Our family has experienced a great deal of joy, but like every family, we have experienced sorrow. Infertility was one of the loneliest most heart wrenching times in my life. I’m getting a little ahead of myself though, so let me back up.
We moved around quite a bit the first few years of our marriage trying to find our little corner of the world. We landed in Tennessee. The area was beautiful, the people were kind, and there were plenty of opportunities for work. We settled into a rhythm. We both worked extremely hard…Steve as a professional driver and me as a teacher.
We felt planted and decided it was time to try for a baby. We were both aware that getting pregnant would be challenging due to my medical history. I had surgery on my reproductive system when I was 17 years old. During my follow up appointment, the dr told me it would be difficult to conceive. After I married Steve, I got a copy of my dr’s surgical notes. I read about the details of that surgery and realized when the surgeon told me, “It might be difficult to conceive” that he was being gentle with the 17-year-old version of me. The surgeon had salvaged my disaster of a reproductive system. Armed with this history, Steve and I walked into this season of our life with our eyes wide open. We knew things had the potential to get difficult but knowing that you’re walking into a minefield does not make the walk less frightening, the steps less tenuous, or the explosions less painful.
Three years of trying to get pregnant turned into five years of trying, and that turned into ten years of trying. Throughout those years the friendship and intimacy in our marriage deepened. I found joy in teaching and for a time that was fulfilling. There were moments when I got a glimpse of what it would be like to be a mother. I called those glimpses “Mommy Moments.” I treasured those moments. A student would accidentally call me mom, or invite me to come to their baseball game, or tell me they loved me. As the years passed, those glimpses weren’t enough. After fourteen years of marriage, our home was becoming deafening with the silence that childlessness brought. I was getting older, and I will never forget the doctor’s words to us during our final visit to the fertility clinic. He said he made enough money that he didn’t need to lie to patients and give them false hope. He told us IVF and IUI were not going to work for us. He gave us less than a1% chance of conceiving if we did attempt IVF or IUI with a different doctor. Family planning is expensive. We were thankful for his honesty, but I was also horribly depressed. Something about this doctor's visit was different. 40 was barreling down on me and this visit had a sense of finality. We decided we'd continue to try to have a baby for one more year, and then we would figure out what life would look like for us without a child. I walked out of that office convinced I would never be a mother.
I knew God answers prayers with yes, no, or wait. Over the years, multiple doctors told us the answer was no. This was a definitive no... a no that meant a pregnancy was beyond all logic. That's when God said YES, and we celebrated our 16th anniversary in the NICU with our beautiful little miracle, Henry.
