let each empty womb bring You glory.  Let each baby bring You glory.  Let each miraculous conception, whether You use science or nature, bring You glory.  You can use any method You choose.  I don’t know what’s best for each woman in the world.  I trust You to move in these decisions.  I ask You to stop us from heading the wrong way.  Give us sensitivity to Your Spirit.  And lead us.  Only You can create life.  Each child is a miracle.  Each child is a gift.  I pray for child-gifts for hurting sisters.  In Jesus’ Name, Your son, who You laid down for us.  In His Name.  Amen.

If you had asked me at the time if I was depressed, I would have said that I was fine.  Alex told me that he just thought I was lazy!  (I think I’ve said enough awesome things about him on this blog to throw that one in.  We were both big doofuses…what’s the plural on that…doofi?)  It wasn’t until years later that I looked back and realized how the sadness had slipped over me like a fuzzy warm blanket that I was too comfortable to remove.  The couch was really really comfortable…my blanket was comfortable…the TV sucked me away from my childless existence and replaced my life with reruns like Full House, full really really full house of kids and laughing and Uncle Joey antics, and Seventh Heaven, with its seven kids who all look out for each other and invite their friends to eat big family meals around the big family table and the more episodes I watched the more kids I wanted.

After about two years of trying to make a baby, our sex life consisted of charts and days and times and pee sticks and so much pressure that our time as husband and wife felt like a graveyard of buried dreams.  Oh, I forgot one for my list from Part 2: “Well at least it’s fun trying!”  Oh absolutely.  We are swinging from the chandeliers with wild abandon over here!  We’re not at all cowering with fear that our stuff doesn’t work.  No, this whole thing feels like a second honeymoon.

We started seeking the Lord about whether we should keep soldiering on, you know, relaaaaaxx, or go to the doctor and start poking around.  One night around 2am, He answered us with my waking up with severe pain near my right ovary.  I went to the doctor, who sent me to the ER, and all of a sudden after years of carefully selecting female gynos to handle that region, I had male ER docs down there and I catapulted into the land of medical intervention, where there is no privacy and everything is cold and gooey.  We were thinking apendicitis when I went in, but once they ruled that out, they sent me for tests, and so began our journey through fertility testing and treatment.

I have endometriosis.  Many people with endo can get pregnant.  And many can’t.  Alex is shipshape.  And so, over time, as I lay on the couch with a heating pad on my abdomen watching sitcoms of happy homes bursting with children, my thoughts wandered to what if I wasn’t here?  What if I was out of the picture and my sweet darling husband who I love so much could remarry a fertile Myrtle who could give him the kids he deserves?  After months and months of hospital trips and chronic ovarian pain, I had a large stash of pills lined up in the medicine cabinet.  Ten steps down the hall to the bathroom and ten steps back to the couch would free Alex to be a daddy…

Lies.  Jesus inside of me would not let me fall for them.  One day, after spending too much time in my television fog thinking of slipping away, I stood up, walked quickly into the bathroom, opened up every last jar into the toilet, and flushed.  My backup plan swirled away and I breathed lighter and made a choice to be a wife, to stay, to fight.

Infertility does not define me.  Infertility does not lessen me as a woman.  I am a stronger woman than I was because of this battle.  And I will use every last drop of my weakness for the glory of Jesus.  ”His grace is sufficient for me, for His power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:8).  I am a weak vessel for His perfect power.  ”Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).

Only Jesus could redeem me from my life on the couch.

Only Jesus could restore me from a life almost erased.

Only Jesus could reveal His majesty through my ashes.

I love my infertility.  I love my weakness.  Because it’s not the whole story.  ”Being confident of this: that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:5-7).

It felt like life was passing me by, couples were getting married and having babies, and I was in a babyless purgatory.  Well-meaning people had so much advice.

“You’re so young.”  Yes, yes, that’s true.  Shouldn’t getting pregnant be easier then?  I mean, my eggs were youthful and vivacious and ready to grow into a person, right?  When we finally had our first appointment with the reproductive endocrinologist, she said that because I was so young, I shouldn’t be having these kinds of problems.  Thank you!  Yes, exactly!  Ha, now I joke that God will have a good laugh and decide to make me pregnant when I’m 45.  Gulp.

“You just need to relax.”  How do I relax when the thing I want so badly is eluding me month in month out and I am powerless to make it happen?  We tried relaxing.  I took my mind off of it, got excited about other things, refocused.  Months later, still no baby.  I made good grades in school, got into the college where I wanted to go, never really had a major thing that I couldn’t achieve without hard work and diligence.  Until infertility.  I could not work my way out of it.  I could not make myself get pregnant.

“Trust God.”  Many people had variations on this one, like somehow my faith was crumbling and I needed a good spiritual enema to stay on the God-train.  I wasn’t struggling with my faith in God!  I was just hurting!  I didn’t understand and I wanted Him to take it away, but He was still on the throne and still good.

“Wait on God.”  Yes, we should absolutely wait on God, follow God, not get ahead of God (I just blogged on waiting a few days ago.).  But.  Would someone tell a cancer patient not to go seek treatment?  God has blessed us with medical interventions.  We slowly, prayerfully took it step by step, waiting on Him for direction, but not just sitting around for a baby to go POOF! in my belly.  More about this later.

“My cousin/friend/sister/aunt couldn’t get pregnant, then after 10 years of utter despair, she finally did!” (said with an encouraging tone and smile of assurance)  What the what?  Ten years!?!?!  This is not helpful people.  Not helpful at all.

“Why don’t you just adopt?”  We looked into it.  Even from our vantage point then, it looked like there was no “just” about it.  Like people thought if you couldn’t get pregnant you could go down to the Department of Adoptions, take a number, fill out a form, and bang!  Baby.  And now as an adoptive parent, I can say that THERE IS NO “JUST” ABOUT IT!!!  Adoption is not a fallback option.  Deciding to adopt is declaring war on forces that do not want to see orphans in families.  It’s worth it and amazing and God’s heart and our PLAN A now, but having gone through both a crazy lab rat conception and high risk pregnancy AND an international adoption that hit roadblock after roadblock…the adoption grew and stretched me in ways that I didn’t know I could bend.  I love it.  I’m an adoption junkie.  But I’m SO GLAD that I didn’t pursue adoption as a fallback plan.  I’m so glad that God moved adoption to Plan A before we headed that direction.

“Are you doin’ it right?”  Um…I dunno.  Maybe we need a diagram or something.

“Have you tried adding ___to your diet/___position/___time of the month/measuring___/doing a fertility dance?”  All useful suggestions.  Thank you.

“It’ll happen for you.”  It.  Might.  Not.  Wrestling with how to survive that.

Now, I live with my foot in my mouth, and my foot’s probably stuck on this keyboard, too.  So many caring people just want to help.  I tried so very hard to smile, nod, extend grace, extend grace, extend grace.  And then sometimes I had to go home and laugh/cry hysterically.

I learned to treat myself gently.  Sometimes it was just okay to not be okay.  Some months were harder than others, and on those days when my hopes would crumble, I’d let myself be sad.  I’d let myself stay in, read a book, watch a movie.  I’d tell God the truth about how I really felt about it.  He knew anyway.  It felt good to tell Him.  ”This sucks.  Take it away.  Make it better.  And I love You and you’re always good, even if I don’t understand why it has to be this way.”

For awhile we were very involved in serving at church, and I really think that helped.  We loved spending time with other couples.  But as more and more of them had babies and we tried again and again, my depression grew deeper and more debilitating.  My faith in God didn’t waver, but my ability to get off the couch and “be normal” did.

I’ll save that for my next post.  Until then, beautiful sisters, I truly love you and ache with you. I’m drawn to Romans 8 tonight and am praying it now for you.  ”I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”  May your present sufferings fall away and His glory be revealed in you.  The whole chapter is encouraging to me.

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  Nor infertility.  Amen and amen.

I’ve been feeling lately like I need to tackle infertility on my blog.  Like run, grab it, throw it to the ground, and rub it’s dang face in the mud.  No, hehe, I’ve had several conversations lately with women struggling through some of what I’ve been through, so I’m going to grab a flashlight, open myself up, and shine it into some dark corners from my past.  If you’re struggling with infertility, hug.  Big hug from me.  It sucks.  If you aren’t but have a friend or sister who is, feel free to pass this along.

So, I’m going to do a series of blog posts on my experience with infertility.  While going through that difficult season of my life, I read many many books, and I threw many many books across the room.  Please, if in reading this post or any of the ensuing ones I piss you off, feel free to throw your laptop across the room, spit on your monitor, or electronically punch my face.  Especially for those sweet sisters of mine who are hopped up on hormones and injecting yourselves daily with drugs that make you feel like you’re pregnant AND in menopause all at once…scream at me all you want.  I know.  I remember.  And just because I am where I am now, I am no expert on what you’re going through.  All I have are my own stories and my own choices.  So I guess these next blog posts are going to be my way of hugging you, agreeing with you that it sucks, and sharing my own crap while we drink another stupid cup of decaf coffee cuz we can’t drink the real stuff while trying to get the frick pregnant.  Ah yes…the frustration of yore is coming back to me now….

So I won’t get super-detailed about exactly what all I did in the fertility treatment realm, but for those of you in it, I’ll just outline my route really fast just to give you an idea: 2 years “the old fashioned way,” then 2 years the lab rat way: hysterosalpingogram, laparoscopy, 4 IUIs with superovulation, half an in vitro cycle that bombed before we even got to removing my eggs, full in vitro cycle that ended with my son Elliott, and frozen in vitro cycle that ended with 5 months of Christian counseling.  Plus a ton of other fabulous lab rat experiments and sticking equipment in places.

During the four years of babylessness, I struggled.  I did not navigate those years perfectly.  Not even close.  So I’m not coming from a place of perfection with a simple 10-step plan to wade through infertility as the perfect Christian.  Oh my word.  Anyone who knew me then would laugh me off this blog.  I was messy and crabby…and I still kinda am.

I remember feeling so very alone.  Even surrounded by my lovely wonderful friends and a loving husband, so alone.  I feel like in the Christian community, fertility is just kind of expected.  Our parents had babies, so therefore we’ll have babies, and so often pastors talk about getting married and having kids and I felt like a big big freak for not being able to follow that model.  My parents got married at 22, so did I.  My parents had me at 25…and that’s where my life started to veer off course.  At 22, I really didn’t want kids…ever.  But by 24, I did really really did, and month after month, nothing.

There’s a kind of baby epidemic that happens when you’re doing life in church small groups with other newlyweds.  One by one, couples show up to group with big grins and that “we’ve got a secret” glimmer in their eyes.  During prayer request time, they look at each other, raise eyebrows, “Are you going to say something/do you want me to tell/is this the week we’re going to tell,” and it comes out in this “Ta-da! We have an announcement!” kind of way.  It’s beautiful and special and I celebrated as each couple in my life had their big moment.

One of the first lessons that God taught me as I struggled was to keep my heart soft to the mommas in my life.  I did that by serving my friends, throwing baby showers, cooking meals, asking about their pregnancies.  Certainly there were plenty of times when I just had to go home and sob huge sobs, but I tried to keep my heart soft and not grow bitter.  Now, again, so not perfect, and there have been many random pregos around me complaining about their pregnancies who I would love to, oh I dunno, run over, pull their hair, and run away maniacally laughing.  God surrounded me with adorable pregnant friends who love being pregnant and recognize the gift that it is.  I love each and every one of them for it.

As a mom now, I love celebrating motherhood, but as a pre-mom, it was tough.  Mother’s Day was a horrendous day, as mothers got to stand in church and received flowers and I stayed seated, wracked with abdominal pain from endometriosis and hormone treatments and surgery and still no baby.  The last Mother’s Day that I had before getting pregnant, I drove to Krispy Kreme and ate two donuts.

One Sunday, we were sitting in the balcony at church and I watched as three of my friends from small group walked in together, all pregnant, and sat down in a row, their cute bellies bouncing over their laps.  I ended up in the prayer room crying, boogers streaming, and we didn’t come back to church for three months.

I’ll leave you there, at dangling boogers, and pick up the next post with all the things people said to me.  It’ll be awesome.  No seriously, I am not writing any of this from a place of bitterness.  The most amazing thing happened to me in August 2009: God healed me from the pain of infertility.  I’m still infertile.  In vitro is no longer even an option.  But my heartache is GONE.  One hundred percent gone.  Now I would’ve wanted to punch anyone who told me that a few years ago, so again, I understand if that’s your reaction.  But I do hope that in writing these posts, I can come alongside and just be a friend, and also offer hope and healing for your heart.  I hope you find that before sinking down as deep as I did.

I have Psalm 139 tattooed on my back.  I need a daily reminder that I am fearfully and wonderfully made, that God searches me and knows me and knit me together in my mother’s womb.  I need to know that this broken body, this reproductive disaster, is a work of God.  We live in a broken world, so there is pain and brokenness, but God made me and He loves me in my pain and brokenness.  He didn’t choose to restore my body, but He chose to restore my soul.  And by His will, He made me a mother, even in my brokenness.

I have joy, I have freedom, and I share my former pain and boogers now out of the abundance of His healing.  Bless you.  Big hug.  God has an adventure for you.  I don’t know what it is, but He wastes nothing.  This time of waiting.  This time of human lab rat.  This time of unanswered prayers.  This time of anguish.  He wastes none of it.