My Infertility Story Part 2 – Drudging through the Desert

So, we had decided that adoption was a good family building option for us, but we had to wait until I was old enough for an adoption agency to take me seriously. (If you missed Part 1 catch up here first before continuing…)

This is a 3 part Blog Series of My Infertilty Story

Questioning the Answers

While we had been doing all of that waiting in order to pursue adoption, we began sharing our adoption plans with those around us. With the talk of growing our family through adoption we received well intended questions about why we were not having biological children, followed by more questions. We had plenty of questions, but we didn’t really have the answers to why we were infertile. As a nurse, I decided that following up with an infertility specialist was a good idea, even though we were not pursing treatments. I wanted to be sure that there was not an underlying medical issue that needed to be addressed.

We visited a state-of-the-art infertility clinic two hours from our home and had all the testing done to confirm what we already knew. After endless needles, invasive procedures and expensive tests we sat in our doctor’s office as he explained that it would be nearly impossible to conceive on our own and we needed to pursue In-vitro fertilization (IVF) if we wanted to become pregnant. What we were facing was not going to get better on its own. I believe that infertility is neither a man nor a woman’s problem—it belongs to the couple—and ultimately it is the woman’s womb that is closed. With that being said, in modern medicine diagnoses are made to satisfy what we understand in science. We were diagnosed with male factor infertility which was probably due to a hernia caused by an abdominal injury that David sustained as an adolescent many years prior. According to the doctor we required IVF. We also needed nearly $20,000 to pursue IVF treatments per round, without any guarantee that it would be successful. Our test results revealed that the less invasive, less expensive techniques (IUI, medication only, etc) would be a waste of time and money. We were devastated to hear it officially, but in reality, we were not surprised. We were also relieved to have answers and to know that nothing was more seriously wrong from a medical standpoint. The testing simply confirmed our decision to proceed with adoption. So, we went back to waiting…

During the wait my heart ached. Another piece of me was broken with every pregnant belly, birth announcement and baby shower invitation I encountered; even an infant’s cry in public could elicit tears. As much as I wanted children, it hurt me so much to be around them. It only reminded me of what I was missing out on. Unfortunately, I missed out on other important things because the grief was unbearable. I felt hopeless and wondered what my purpose was. I wondered why I had such a strong desire to be a mother but was not allowed the privilege. I was facing a struggle that no one else could help me with. No one except God. I had trusted Him with our desire to adopt, chose to surrender IVF to Him, and I knew He had a reason for not allowing us to become pregnant, but I was still carrying the burden of infertility. Slowly, I turned to Him more and more for comfort and wisdom as he used my painful affliction to draw me to Him. My infertility was the thorn that drove me into His loving arms. In my barren desert He adopted me into His eternal family and as I got to know Him better, I began trusting Him in more areas of my life. I eventually began to release my grip on the heavy burden I was carrying and gave it to Him in full surrender. And in return He showed me this promise:

“He gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous mother of children. Praise the Lord! ” ~Psalm 113:9 ESV

Hope Against Hope

Six months before my twenty-fifth birthday, the one we had been waiting so long for in order for us to begin the adoption process, we had the surprise of a lifetime. I was pregnant! We had wholeheartedly decided to pursue adoption, and we had no use for birth control after all the unproductive years. We were definitely not expecting a pregnancy! We were elated, astonished and relieved. We thanked God that He had finally answered our prayers and we were so overjoyed that the long, painful journey of infertility was finally over for us. We were pregnant! After three and a half long years we were going to have a baby! And in our excitement and relief—we told everyone! When the news finally settled upon us three and a half days later…I began to bleed.

  I miscarried our baby.

The loss was devastating. With my miscarriage came a sort of raw, debilitating pain I had never felt before. It was the kind of pain that came from the deep pit of my stomach. The kind that ambushed me as it seeped into the marrow of my bones, assaulting my body and leaving permanent scars. On that day, I lost my precious baby. The one I had waited so very long for.

Comparable to any tragedy, life went on. I woke up the next morning wishing it was all a dream. My world had crumbled down around me, and I wondered how it was possible for everyone else to keep living like all was well. Time did not stop for me to catch my breath. It kept going and I was expected to keep moving too. There was no acknowledgement of what I had suffered, nothing to represent the life I mourned. I went through the motions numbly, and eventually the pain slowly moved to the background of life as I learned what real grief felt like. David and I not only grieved for the loss of our baby. We grieved for the loss of a dream. We grieved for all the lost time spent trying. We grieved for our future. Then, we squinted with all our might for a small glimpse of hope. And somehow, we found it. We found hope in the assurance that we did create a baby. We missed the opportunity to meet her here on earth, but through our faith we knew we would meet her someday in heaven. She became our motivation to move on and to allow our grief to fade into the background as our hope turned to joy and we began to focus in on life again.

  And we call her Hope.

We named our miscarried baby Hope. Although there is no evidence of her on this earth except a few positive pregnancy tests, she exists. David and I created a baby together and one day in heaven I will meet her. She is one of our miraculous blessings from God. He did answer our prayers for a child, just not like we expected. He gave her to us just long enough to know she exists, and then swept her into His loving arms, sparing her all the hurt and loss of humanity. We long for her, but she is in a perfect Paradise. Something is not really lost if you know where it is. We never learned the gender of our baby, it was too early in my pregnancy for confirmation, however we just decided to call her a girl for the sake of grieving and remembrance. One day in eternity we will have the ultimate gender reveal!

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you…” ~Jeremiah 1:5 ESV

Follow My Infertility Story to Part 3 HERE. →

(If you missed Part 1 of My Infertility Story, you can find it here)

Thanks for reading,