I have twirled the silver African continent around its chain countless times, praying for our 300 kids in Adacar, Uganda, praying for our daughter, longing to go back and back and back.  Heart for Africa.  Heart in Africa.

Two years later, we arrived at the lake and little metal box in hand, I suspected what lay inside.  I opened it, and yes, inside, silver India.  He’d contacted Tracy at JunkPosse and she created a lotus blossom necklace, the national flower of India on one side, and a special inscription on the other.  For twelve years of marriage, Alex and I have drawn on each other’s backs symbols for “I love you forever.”  He inscribed it on the back of the lotus charm.

I hugged my husband of almost twelve years and countless journeys as our kids ran around in the tall grass at the water’s edge.  Deja-vu-y, but now the daughter piece of our heart for Africa ran around with the son developing his own heart for Africa and our growing heart for India gleamed around my neck.  My, oh my, oh my God, my God, how the last two years have grown and shaped us.

Our marriage is such an adventure.  Our marriage is a perfect marriage of exciting forays into the unknown and the daily commitment of getting eyeball to eyeball and doing the work of relationship.  Perfectly messy.  Perfectly exhausting.  Perfectly worth it.

The heated moments in the kitchen working through misunderstood words and missed moments, both of us determined not to leave, not to walk away, until we breathe a shared sigh of common ground fought for and found.  The hour on the couch after the kids are in bed but before the 11pm conference call when we dream of God’s calling for our family and seek His will – from a conversation in a coffee shop to a hug around the world.  The crowd-falls-away moment when he writes our “I love you forever” symbols on my back as we’re surrounded by people.  We are exclusive.  It’s only us.  Team Dale.

Adding a child to our family, and preparing to add one or two more (or four or seven or…plenty of hours on the couch in our future discussing THAT!), has added its share of stress and exhaustion.  And this year we have learned and are learning to fight that much harder for our moments together.  To fight for, not with, each other.  There’s something so glorious about that feeling of scaling the top of the tension between us and plunging down to the other side of togetherness.  We overcome a mountain of hurt, conquering it together, and stand at the top, screaming below with delight as we take in the breathtaking views from this new height of matrimony.

Since about the second year of our marriage, we have gone on a weekly date night and asked each other two questions.  1) How have you felt loved by me this week?  2) How can I love you better?  Our couples’ pastor and his wife at our church back in Virginia recommended these questions, and we’ve put them into practice ever since.  Some weeks we sigh and force eye contact as we ask them, dreading the responses.  Painful messages of missed opportunities and hurt feelings.  Some weeks we can’t stop laughing.  Some weeks we have so many things to share that it takes the whole meal.  Having a weekly platform for sharing openly, when we both know it’s coming and no one’s getting blindsided, has kept anything from building up to a breaking point and has given us confidence.  I am confident that we will talk.  That we will be honest.  That we will work through whatever needs to have our attention.  That Alex will hear me and respond.  This isn’t a lucky break.  This is twelve years of solid marriage work.

I love our journey.  All of it.  And I love that all of our work in the trenches of the marriage war has come to fruition in our ministry together, our hard-fought, hard-won family.  What a privilege to be called to crazy-hard, crazy-awesome marriage.

We bend, we yield, we love, and we respect, unconditionally.  Anyway, that’s the goal.  And when we don’t get it right, we extend grace…anyway, that’s the goal.  We talk each other’s faces off until we regain Team Dale and scale that mountain together, my little silver charms clinking happily around my neck.

Yes, I’m a total hypocrite.  What I should say is “YOU don’t say fart.  I say it constantly as soon as you leave the room or go to bed.  Fart jokes make me snort laugh like a thirteen-year-old boy.  But YOU can’t know this yet, because you’re two and five, respectively, and I need to hold onto some semblance of decorum for as long as I can, until you find out who your real mom is, a woman in her mid-thirties who cannot hold herself together if someone says ‘duties.’”

From farting to loving.  Elliott talking about Jesus in his heart, Evie saying “I love you.”  I love those highs of mommyhood.

Every night Elliott wants me to lie down with him for a few minutes and talk.  He props himself up on his elbow and says, “What do you wanna talk about, Mommy?”  We talk about everything from monster trucks and monster trashcans to robots and superheroes.  We debate DC Comics versus Marvel and talk about our favorite heroes.  We talk about whether or not Darth Vader is a bad guy and we talk about how Jesus is God AND He’s God’s Son.  And how the Holy Spirit can fit inside a heart.

Evie’s favorite song is “The Only One” from Passion’s White Flag CD.  She wants it on repeat in the kitchen everyday, and we’ve made up a whole dance routine.  She calls it the “Jesus” song, and she starts chanting for “Jesus!  Jesus!  Jesus!”  And then she wants to instruct me on HOW to dance to it.  Girl knows what she wants.  “Twirl!  Mommy, twirl!”  I am happy to oblige, and we Dale girls twirl until we fall down.

So many highs, and also plenty of lows.  I’ve had a rough evening with my daughter.  The last few months have been getting better and better, and tonight we hit another rough patch.  She’s testing boundaries, I’m trying to be lovingly consistent, and now that she’s in bed, happy and healthy and the day’s troubles already behind her, I sit and stew and battle feelings of inadequacy and doubt.

SHE can let it go, so why can’t I?  Why do I let every bad moment escalate in my head to her sitting in a small group someday telling everyone how her mom was unkind and never loved her.  I face an emotional battle inside myself where I rehash every moment and release it to God, then pick it back up again and wallow in guilt, then release it, then wallow, release, little more wallowing….

Momming is HARD!  It’s so hard.  The hardest.  The road TO my kids has been crazy difficult, but actually parenting them is hard freakin’ hard hard HARD!

In honor of Mother’s Day, this post goes out to all the moms in hard places…so pretty much all the moms.

To the moms with kids who go beserk in public places.

To the moms working every day to win the hearts and respect of their kids.

To the moms who juggle soccer practice, swim team, dance class, music class, school projects, field trips, youth group, and still work in a family dinner every few days.

To the moms who aren’t sure where dinner’s coming from.

To the moms having to fill daddies’ shoes, too.

To the moms notarizing their brains out to get paper ready for kids who need them.

To the moms watching the children that grew in their hearts slip through their fingers and disappear into the system.

To the moms who raised their kids and aren’t quite sure what to do now.

To the moms-in-waiting, waiting waiting waiting.  The moms-in-waiting, waiting on cold, hard exam tables and hearing hard news.

To the moms who can’t remember if their kids brushed their teeth.

To the moms who spend twenty minutes in the dollar store bathroom waiting for their children to finish pooping.

To the moms who spend hours and dollars to find food that their allergic kids can eat.

To the moms who spend hours working for dollars to buy food that they can afford.

To the moms living in fear for their safety and the safety of their kids.

To the moms with a Bible in one hand and a baby in the other at 3am.

To the moms with disconnected kids.

To the moms sitting bedside in hospital rooms.

To the moms planning meals, planning hospice care, planning funerals.

To the moms watching their children grow up in pictures as they wait for courts and papers and visas.

To the moms trying to make sense of the medicines and insurance paperwork.

To the moms who can’t remember what day it is, can’t remember if they changed that diaper, can’t remember their social security number, can’t remember the last time they went to the bathroom alone.

To all my fellow mamas, I am proud to be among you, to bear the name of Mommy.  Wherever you are in the hard place of Mommyhood, don’t give up.  Throw your hands in the air, surrender to God, and keep walking.  I will, too.  I wouldn’t trade this job for anything.  It’s a sacred calling, a road to refinement, an opportunity to see God.  It requires so much more than a baby shower, so much more than an IV and breathing, so much more than classes and books.  It requires all of us…and still we’re not enough.  On so many days when I’m gripping the kitchen counter praying for more energy and more patience and more more more…I’m so thankful for the Jehovah Jireh, the Provider, who gives more more more.  I need the Holy Spirit…and sometimes the Holy Hand Grenade (For those of you who aren’t Monty Python fans, this is a joke.  Nobody panic.).

Happy Mother’s Day.  Holy Mother’s Day.

Mach

1st/03/2012

Dear Alex

Hello sponsor! I am happy for the letter I resevied, it contained some pictures on it was really nice for me to see those pictures.

In fact dad! I read the letter and it was interesting I am also serios in my studies since we started a new term soon at last year from my last term i.e term three I managed to pass p. 5 where I become number 1st to pass and I was the best boy from the whole school and I won a goat given by the project. (Children’s HopeChest)

I know Jesus loves me and you as well.  I have lots of prayers for you Melanie, Alex, Elliot, Evelyn.  God bless you!!!

Greeting

from Okiria Bosco 425

Mum, Nicholas and all

My brothers in Jesus name Amen!!!

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Korah.  Lord, give me the words, because I lack the ability to form the compelling sentences that my heart wants to share.  First, we visited the Alert Hospital, where those with leprosy, TB, and AIDS can come for treatment.  Africa’s only leprosy hospital, and once people come, after treatment, they tend to stay.

We watched gifted artisans spin cotton into thread, weave, embroider, knit, crochet.  I know the ache of one’s fingers, arms, and back after a long day of knitting and sewing…and these women and men work all day, every day, many of them without fingers.  They all make what they can.  If they have fingers, they do one thing, if they have part of a finger, they do something else, and if they’re missing their whole hand, then they turn a crank with the stub of their arm.  I watched women with no fingers knit scarves with the stumps on their hands.  One woman was working on a brown scarf.  I sat down next to her and Yemamu translated and we learned that it takes her two months to knit one scarf, because she’s missing all of her fingers.  For that scarf, she is paid 9 birr (about 50 cents).  For two months labor.  And yet she does it.  Each day.  And she was smiling.

After visiting with the craftspeople and buying some of their beautiful items at the gift shop, we headed through Korah and into the dump.  We could see the smoke billowing up into the sky from far away, and we walked closer and closer, stopping to shake hands with children and greet everyone with “selamno.”

We followed Yemamu and Sisay into the dump.  My first thought was that it looked like a post-apocalyptic world, like a movie set for the next big summer blockbuster.  But it was real.  We stepped through broken glass and plastic bags, large bones of animals, dirty diapers, bottles, cans, batteries leaking acid, rotting food.  Layers and layers.  Someone had dug a deep hole looking for metal to scavange and the layers of trash went as far as I could see, down down down, smoke pouring through the fissures in the strata.

And there were people.  Hundreds of them.  People like Busana, who received treatment at the hospital and now lives in Korah, foraging for metals in the dump that she can sell, her 1 1/2-year-old child on her back and her husband nearby searching in the dump.

As we were walking, the smoke filled our lungs, and the smell of rotting diapers, food, and animals filled my nose and lungs.  I dry heaved over and over and prayed for the strength to keep walking, to keep asking questions, to keep shaking hands and hearing stories.  We saw homes made of plastic tarp where 25 men squeeze in at night to sleep as the hyenas prowl outside.  We saw litters of puppies, dogs with matted fur, pigs, and goats.  One man was roasting a pig and it looked like he was using the smoke from the dump itself to cook it.  A group of young men found a carryout container of raw chicken wings and said, “Let’s eat!”  They huddled around it and everyone dug in hungrily.  Yemamu showed us what people eat – coffee creamer packets discarded from Ethiopian Airlines, packets of cooking oil, leftover water in plastic bottles.  He explained that many people die by drinking the wrong thing or eating something bad.  The food at the dump could come from a restaurant…or it could come from the hospital and be mixed with infected blood.  The water could be clean water, or it could be chemicals.  They take that chance every time they eat.  Their clothes come from the dump, and they could be clothes from a patient who died at the hospital, covered in blood.

Each day is a battle to stay alive, and the resilience of the human spirit is remarkable in this place.  The older boys take care of the younger ones who have been orphaned.  We saw women collecting plastic bags to turn in for money.  Garbage trucks came in and out, pouring more and more refuse onto the smoking heap.  Hundreds of people gathered around the new piles in search of food and metals.  The smoke was so thick that we couldn’t see very far in front of us.

In the middle of the dump, the garbage stretched as far as I could see in each direction.  We trekked back to the edge, then headed back through Korah, stopping at Sisay’s home and watching his mother make injera.

Back at the center, we met with Yemamu and Sisay to discuss the website, getting scholarships for the kids for school, supplies, uniforms, and food.  Some of the kids at the dump have tried to go to school, but they’re so hungry that they can’t focus.  There is such a social stigma for the people of Korah that people won’t allow them in taxis or buses because they smell.

Now we smell.  Our clothes smell.  After two showers, my skin still smells of ashes and rotting garbage.  And just as we’ve taken on the smell, we’ve also taken on the burden of knowledge.  We’ve seen it.  We’ve smelled it.  And now we’re responsible.

I cannot be another rich person who visits, takes photos of the poor people, pities them, and moves on.  I cannot be merely a voyeur to their plight.  I am responsible.

And so I write.  Mark is working on Yemamu’s logo.  Alex is working on the website.  Becky is using her photography skills.  I…well…all I know to do is try to give these people a voice.  If I can use our adoption story as a catalyst to get people to read about Korah and rise up to provide scholarships for some of the kids, then that’s what I’ll do!

I wasn’t on a movie set today!  It’s real!  It’s terrible!  They need us to help!  Once the website’s up and running, I’ll let everybody know where it is.  For now, pray for the people of Korah.  Pray for Yemamu and Sisay, two kids from Korah who bring hope to their community by the grace of God.

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

So those were my thoughts at the end of that day, trying to process what I’d seen.  We’ve since had many more meetings with our friends Yemamu and Sisay, and this week we are thrilled to share what they have done.  These two amazing Ethiopian men, together with our friends at HopeChest and my dear friend Amy, have launched a sponsorship community for 150 kids at Korah.  Yemamu’s organization, Hands for the Needy, has partnered with Children’s HopeChest.  Yemamu and his team are ministering to the kids on site, and there’s no one better in the world than these men who grew up there and know the needs of the community.  And through Children’s HopeChest, we are able to partner with them to bring lasting change.  ”Korah” literally means “cursed.”  Not anymore.  God is on the move there, and we can be a part of it!

I know I spend most of my time here rallying people around Adacar, Uganda.  And yes, yes, please yes, rally hard.  But a huge huge part of my heart is also beating hard in Ethiopia, and the people of Korah are never far from our minds.  So for those of you who asked me back in March 2011 how you could get involved in Korah and I said “pray and wait,” the wait is over.  Click HERE to make it happen.

During my pregnancy with Elliott, his first year, all the bliss and exhaustion of new mommyhood, my freezer babies never wandered too far from my mind.  When we sang that song in church with the line “defender of the weak,” I always thought of them.  Who’s weaker on this planet than little embryos suspended in a freezer?

They were stuck in D.C. and I now lived in the Atlanta area.  I had two choices.  Bring them down here in a cryo freezer or receive “bus stop monitoring” from a clinic down here and the actual procedure back in D.C.  I could just picture driving with my freezer babes and having the car break down in some tiny town and my babies prematurely thawing out in a Red Roof Inn while I frantically dialed my endocrinologist’s number.  Nope, I was headed back to D.C.  So for all of the monitoring and drugs, Alex and I drove to the ATL north side morning after morning, and we made two trips to D.C., one for the “mock” embryo transfer, the dress rehearsal where they map out my uterus, complete with new scar across it, and one for the actual transfer.  I was nervous and also relieved to finally have my kids with me.

We already knew that my body didn’t like progesterone.  The only way it would work was via shots with Elliott, and I took them for an entire trimester of that pregnancy.  Well this time, it didn’t like the shots either.  Night after night, Alex punched through growing scar tissue from allergic reactions to the drugs.  I developed huge knots on both sides where the injections were.  Like the first time around, I belted out eighties tunes and tried to relax my legs while he administered the pain.  This time was worse.  It was harder.  Something wasn’t right.

We flew to D.C., stayed in a hotel by the clinic, and they thawed our babes.  They were alive!  In they went, and Alex delivered food to the hotel room as I stayed on bedrest for a couple of days.  We flew home.  During the waiting period, I started to feel more and more the same way I felt when I was pregnant with Elliott.  Hope grew.  I began to let myself get excited.  This was happening.  I was pregnant!  I felt the exact same.  I had to be pregnant.

On the day of The Call, Mom came over to watch a movie with me to keep me distracted.  We watched The Last Holiday.  Halfway through, I got The Call.  The second I heard my nurse’s voice, I knew.  That comforting edge in her tone.  The hesitation.  Not pregnant.  I held it together up the stairs and broke down as I told Alex in his office.  Not pregnant.  The feelings, all the feelings of pregnancy.  Not a baby.  The drugs.  Just the drugs lying to my body.

I walked back downstairs.  Mom could tell.  Moms can always tell what their daughters are feeling.  We hugged.  We finished the movie.  I called my friends from church small group.  Julie offered to organize meals.  No, I was fine.  Really.

I called Julie back.  I was not fine.  Really, really not.  Bring food, yes please, because I don’t know what to do and if there’s food then maybe eating it would be a good first step.  I loaned out my maternity clothes.  Somehow knowing they were on a friend made me feel better than if they were in a box.

I know it’s a really, really early miscarriage.  I mean, really tiny embryos.  But.  I’d dreamed about them, those specific babies.  Prayed for them.  Nestled them in my heart and planned for their futures and hung their pictures on the wall of my mind.  For two years.  They were a part of our family for two years.

And my toxic body killed them.  They survived a test tube for two years, but couldn’t survive my womb for two days.

A few months after losing the freezer babies, I called Julie and just started talking.  You know those conversations that start like regular conversations and end up with your guts all over the floor and mascara streaked cheeks?  I told her, “I’m just…sad.  And I don’t know how to get better.”  She found me a counselor.  I went.  For five months.

And slowly light filtered back into my life.  My home became full again.  My heart became whole again.  Our family felt complete.  God filled the hole.  He was enough, and Elliott and Alex were enough.  One child and one husband were enough.  I was content and at peace.  Only God could do that.  Take a broken woman and make her whole again.  I can’t explain how I have peace and joy knowing that I can’t ever have a baby again.  Joy!  Bitterness gone.  Sadness gone.  Longing gone.  Only God.  I am not a naturally content person.  On my own, I lean toward sarcasm and bitterness and frustration.  But now joy.  Fullness.  The Bible says always be prepared to give a reason for the hope that you have – JESUS!  IT’S JESUS!!!  He’s the reason.  The only thing that makes sense.  I am redeemed beautiful barren woman made whole in His presence by His grace.  The scars on my belly used to taunt me as FAILURE, but now I see them as GRACE as COURAGE as REDEMPTION from a loving Father.  He took my scars and covered them with His own.  Peace.  Contentment.

And from that place of peace and contentment, God launched us down an entirely new path.  And the beginnings of that journey launched this blog.  Waking Giants.  We were waking indeed.

I asked several different people on the team trying to knock me up if I would have a “high risk” pregnancy.  I always received the same answer.  ”Nope!  Once we get you pregnant you’re the same as everyone else.”

Awesome.  I started reading books on natural birthing before my baby was bigger than a pea.  I finally felt whole.  I used the high tech approach to get pregnant, but after years of needles and doctors, I was going low tech all the way.  Finally, I could just let my body perform the way it was meant to.  Midwives, natural birthing classes.  I was so excited.  After years and years of excruciating endometriosis cramps, I figured I could handle contractions.  We’ll never know.

At my 32-week appointment, my midwife got a look on her face.  She sent me to the hospital for further testing.  I was not worried.  So my belly was measuring small.  I was a 5-lb. baby, Alex was a 5-lb. baby.  It would make sense that our baby would be a 5-lb. baby.

One little trip to the hospital.  And then another.  Then another.  I was back in specialist land.  Interuterine growth restriction (IUGR).  Preeclampsia.  And apparently my placenta “looked like it was 110 years old.”  My blood pressure kept rising and rising, my kidneys were failing, I was getting closer and closer to stroke territory, and they were monitoring Elliott like crazy.  I was at the hospital three times a week, the doctor’s office twice a week, and the outside lab several more times a week.  I had to collect all of my pee, give more blood, and all of a sudden, that natural birth thing wasn’t looking so good.

The day Alex received his contract for the new job down in Georgia is the day I ended up on bedrest.  I’d planned to have the baby in Georgia, but it looked like we’d be staying put in Northern Virginia for a few more months.  I began pulling out all of my natural birth books, flipping to those chapters in the back that I’d skipped, the ones about c-sections and needles and everything I didn’t want.  Everything I was done with.

And over and over again, these new specialists in my life were saying, “In vitro?  Oh yes, those are high risk pregnancies.  We just attended a conference on this.  The rates of IUGR, preeclampsia, and gestational diabetes are much higher in in vitro pregnancies.”  I had 2 of the 3.

I wouldn’t have done anything differently.  Except I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have skipped all those chapters about c-sections and spinal blocks!  They kept admitting me to the hospital, assigning me a room, then releasing me.  Everyone was hoping that we could keep Elliott inside me until he was a little bigger, try to make it to 37 weeks.  At the rate we were going, that didn’t seem feasible.

In the hospital hooked up to machines, I felt the safest.  I could see that Elliott was okay.  The doctor would do an ultrasound of my placenta, which looked dead, like a placenta at 42 weeks.  But by some miracle, the ultrasound would show that blood was still flowing to my baby’s brain.  God’s hand has been on Elliott from the beginning.  If he could survive a test tube and my scary womb, I guess a little placenta issue was nothing for him.

At home, I sat there, wondering, hoping.  Scared.  Sitting in bedrest all day, I had to monitor his kicks and my blood pressure.  I got a stopwatch and a blood pressure monitor and made little charts.  My body was trying to kill my Elliott.  The girl who wasn’t supposed to get pregnant was pregnant, and my body was done with it!

April 15 was a Sunday.  I was 34 weeks pregnant.  I had an appointment for hospital monitoring Monday morning.  They had told me that if my blood pressure got up to a certain place, or I had a headache that wouldn’t go away, that I had to come in to get the baby out before I had a stroke.  All day Sunday, I took my blood pressure again and again.  If I laid on one side and didn’t lift my head off of the pillow, I could keep my blood pressure just under the stroke zone.  I tried not to move a muscle all day.

The next morning, I headed to the hospital and sure enough, they admitted me for the last time.  My blood pressure was something like 180 over 110, and my headache would not go away.

Mom got the last seat on a plane flying standby up from Atlanta.  Alex grabbed my suitcase that had been on call in the trunk of the car for weeks.  They took me by myself into the surgery room while Alex went somewhere else and donned scrubs.

As they cleaned off my back and inserted the spinal block, I felt waves of fear wash over me, sobs threatening to break loose and shatter my lungs.  This isn’t how it was supposed to be.

(Oh wow.  I just started crying.  I haven’t done that once through this whole series.)  Reliving that moment has brought me back to the feeling of loss that I had as that needle went into my back.  The disappointment with my broken body.  Why oh why couldn’t I even do this right?

This wasn’t my plan.  So many husbands brag about their wives and how strong they were through labor.  Everyone’s always saying, “No drugs!  She did it with no drugs!”  I wanted that so badly.  I don’t even know why.  Maybe after all my infertility all my brokenness I just wanted to do this one thing by myself this one thing to show myself that I could.

Alex came into the room in his doctor outfit.  They stretched out my arms and tied them down.  (Wow.  I did not expect this tonight, people.  I am sobbing at my computer.  Apparently I’ve hit a long lost nerve.)  I felt tugging.  No pain, but lots of tugging.  The anesthesiologist kept me talking about my mom.  Alex told me that she made it on the flight.

The doctors pull out my placenta and I can’t see it but I hear them saying that it was partially abrupted (ripped off my uterus wall, like not attached properly) and there were lots of clots behind it and it’s amazing that Elliott was getting what he needed from it and it’s a good thing they got him out.

They held him up to my face for me to see him before whisking him up to the NICU.  Alex went with him and I was alone again, alone with a bunch of nurses and docs.  Alone.

They wheeled me out of the surgery room and the first person I saw standing in the hallway was my mom.  She’d made it just in time.  Somehow everything felt better.  (Sheesh.  I am sobbing hard trying to type this.)

For 24 hours I was on magnesium, felt like my body was literally on fire and threw up if I ate more than an ice cube.  Couldn’t see Elliott.  Kept babbling about needing to talk to a lactation specialist cuz I was determined to nurse this little preemie oh God oh God oh please God please please please let me have that please let me have nursing please.  Please.

The lactation specialist came and talked with me but I couldn’t even keep my eyes from crossing.  I tried to nod and look like I could understand as she pulled out pumps and talked about getting milk to the NICU.

Alex and Mom would come and give me updates.  God does this amazing thing with babies that are “stressed” in the womb.  He accelerates their lung growth, His provision for these tiny miracles.  Elliott didn’t even have to have a ventilator.

After a full day, they took me off the magnesium and I could see Elliott.  The whole time I was lying there on fire staring at my swollen belly thinking, “He’s still in there.  I don’t feel him kicking.  Did they take him out?”  I felt such a sense of loss.  Drugged up barely alive momma with no baby.  Where was he?

I rode the elevator up to his floor, scrubbed up, wheeled over to his little incubator, and saw his face, really saw him for the first time.  My first thought was that he looked like Alex’s sister Katherine.  Those beautiful wide eyes.

He was covered in wires and they carefully lifted him out and into my arms.  They wouldn’t let me nurse for another full day because of the drugs in my body, but I held him against my chest.

The drugs.  The c-section.  It faded away.  My plan.  Just like with everything.  Lay it down.  Lay it down. The c-section, the laying down my plan, it was my first selfless act as a parent.

I spent six days in the hospital, Elliott spent ten.  More lab rat stuff.  At one point my incision was sprouting blood and the doctor was peering at it saying, “Hmm…I’ve never seen that before.”  All I could think about was what if I lost my uterus and my frozen babies stayed stuck in their suspended state in the freezer?!?!

They ran out of places to stick my veins.  At one point a doctor had to come to my room and tell me that I won’t do my son any good if I don’t make it and I needed to stop visiting him so much and rest and take care of myself first.  Hard to hear.

Lay it down.  Lay it down.  Lay down my plan. Through that whole difficult, scary, painful time, God was stripping me down to another layer.  I thought I’d given up planning with the whole road TO my pregnancy.  But then once I got pregnant, I started planning again, didn’t I?

I laid down my plan.  Again.  And even now as Elliott is almost five, I have to keep laying it down.  ”Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it’s the Lord’s purpose that prevails” (Proverbs 19:21).

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.

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.

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).

“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.