Infertility Awareness Week

It’s the excitement that came over us when we learned we were expecting, 

followed by pain and loss when it was all ripped away from us.

It’s yearning for the honor of growing a life, carrying to term, 

the ability to adequately care for our babies, and tangibly love them. 

It’s feeling like a failure as a woman and a mother, 

because my body couldn’t do what it was designed to do.

It's obsessing over each cycle, our timing, every symptom, our diets, and our bodies, 

only to find that it's never enough.

It's appointment after appointment for blood work, empty ultrasounds, invasive tests and procedures, 

drug prescriptions, and anything we can do to move forward.

It’s seeing the world through a darker lens. 

Instead of being carefree and optimistic, I stress, strive, and feel the need to expect the worst. 

Bitterness and anger wage a war against my heart and my joy. I don't feel like myself.

I struggle to find the balance between remaining hopeful
and not setting myself up for disappointment.

It’s an emotional roller coaster,

on which I climb to high heights and plummet to low lows,
sometimes in a matter of moments.

It's falling apart, pulling myself back together,
and setting myself up to fall apart all over again,

month after month, after month, after month, after month, after month...

It’s missing our babies, despite the fact that I only carried them for weeks,

and longing to embrace them just like every other parent I see!

It’s the isolation of invisible motherhood.

It’s the unrelenting battle for my faith. 

I wonder why God would intentionally begin a life, only to let it dissipate. 

It's easy to distrust him and distance myself. 

Thankfully, he doesn’t let go.

It’s continually fighting off the lies that God doesn’t see us, 

doesn’t honor our marriage, or doesn’t see us as capable parents.

It’s stepping into social situations and wondering 

if the full arms and expectant bellies all around me will trigger me into tears. 

It's feeling like death incarnate 

while being caught up in a parade of fertility, bursting with life and music. 

It’s having to fight for my relationshipsbecause I feel the sting of loss and struggle when I see my pregnant friends
and friends who are young parents. 

It’s asking God “WHY ME?” 

and then feeling stupid when I end up asking myself 

“Why not me?”

It’s a battle that I’m kind of glad we’re fighting, 

because I know it's doing something aside from adding depth and beauty to our story.

1 in 8 couples deal with infertility. 

We aren't alone. 

It's someone else you know.

The Golden Uterus has Spoken! Seeing a Specialist

The same day I buried our April baby, my best friend told me that she thought she was miscarrying as well. She lost her baby, and we were able to be broken-hearted together. When we were ready, we started to try again and we kept each other updated on our cycles. It was a strange gift, and I think we both felt less alone when all of the Fall pregnancy announcements were made.

By February 2017, my best friend had texted me with her happy news! I felt excited, and I had hope that even though it wasn't a successful cycle for us, that we would be pregnant together very soon, just like we'd always dreamed!

Despite all my hope, church started to get really hard. One of my friends who made their pregnancy announcement in the Fall was growing a sweet little bump. As soon as I noticed, I cried (like, embarrassing out loud sobbing that couldn't stop) through an entire service. More and more, the painful reminders of what we had lost were everywhere. It felt like wherever we went, we were the only childless or not pregnant couple in the room. 

As 2 more months of unsuccessful trying went by, hope felt a lot less like consistent comfort, perspective, and peace, and felt more like the thing that consistently strung me along and left me to bleed. 

Even though at the beginning of each cycle I was convinced I shouldn't get my hopes up, they were back up and soaring by the end of each cycle! I was so sure that each one was "the one". 

When my dreams of having our "little turkey" or "little butterball" around Thanksgiving 2017 were gobbled up by reality (See what I did there?), I finally felt desperate enough to call a doctor and get some help. We started seeing a fertility specialist on March 23rd.

Despite knowing that it meant I would have to do some of my least favorite things, (make phone calls, see doctors, get blood work and invasive tests done, etc.) I felt at ease knowing that they would check my hormone and progesterone levels and Rob's swimmers, make sure my uterus was in good shape, find out if I was ovulating properly, and that they would want to know ASAP if I got pregnant so that they could monitor everything! It felt like a big step in the right direction.

That Monday, it was time for the blood work to test my hormone levels. Being someone who HATES giving blood, this was a memorable experience.

Rob, being the sweet husband that he is, drove me to the Quest office. When it was my time, the nurse took me back, saying "We've got a lot to draw, honey!". She started grabbing hand fulls of viles. Right as I thought she HAD to be done, she said she had to get some more from another room! Another nurse walked by, saw all of the viles and gasped.

The nurse came back with the rest of the viles and asked me if I would pass out. Before I could finish the word "Probably!", she got me out of the little desk and asked me to lay down on a bed in the room. She prepped my arm and talked to me through the whole draw. I talked about my fondant job, my husband, my ring, how my bedroom used to be the same lime green color as the interior of the room, and who knows what else! I really ran my mouth, which is not something that I do normally. It wasn't so bad and it seemed to be over relatively quickly. I felt like a rock star when I walked out of there without passing out! They took 15 VILES!

Over the last year, we had lost both of my Mommoms. One of the thoughts that got me through the blood work was wanting to make my Mom into a Mommom, since a life without Mommoms just felt wrong. Our family was way overdue for some good news, and I dreamed of bringing joy to my grieving parents, siblings, and Poppop at the Easter table that year. Success at this cycle meant a December baby, which I joked I would lovingly refer to as "Baby Bertha Jessie Smith" in memory of my Mommoms, who were both born in December! 

Despite these joyful thoughts, I felt the weight of all of the sorrow. My life seemed to have turned into a perfect pattern of miscarriage, struggle to conceive, loss in the family, and more struggle to conceive. It was hard not to look around me and compare this season of grief and struggle to the lively and effortlessly happy seasons all of my friends seemed to be in.

Instead of making a pregnancy announcement that Easter, I made appointments for more blood work and another uncomfortable and bloody babyless ultrasound. The specialist talked me through the whole ultrasound and found plentiful eggs! On the day after Easter, Rob made love to a plastic cup and I had dye shot through my uterus. 

Egg hunts and uterus dying - A little too hilariously appropriate for Easter.

The HSG test was uncomfortable, but I have to admit it was pretty neat to watch the x-ray screen and watch the golden yellow colored dye flow through my (wonky looking) uterus! I'm guessing that many women don't get to see what their uterus looks like, nor have such an opportunity to go by the name of "the golden uterus". 

Take that, fertile Myrtles!

The specialist told us to make sure we definitely try after the HSG test, because it's common to get pregnant after it since it can "clean out" a uterus. I did some premature calculating on the pregnancy app (like I always do!) and discovered that success for that cycle meant that I would not only know I was pregnant by Mother's Day, but I would be due just a few days before my 30th birthday! Hopes and dreams danced in my head!

When the test results came in, everything looked pretty good. Rob's swimmers were healthy, and I had plenty of eggs. The problem? It seems I put the "late" in "ovulate". While my eggs were maturing, they weren't releasing as they should, from what I gathered. The specialist told us that I had a mild case of PCOS and a hypoactive thyroid. 

The hypoactive thyroid thing made total sense to me since the thyroid produces the hormones that are needed for ovulation and for supporting a pregnancy. It felt a little sad to know that my body could have been the thing that failed our babies.

I felt at ease as the specialist went through the possible future steps with us. He prescribed Levothyroxine to replace the hormones my thyroid wasn't producing enough of, as well as Clomid to help me ovulate. I started the Levothyroxine right away, and kept the Clomid prescription for a rainy day, knowing that it would mean more frequent visits to the specialist once I started it.

April 24th 2017

Expectancy, pain, and the sense of love and pride that come with motherhood were things I imagined I would feel on April 24th, 2017. 

It may not be in the way I wanted, but I still feel all of those things today. 

To my April baby,

I sat beside your grave today.
I arranged a little bouquet of flowers (and probably some weeds.. Only the prettiest though!) and placed them there.

Today was our estimated due date. At about this time, we would have held you in our arms and fallen deeper in love with you. You were our rainbow baby. Friends and family would have flocked to our sides to meet you and hold you and celebrate you. 

But instead, I sat under the tulip tree grieving your loss all alone. I think about the love and pride I have for you, and can only imagine how it would multiply if I got to see your sweet face and hold you in my arms, just like every other mommy I know. Our story is painfully different, and even though I know I'm not the only mommy with empty arms, it sure feels like it.

It's so hard to grieve your loss. It's my best guess that God intentionally and lovingly knit you together in my womb. That he gave you to us, but let you slip away from us for reasons I don't understand and struggle with on a regular basis.
Maybe you're with your big brother or sister, Poppop, Grampy, and both of my Mommoms.
I'm sure that if that's the case, you're getting plenty of loving attention and that you're in the best place you can be. 

I won't ever forget you and the short time we had together. I'm so proud of the fact that you existed. Even though I won't know you in this lifetime, I'm happy to carry you in my heart.

Somehow as I sat beside your grave today, I felt more thankfulness instead of sadness and anger. I know friends are praying for my hardened heart and believe that God is doing something through you. You have taught me to fight. You have given me the opportunity to fall in love with God all over again.

Rob came home with a surprise for us today.

You are still my pride and joy, although in a different way than I expected. 

Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet

A friend of mine lent me this book by Sara Hagerty. I wanted to remember the things that stuck out to me.


REMEMBER:

"Grief's tide can't be predicted."

Don't naively assume that those proclaiming the truths of God in song can more easily do so because they have what you want.

"Fear makes life small."

"You can't eat yesterday's bread today."

Your struggle is not on your circumstance. It is about your perspective on God.
You can get a lot of ideas about God that aren't actually God's ideas about God. 
Your prayers can feel rote because of how you see the one to whom you're praying. Then with each successive layer of circumstantial pain, new false ideas of God that you carry become unearthed.

When you are caught in a mind trap, this is your time to hold his word up against the "truth" you've contrived. 

Relief will be found while you hold your toxic thoughts up to his beauty day after day.

To know God as healer is a relationship, not a moment.

God never intends for us to ask, "who are you in this pain?" only once. He wants us to make a habit out of coming near. Think of a child who runs to their parent after being stung by a bee, and how a parent longs for that. He wants us to run toward him, in expectation, when we are stung. 

Hope requires a true view of God, and that true view of God is not natural. It is from him.

Your life isn't a series of rewards for doing things "right". They are strung-together surprises that continue to speak more of who he is.

You can grow comfortable bracing yourself for the worst. It feels safe. Negativity can have a hold on your soul.

WAYS TO FIGHT:

Hope when it doesn't make sense. 

Seek God with your heart when your flesh wants to run.

Pray "There has to be more of you, God, than what I'm understanding."

Sit before him when you're waiting or dissappointed. Ask the questions that a little girl would ask her daddy when life isn't what she expected. It will make it all the more easy to go there again if another month passes and your womb is still empty.

Adore him! Adoration calls the circumstances no matter how high or low, into proper submission in our hearts. It steadies us. It repatterns our thinking. It centers our lives around a God-man through the lenses of our circumstances. Adoration aligns us under him. This is the place where life is found.

Pray "show me yourself as healer" 

instead of "why haven't you healed me?"

Pray "show me the daddy side of you" 

instead of "why aren't you daddy to me?"

Pray "show me yourself as comforter of those in pain" 

instead of "why all the pain?"

Respond with trust. Lean. Rest peacefully in what God COULD do but hasn't done.

When your flesh is telling you that God is toying with you, ask "could there be yet more of him to know?"

Be set on finding the sweetness of him waiting inside what the world calls bitter.

GIFTS AND PROMISES:

Without the bittnerness, we would never appreciate the sweetness.

He gave you a story to tell.
Your mess won't forever be a curse. One day it would be your crown. One day it would tell the story that he is good... to you.

You'll dance on this. This isn't your darkest hour, but your best.

These moments aren't stolen. They are purposed for a different kind of receiving.

Hope, and how it draws me to him, means that not one of those minutes curled up in pain was lost and not one of those negative pregnancy tests (or in my case, even the 16 positive ones that didn't end with a full term pregnancy) was wasted.

He shares with you the reproach you carry. He knows that it will one day be a crown, not through new circumstances but through a new heart. In your barrennes you will know God as the give of good gifts. Before your body ever holds another's heartbeat inside of it, he will give you life.

You are a different woman than the one you had been before your life unraveled, because God had become to you a different God than the one you'd contrived him to be when it was working as it should.

Winter and Spring: He is healer in both.

Unseasonable Warmth

I was actually dreading the coming of Spring this year.

I pictured nature bursting into life and feeling trolled, since our baby was supposed to be born in this season as well!

Today on February 23rd it was sunny and about 70 degrees outside, but instead of feeling the sense of dread and resentfulness I thought I would feel, I felt like nature was preaching to me and offering me hope.



It's still Winter. It has been a darker season than usual. The air has been bitter and cold, and the hardened earth doesn't seem capable of receiving and nurturing new life.

But we didn't have to wait for Winter to be over before we felt the warmth of Spring.

I don't want to wait until God "seems" good to me to believe that he IS good to me.

Before I feel the joy of expectancy in my body again, I want to praise him.

The time for light, for warmth, and for growth is now.
Right now, in the Winter.

Chocolate, Tampons, Wine, a Kitten, and a Rainbow

After the loss of our August baby, 9 months passed with no success at baby making. It got stressful. I began tracking my cycle, using OPKs, and trying new diets and supplements. We would try, wait the 2 weeks, I would get my hopes up, I would be disappointed, we would wait about another week or 2, then we would repeat it all again and again. Trying to conceive can be an emotional and physical roller coaster to say the least.

Rob got really good at “my wife is on another unwanted period” shopping trips. He brought home Ferrero Rocher chocolates, fried chicken, tampons, wine, and eventually a kitten!

(Our little Permelia!)

We were on a family vacation and out for breakfast together at the end a 2 week wait in August 2016 when I suddenly felt intense cramps. I assumed I was getting my period. I tried to smile and choke back the tears but I just couldn't. I took Rob's hand and started to cry at the table. He excused us and we quickly left the pancake house before I could even finish my coffee. 

Days went by with no bleeding, which was never normal for me. 

I took a pregnancy test and saw a faint positive line, just like the ones I saw in November 2015.

Of course I was excited, but also afraid to use the bathroom for fear that I would see blood again. We told some friends and family so they could pray, while more friends figured it out too quickly when I was on my 3^rd water bottle in the presence of beer. I couldn’t play the diet card after 3 pieces of pizza, either.

I began to feel familiar nausea and fatigue. The crappier I felt, the happier I was. I cleared time in my work schedule so I could take contented pregnancy naps with Permelia.

For 3 weeks, I kept taking pregnancy tests, thinking that as long as they stayed positive I would be in the clear. I started to see brown spotting, which worried me, but I kept trying to remain positive and keep testing. The 14 beautifully positive tests I had in a row had me feeling reassured. Each test looked darker than the last!

I was about 8 weeks along on September 12^th. The spotting was getting redder and heavier throughout the day, despite the darkly positive pregnancy test I had that morning.

That afternoon I felt physical and emotional pain like I never felt before as I began what I would describe as a mini labor, contractions and all. I began passing things that clearly were not just blood clots.

I was quickly asked by my doctor to come in for blood work and was sent for my first ultrasound.

My. First. Ultrasound.

I always imagined my first ultrasound as such a happy and surreal moment. I imagined both of us gazing, teary-eyed, at the flickering heartbeat of a creepy little tadpole baby that was all ours. Instead, we barely looked up because of the sad news we already knew. The screen was black and completely empty. No sign of life at all. 

I buried the fetal tissue under the tulip tree in our yard, so when the tree blooms in the Spring, it would be a reminder of our April baby, who will always be our second.

I Fell in Love with a Chocolate Chip Mermaid: The Beginning

I don't think I've ever had any "huge dreams" for my life. When asked as a child what I wanted to "be" when I grew up, I don't remember having any specific job in mind. I just thought I at least wanted to be a wife and a Mom.

After Rob and I got married, we assumed that we had complete control over our family planning. We planned to spend our first 5 years as just the two of us, buy a house, and simply start trying and conceive our first little one in, perhaps, just a matter of months after that. That's pretty much how it goes for most people, I thought. I don't think the concern of not carrying a pregnancy to term even crossed my mind. It just wasn't something I heard of enough.

During our first 4 years of marriage, we were carefree. We watched our friends and families have "ooops" babies, and just felt happy for them and relieved for ourselves. We prided ourselves on our responsible planning, consistent birth control use, and easy child-free existence. I would get another period, and we would high-five and laugh. 

We bought our house just before our 4th anniversary in October 2015. By this point, we still weren't trying for a baby, but we weren't necessarily trying to avoid getting pregnant either. We decided we were happy either way. We figured we kind of wanted to stick to our "5 years of marriage first" plan and work on our home for another year before really trying. 

That November we got the news that changed everything. 

We were busy tearing down wallpaper and painting the kitchen and dining room when I started to wonder where my period was. I didn't keep track of my cycle then and almost didn't notice I was late. I took my FIRST EVER pregnancy test, and my world was changed forever when I saw a faint positive line.

My excitement level went through the roof, rising way above my excitement for house projects and paint colors. I was going to be a Mom! I downloaded a pregnancy app and read about our baby's development. I tracked his or her size and appearance and dreamt up Summer inspired nursery themes and baby names for our August baby, while Rob remained (wisely) cautious.

When we realized we couldn't keep it a secret and that we truly had NO IDEA how to proceed with a pregnancy, we decided we would tell our parents. We snuck cinnamon buns into their ovens with my positive pregnancy test. Our Moms jumped around their kitchens and screamed with joy. It was every bit how I thought announcing a pregnancy should be.

I made my first appointment with a doctor, and on November 16th, 2015, I wrote my first letter to our first little one in their own journal.

Later that day, I was working in my Etsy room when I felt intense cramps. I ran to the bathroom to find what I feared the most. Blood. Anxiety, fear, and sadness came over me in a way that I can't describe in words. 

I panicked and screamed for Rob. I hate making phone calls, but I called my doctor without much hesitation. I choked through my description of what was happening while Rob called the nearby hospitals to find out what their E.R. waiting times were. I sent worried texts to my Mom and best friend while we waited for an agonizing 3 hours in the E.R. 

I won't forget the moment the doctor dropped my pee onto a pregnancy test with a tiny eye dropper. "And you are..." he said casually and quietly "..not pregnant."

My heart sank. Rob told the doctor that my tests were faintly positive before and we asked him to test again. Our eyes were glued to that second plastic screen, and our hearts dropped deeper as we hoped for even the faintest second line to appear. 

It didn't. 

I felt dead inside as the doctor prepped for blood work. Normally, I dread blood work with everything that is within me, but at this point, I felt like I had nothing worse to dread. The doctor sent us back into the waiting room while the results of the blood test were read. "It's okay, you can just try again." he said, as if this was a simple thing we were just given to process.

While we waited, I began bleeding in clots. While shaking and sobbing in the public hospital bathroom, I couldn't help but think that our baby was in those blood clots and that I couldn't just flush him or her down the toilet like a dead goldfish. I reached into the toilet and rolled anything that felt like anything into a wad of toilet paper and kept it in my pocket to inspect later.

The things we do for love.

I was put in a hospital bed while a few nurses came through who calmly and sympathetically confirmed that I wasn't, in fact, pregnant (anymore). They didn't seem to understand that I had those positive tests at home. I was handed an information packet about periods as if I had never heard of a period before.

I updated my Mom and best friend and Rob called his parents to retract our happy news on the way home. I don't know how to describe the time after this. I was in denial and I was hurting. Something I had so much excitement for was snatched away in a matter of moments. We didn't tell our friends that I was pregnant, but after this loss, we ended up telling our friends because we needed the support.

While it wasn't in our original plan, this loss left a void and we started trying for another baby as soon as we could.

To our "chocolate chip mermaid baby",
you will always be our first.