Thursday, September 12, 2013

I'll Never Be Pregnant Again (Part Two)

So I left off the last post with our diagnosis of infertility.  It is a hard word to say out loud.  It is hard to say, "We are infertile" ... or ... "We struggle with our fertility."  I have a hard time saying it out loud even to myself, today.  But this is our reality and one that we tackled head on.

Due to the nature of our infertility we were able to skip much of what other couples need to wade through with Clomid and the IUI treatments.  We went straight to IVF.  IVF stands for In Vitro Fertilization.  Romantic and intimate right?!  We quickly learned that this is the most not fun way to get pregnant ever.  And because of our situation, we had another set of letters (and costs) to add to the IVF -- ICSI (which basically means that the lab tech chooses one super sperm to inject into one egg rather than setting a bunch of them free to fight over the egg in the petri dish).   It all seemed easy on paper and while I noted the statistics on success, I felt sure that God would fulfill the desire of my heart with a baby in my womb.  I read as much info as I could and was convinced that because we had healthy eggs and sperm our miracle babies would be conceived and although it would be a different route than most couples, it would yield the same result: pregnancy and nine months later, a baby.  Repeat.

I was wrong.

Skip ahead a year or so when we were finally ready to start the first step of IVF.  This involves a lot of injections, blood work and appointments for ultrasounds and pokes early in the morning.  Because we were living in Michigan and our clinic was in Ontario, I did much of this first part on my own.  I drove the 45 minutes to my appointments in the dead of winter on days when even school buses were cancelled.  I was so determined to do this right and so emotional and hormonal I wouldn't have considered not going.  I was exhausted, missing my husband and home and high on hope.  I was a mess. 

Finally the day came to "harvest the eggs" -- isn't this a horrible thought?  Well, it was horrible in other ways too and while I was excited to see them extract egg after egg it was painful and I cried through the whole thing.  Now for the romantic part -- Josh and I weren't even there when each of our eggs was united with a sperm.  Definitely not how we imagined the conception of our first child!  We were hopeful and had our appointment set to have two of the embryos transferred a couple of days later.

My world crashed the next morning.  Still exhausted from all the medication, I slept in and was excited to receive the phone call to tell us how many embryos had developed and how they were growing.  Josh was out with a friend when the call came.  A lab technician, who didn't even refer to me by my name, was calling to tell me "not to bother coming in tomorrow because none of the embryos survived." 

That's it. 

In my mind, it was over.  A huge, steel, impenetrable door had been slammed in my face. 
                   In my dreams of being a mom. 
                   In my dreams of growing big with a child. 
                   In my dreams of nursing my baby. 
                   In my dreams of a little girl who looked just like me.
                   In my dreams of giving Josh a baby that carried his name.

Everything. 

I was numb and frankly, extremely angry.  How could God lead me through all of this (all the needles, the ultrasounds, the appointments, the dollars, the HOPE) and then say, "NO."

I cry as I sit and write this ... the pain of that day is still so real and sharp.  I didn't understand -- I had given up so much to follow God's call in our life and I couldn't grasp why He would refuse to give me a child.

Of course now I know now that if we had conceived that day, Kailyn would not have been mine.  I can't imagine my life without her passion and intensity, her imagination and downright stubbornness.  She sure doesn't look like me, but oh, she is my daughter inside and out! 

God is faithful. 

April 
My girl on her first day of school.