Category: Travelogue

Notes about the journey

Second Trimester and More Things I Never Thought I’d Get to Say…

We are now well into the second trimester, and each report from the doctor is great!  I know I’ve been strangely quiet on the blog about the pregnancy, but I’ve been weirdly protective of everything related to this baby.  (Okay, maybe not so weird given our history…)  I’ve yet to post ultrasound pictures anywhere, and I’m stingy about who I share them with.  I’ll post pictures at some point soon because I just know everyone wants to see our little alien. 🙂  She does look pretty human now, though, so we’ve outgrown the early stages of “What is that thing?” and “I’m just going to take your word for it…” on the ultrasound pictures.

Yes, that was SHE, in case you haven’t seen it on FB.  We’ll have a little girl joining us at the end of January.  And, no, we haven’t picked out a name yet.  We’re still perusing the name book and waiting to see what fits.  It’s tempting to choose a name that reflects the magnitude of what this little one means to us, but that’s a lot of pressure to saddle a kid with.  “You have to be brilliant and special because we’ve lost so much to get to this point.”  If that won’t create a host of neurotic breakdowns, I don’t know what will.

So while this child is more than we could have hoped for already, I think it’s best for her to be just a normal kid with goofy parents who are sure to embarrass her at every turn.  We’re already set to be the old farts in home room; when our little girl turns sixteen, we’ll be fifty.  That’s a little daunting.  But it’s also a tremendous asset.  I hate that we won’t be young parents, but we don’t have any crazy expectations that parenthood is some sort of magical domestic bliss.  We’re well aware that it is hard work, and we’ve both reached a point in our lives where we choose our battles carefully.  We’ve had to let go of so much already that rolling with the punches is just what you do.

I really want to see “The Odd Life of Timothy Green.”  I won’t watch it for another year or so because I can’t watch the trailer without crying.  They show part of a scene where the parents who have tried desperately to have a child on their own give up.  They write down all of the things that their child would be – funny, smart, kind – and bury it in a box in their garden.  Maybe the rest of the movie is horrible, but that scene is such a great snapshot of what our last five years have been like.  For a week or two at a time, we could dream about what our kid would be like before we had to bury the dream again.  That’s another reason I’ve been oddly quiet: for so long, loss has been our story that it’s hard to write about this amazing gift without feeling like I’m losing sight of where we came from.  I honestly hate that I am one of those stories being bandied about to other women who are struggling with infertility or losses of their own.  “If you just hold on and keep trying, things will work out for you just like they have for my friend…”  There is a time for hope, and there is a time for grief, and I hope that if you feel tempted to use me as an example for a struggling friend that you pause and consider what your friend needs most.  Usually, it’s not the miracle story.

I am under no illusions that this is nothing short of a miracle; we still have no medical explanation for our miscarriages, and there is no reason that this pregnancy has continued where every other one failed except that this is God’s plan.  I still don’t understand it, and I still don’t like most of it, and it certainly wasn’t MY plan.  But this baby is coming at this time in our lives for some reason that only God knows and we will likely never discover on this side of the veil.  If you really must share my story with someone struggling through their own infertility/pregnancy loss hell, I hope that this is what you share: we won’t always understand God’s plan, and we don’t have to understand it or even like it.  We do have to submit our plans and dreams to him and trust him to work out the details in a way that will honor him.  You may not get what you want, but you will always get what you need.  It will never be easy to lay down your own dreams and wait for God to give you new ones, but it’s worth the work and the pain.  I can honestly say that we would have been happy even if God hadn’t blessed us with this pregnancy because we learned to be content and useful where we were no matter what.  I really never thought I would be registering for baby clothes and strollers and toys after IVF didn’t work.  I never imagined that I would ever hear a heartbeat that isn’t my own coming from somewhere inside my belly.  I never thought I’d get to count down the weeks and measure my belly by the things I can no longer see when I look down.  I still have a hard time believing that we are actually telling people, “It’s a girl!”  And she is a miracle; she is a gift that I didn’t expect, but her impending arrival isn’t the greatest gift that this journey has given me – the knowledge that I really can and do trust God no matter what is greater still.

It’s Just God’s Way of Showing You…

Consider this a fair warning type of post. It’s a rare complaint/whine from me, actually. The only comment I’m not fielding very gracefully is, “God is just showing you that he didn’t need you do IVF.” Here’s the fair warning part of the post: I will respond less than tactfully that God didn’t need us to do IVF the first eight times we got pregnant, either, and look how those turned out. Then I will smile and change the subject. Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

I have heard this well-intentioned statement from a lot of people, and most of them are people that I love dearly. When I told one of my favorite people on the planet about how I was reacting to this, her response was exactly what I tend to think: “No, I almost think you had to do IVF; you had to be willing to do everything. I think that God is showing us he has a tremendous sense of humor and irony.” I love that my friend isn’t afraid to admit that God clearly has a sense of humor (he created me, after all), and he seems to have a flair for the ironic as well. I actually think God laughs when we attribute grander meanings to our circumstances. “That’s just God’s way of saying you’re going to have a boy.” “That’s just God showing you that you should be nice to short people.” “That’s how God shows us that artichokes are the perfect food.”

Of course those are ridiculous examples, and of course there is grander meaning to our circumstances, but I don’t think we know what that grander meaning is most of the time. I think that we rarely guess correctly when we try to guess how every circumstance fits into God’s plan. I think we might even be frustrated to know the answers most of the time; we’d probably be disappointed to know that our suffering wasn’t used as directly as we hoped. God has yet to tell me directly exactly why we had to have nine miscarriages to get to this point. I have no doubt that he has used our circumstances for his glory, but I don’t know why we had to endure all of what we’ve endured. No one does. We may never know.

What I do know is that to claim that this pregnancy is evidence that God didn’t need us to do an IVF cycle or didn’t use our IVF cycle for some part of his plan is malarky. It also trivializes our loss, not just the IVF pregnancy, but each of the eight miscarriages preceding that one. While that is certainly not the intention of my personal prophets, it is the emotional effect of their proclamation. Obviously, God didn’t need for us to do IVF to have a successful pregnancy; just as obviously, it wasn’t God’s plan for us to keep the previous pregnancies. Beyond that, I have yet to meet anyone who has the details about why those things happened the way they did except to say that God has a plan that we can’t always see or understand. That’s just God’s way of showing me that I have to trust him through every trial and every circumstance.

And Baby Makes Three

I haven’t blogged in a few weeks (or three…). The main reason for the blog void has nothing to do with being busy since I’ve mostly been holding the couch down. My blogging is as much a means for me to process my thoughts and emotions as it is a means to communicate, and I have avoided processing anything for almost a month, which is exactly how long I’ve known that I’m pregnant.

The first week was perfect, with great hcg levels that more than doubled. The second week brought cramping and spotting which was painful and scary and frustrating, but the numbers were still good, and our first ultrasound showed all the right pieces and parts in the right places. Last week we got to see the heartbeat, and this week we got to see the heartbeat again and see that our baby is growing just like it should be. I have avoided thinking through most of this process, which probably sounds as unbelievable to you as it is to me.

As introspective as I am, I haven’t let myself think much at all. Over-thinking the spotting in the face of such good test results would have discouraged me, and I might have given up. Over-thinking the heartbeat would have encouraged me to start planning nursery themes and looking forward to baby registries and showers, and I wasn’t ready to throw caution to the wind. I think the psychological term for that is protective pessimism. As much as I haven’t given up, I haven’t felt safe in my hope yet either. Baby steps are in order. (Pun intended…) I realize that saying I can’t abandon all fear of disappointment in the face of God’s new plan for us probably indicates a lack of trust. Instead of running full-tilt into the joys of pregnancy, I’m creeping into it – trying it on for size, testing for each step like a first-time high rope walker.

I trust that God is at work and that there is a plan here (as there has been all along), but I also feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop as if I’m conditioned to expect the worst. I suppose physically, I am. Spiritually, though, I know that there’s really not another shoe. No matter what, God is God, and God is good. So what keeps me from doing cheers and signing up for the weekly baby update app and zapping things at Buy Buy Baby? As much as I truly believe this baby is sticking around, I have a world of experience in loss, so I may not really believe it until a week after the baby is delivered. I suppose I wouldn’t need to dig very deeply to find that there’s a fine layer of guilt not too far beneath the pain. To dive whole hog into pregnancy joy feels like a small betrayal of the babies we’ve lost, as if there was no joy in their presence or as if I might forget them. I know it’s an irrational thought, but grief is not rational.

One of my favorite poems we studied in a lit class I took my senior year in college is “Surprised by Joy” by William Wordsworth. You can find the full text very easily if you search for the title. The theme of the poem is moving on from grief, and the writer is surprised and more than a little guilty to be feeling joy in place of the sorrow and separation. It’s a beautiful poem – I’ve always thought Wordsworth was the most aptly named poet in history – and it much more beautifully than I can sums up the feelings I have about this pregnancy, especially a pregnancy following so closely after our latest miscarriage. If you’re disappointed that I haven’t been more enthusiastic about such great news, give me some time. I’m not much of a squealer to begin with, but I’m sure in a few more weeks I’ll be driving you nuts with baby updates and using lots of exclamation points!!!

For now, to answer a few of the questions I get a lot, we are right at 8 weeks, and our due date right now is January 31, 2013. Although our very first pregnancy technically lasted longer than where we are now, it was a blighted ovum, so having seen the fetal pole and now the heartbeat means that we know this isn’t a blighted ovum. This is the first time we’ve ever been able to see a baby; this is the first time I won’t just be wishing to see a heartbeat – now I can’t wait to hear it!

All the Time

You have turned my mourning into joyful dancing.
You have taken away my clothes of mourning and clothed me with joy,
that I might sing praises to you and not be silent.
O LORD my God, I will give you thanks forever! (Psalm 30:11, 12 NLT)

That pretty much sums up how I feel this week. I may seem a little quiet compared to some of my friends about praising God for our good lab work. Let me pause right here and say, God deserves all the credit and glory for continuing to give us good news about this pregnancy. Let me continue by adding that he deserves all the glory from every situation in my life, including the losses. Any good that has come from that pain has all come from him. Any good that comes from continuing this pregnancy will all come from him.

I hope that my faith has been acted out in my life plainly enough that anyone reading this would know that my faith is in God all the time. I have been exhorted more than once this week to remember that God can do anything and that we should never doubt his power. If I didn’t forget that through nine pregnancy losses, I’m not going to forget it now. What I don’t want to happen is for my focus to shift from relying on God to letting my faith rest on what he can do for me. I don’t want anyone else to be shaken in their faith if our desired and prayed for outcome doesn’t come to be. I praise God for keeping me whole and sane and for giving me great news about this pregnancy. I will not stop praising God if our good news changes – “O Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever!” No matter what.

This has to be your prayer, too, if you are praying for me. I would love nothing more than to find twins on our ultrasound in a few weeks; I would love nothing more than to see a single heartbeat; I would love nothing more than to experience a complete pregnancy and hold a squirmy baby early next year. Any part of that dream coming true would be a blessing from God; none of it is a measure of his love for me. We tend to be if-then thinkers: if God gives me a baby this time, he loves me a lot. Wrong. There is no if-then with God except that he loves us, and IF we accept the sacrifice his son made as the ultimate sacrifice for our sins, THEN we become his children and will live to praise him forever. The good things he gives us are gifts – wholly undeserved, and absolutely no reflection of any goodness we may have demonstrated in our lives.

This baby is already a gift from God; born or unborn it’s his creation, and it’s part of my life forever. Have no doubt that I am giving God the glory for this gift and our joy. Have no doubt that God is good all the time, when you can see his good gifts – like our lab work this week – but even when it hurts, even when you’ve lost, and even when you mourn. ALL the time, God is good.

Period. End of Discussion.

This was the title of the post that was running around in my head last week. It was going to say that I hate the period after a miscarriage. As if the miscarriage wasn’t loss enough, you spend the month (actually, the rest of your life) after trying to cope and return to some sort of normalcy when you are hit with the ultimate normalcy of your next period. Maybe I’m weird (okay, there’s no maybe about that one…) or alone in this feeling, but the period after a loss can be harder to cope with than the moment of the loss itself; you can autopilot through a few weeks or even a month, and you can imagine that there was some sort or mistake in the lab work – or that it was all a nightmare that you’ll wake up from – until you start your period. (Squeamish folks/guys, skip to the next paragraph now.) Nothing feels more final or fatal than blood when you lose a pregnancy – it’s a constant, graphic reminder of your baby’s death. The return of a normal cycle just nails the coffin shut on your dead dream with the same bloody fatalism.

Here’s the rest of the story this month. Generally, I am only moody when I’m extremely stressed or my hormones are running amok, and my expression of moodiness is either to be angry at everything for no apparent reason or to cry at everything, also for no apparent reason. This was how I felt Monday last week, along with all of the general aches and pains associated with periods, so I consulted the calendar and discovered that I should be starting at any point. By Thursday, I was beyond cranky, so I decided to psych myself out with a pregnancy test – I could take it, see that it was negative and my imagination was running wild, and then feel free to start my period. God clearly has a sense of humor. That was the fastest changing, darkest line we’ve probably ever had on a home pregnancy test. I had just been waiting for my period to start so I could start taking the pill again so we could do the second opinion appointment so we could have a better idea of what steps to take next so we could… apparently watch God laugh at our attempts to plan.

I really considered not telling anyone, including my husband, until sometime next week. If it didn’t work out, I would only be a week late starting, which would probably not be all that unusual after an IVF cycle. As the opening paragraph indicated, I was already set to be a grump anyway, so who would notice if I was more of a grump? If it did work out, then I’d be far enough along to confidently yell “Surprise! We’re pregnant!” at random. You may be wondering why I considered not sharing this at all since I’ve been pretty open about everything we’ve dealt with. Honestly, I felt a little embarrassed. We spent the last two months dealing with IVF and another pregnancy loss – how could we have let yet another pregnancy happen? How could I possibly tell anyone without feeling like an idiot? I even hesitated to go to the doctor’s office on Friday. The staff would surely think we were nuts, and it’s hard to date a pregnancy that happens the cycle after a miscarriage, so… There were a million little nagging thoughts like that.

Of course, I couldn’t have been more wrong. The nurse gave me several huge hugs, and the lab tech drew a souvenir pig on the test (I told her about inheriting my grandmother’s pig collection since they had pig stress balls to squeeze for blood draws last month…) which the nurse brought out and gave to me. My friends have been just as surprised as we were, but they have been amazing and supportive – as if I should expect anything less! You guys are awesome! My mom may win the best response award this time. She decided that we are having twins – one for me, and one for her. When I said Steven may not like that idea, she amended her decision to triplets – one for me, one for him, and one for her. I think there was a “Friends” episode like that: “There are three of them – surely they won’t miss one…”

The blood work Friday looked really good. The progesterone level was good, and the hcg level was 263, which might be the highest first test we’ve had. I know it’s the highest first level we’ve had in the last few years. If all is well, by Tuesday’s re-check, the hcg level should be at least over 600, and maybe even close to 1000. I’m hoping for 1000 tomorrow because that would be the best-possible-case scenario. It looks like we are right at five weeks, and this is where we always run into trouble. Right now, everything looks great, and I am hopeful that I have faced my last post-miscarriage period. Right now, I have no idea what God’s plan is, but I have no doubt he’s in control of every circumstance, regardless of the outcome. Period. End of discussion.

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Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day is not my favorite day to deal with, and this year it had the added sting of following so closely behind a loss and sharing the date with my birthday. I have often skipped church on Mother’s Day to avoid dealing with it – the awkward (for me, anyway) invitation to stand as an acknowledgement of achieving motherhood, the awkward (for me, anyway) gift that I can’t gracefully accept or decline without losing it a little, and the simple recognition of a day that I can’t really participate in even though I have children. It’s just not the same, and it’s a reminder of loss and unattainable dreams. The absolute hardest Mother’s Day church service is definitely baby dedication. It’s a sweet tradition – if you’ve had babies to dedicate – otherwise, it’s a good day to sleep in.
This year, there was no baby dedication during the service, and we decided to brave it. (Actually, I decided to try it, and my sweet husband who wouldn’t have been too affected by the day agreed to support whatever I felt like I could handle…) There was no extra standing ovation for the moms present this year, but there was a request during the greeting to hug a mom near you while greeting the people sitting around you. In the choir loft, mass hugging ensued, but I noticed one of our sweet older ladies on the back row had tears forming in her eyes while she tried to keep her face still. She and her husband have been married for over fifty years, and they never had children. She’s never told me so, but I get the feeling that she probably lost at least one pregnancy; she’s told me that people her age just don’t talk about things like that. I went over to give her a special hug, and she said, “It’s just a hard day.” I said, “I know” and spent the next song trying not to cry when I realized what I needed to tell her after the service.
After church I caught her in the ladies robing room before she had a chance to get out into the crowd so I could tell her this: “You are just as much a mother as anyone else here today who actually gave birth. You count today for all the time and love you have put into the lives around you – including mine. You are a mom, and you deserved a special hug today and to know that.” We were both crying by then, and she said, “It’s so nice to hear that you count.” It is nice, and it’s hard to feel like you count on a day like Mother’s Day when you have failed the simple biological task of becoming a mother. You feel like you shouldn’t count because you failed. It’s silly when viewed logically, but that’s the emotional toll.
I had the honor of helping another hurting lady through that day, and I was reminded less than five minutes later almost word for word by a sweet friend that I count for the same reasons I gave my choir buddy. Mother’s Day was still not an easy day for me, but it was a sweet reminder of how the body of Christ should work: serving and being served, building up and being built up, encouraging each other in love.

Patience

I say quite often that patience is not my strong suit. I won’t say that anymore. There is a long-standing “joke” among Christians that you should never pray for patience because God will give you opportunities to use it. Ask any group at any church what happened when they asked God to give them patience; they didn’t suddenly, mystically reach such a zen-like state that Buddhist monks were jealous and asking for pointers – they encountered circumstance after circumstance that tried their patience – a baptism by fire, if you will. We silly humans expect that if we pray for peace or patience that this brilliant light accompanied by an angelic “ah” chord will signal to us that we have received the requested virtue. God, on the other hand, likes for us to experience firsthand the results of said requested virtue by putting it into practice – usually immediately.

It has taken me years to accept peace and patience from God, but this last month has proven that I am finally getting it through my thick skull. We had a follow-up appointment last week with the fertility specialist. I was expecting him to say something along the lines of “your egg quality isn’t very good, so we just can’t expect a better outcome in the future.” I had been bargaining with God for an if, then result – a clean answer to move on and give up trying ever again to carry my own child. Even though my husband and I had carefully avoided discussing possible courses of action until we went to this visit, I was fully expecting to hear that we were done pursuing this route. As much as I had told myself that it would be a good answer – a definitive directive to go forth and adopt – I couldn’t deal with the thought of never, ever having a successful pregnancy, of never, ever having those special moments with my husband of feeling the baby kick or seeing our baby on an ultrasound picture while we both pretended we knew exactly what we were seeing in the grainy picture on the monitor. So, I put all thinking on pause for a few weeks until we went for the follow-up, knowing that after that visit, my soul would be crushed, and I would grieve more for the loss of that dream than for the loss of our last pregnancy.

In retrospect, I should have known from our medical history to date that there would be no such clean answer. Our doctor still has no idea why we can’t maintain a pregnancy, and he has recommended a second opinion visit with another doctor. As the doctor said, he feels like we’ve done everything we can to determine what the problem is, but for our sake he hopes another pair of eyes will find the magic bullet. I’m sure that for a doctor it’s hard to hope that you were wrong and that another doctor will solve the problem, even when you’re sure you’ve done everything in your power and doubt that there can be any other answer. That’s humility and love, and that’s why this entire doctor’s staff is so great at what they do.

Obviously, patience and peace have been two of the things I have begged God to give me, and I know that he has because of my response to last week’s news. We still have no indication that there is actually a problem, and we’re going to see another doctor who will not likely have anything to add to that statement. I’ve been waiting for that lack of knowledge to send me into a raging bull state of mind, but I’ve been surprisingly settled with the lack of answers. It felt like mercy to find that although I may not be able to carry a child for no apparent reason, the dream isn’t dead. We had already decided to table any further action, whether it’s IVF or just trying again or adopting, until at least the fall, so this doesn’t change that decision to pause for a while. We’ll go to the new doctor in a few weeks, and we’re investigating adoption agencies and options. We’ll wait, and we’ll know that we have the peace and patience to wait calmly and expectantly for God to direct our next steps.

The Christian View of IVF

The title is an intentional misnomer. There is no one Christian view of IVF, and there won’t be until Jesus returns. As a Christian and an IVF patient, I’ve had to navigate a LOT of rhetoric and conflicting viewpoints to establish my own beliefs about IVF. If you google the phrase “Christian view of IVF,” you will find a plethora of opinions that are loosely, if at all, based on the Bible. Most of the opinions are based on statistics and bad biology. I have been thinking for months about whether to share what I believe and how to share it in a way that would make sense and hopefully encourage some of you who may agree with the Pope’s position that IVF is a “grave evil” to dig a little deeper. I think the most sensical way is to organize this as a statement of common opinions followed by a rebuttal, so here goes, and be warned this is a lot longer than most of what I post.

Opinion: IVF is unacceptable because some embryos will be destroyed or will not survive the process, and any unused embryos may be frozen indefinitely or destroyed. The only thing these unused embryos need is nourishment to grow into full-term babies.

I thought I’d tackle the toughest one first, and I know this is the one point that will alienate more than a few personhood amendment followers. I believe that some form of life begins at conception; I do not believe human life can form until it is implanted in the uterus. I also believe that you cannot form an opinion about this without studying the biological as well as the biblical basis for this. If all an embryo needs is nourishment to become a full-term baby, then it would not necessarily need a womb; science can’t reproduce the effect that implantation has on an embryo. Obviously, that is a necessary step in creating human life beyond the cellular life form of an un-implanted embryo. Read very clearly here that I do not agree with abortion; once an embryo has been implanted, it should stay there. That’s a whole other topic, so that’s all I will say. The biblical basis for claiming that life begins at conception, end of story, is usually Psalm 139:13 that says, “You formed my inward parts and knit me together in my mother’s womb.” Other oft-quoted verses are Job 31:15, Psalm 22:9-10, Isaiah 44:2, and Isaiah 44:24, all of which describe a person being formed in the womb. I don’t disagree that life begins in the womb, and you’ll have a tough time proving anything more specific than that with the Bible. As eternal beings, conception as the beginning point of human life might also be an arbitrary biological point on the timeline; Jeremiah 1:5 and Psalm 139:16 both speak of being known by God as a person before any biological beginning – “before I formed you in your mother’s womb” and “every moment was laid out before a single day had passed” both imply that we are eternal beings that God created and knows intimately, both before and after our earthly life span. I realize that this may seem inconsistent with the thought that biological human life begins at implantation, but, then again, this view makes conception just as arbitrary a point for creating laws and moral codes to protect unborn children.
As far as the embryos that don’t survive, here is the biological fact to consider: this happens all the time in nature. I don’t know if there is data with an approximate number, but over the reproductive lifespan of a married woman, there are easily dozens of eggs that become fertilized but do not for some reason implant. When that happens, the woman’s body doesn’t respond to the fertilized egg/embryo as a pregnancy. The embryo is wasted in the menstrual cycle. No one bewails the loss of these embryos because no one ever knew of their existence. The embryos that don’t survive IVF are representative of that many naturally wasted embryos. A woman is born with a certain number of eggs and no more. The only difference in those eggs becoming naturally occurring embryo losses over a time span of months and those embryos being lost via IVF procedure is that more eggs are fertilized at one time and we can know exactly how many there were. If three embryos are lost in IVF, it represents three failed months of attempting pregnancy without intervention and three embryos that would not have survived in the womb had they been traditionally conceived. As for the embryos that are not used, every couple has to decide what to do based on their situation and beliefs. I personally find that freezing them for an indefinite period is wrong. If you view those embryos as human lives, and you leave them on ice forever, how is that different from leaving a loved one on life support in a brain-dead state until they die of old age or opportunistic disease? Where most Christians would not have any moral objection to the termination of extreme life support or to DNR orders, many are content to leave embryos frozen interminably so they don’t have to confront the problem of what to do with them.

Opinion: IVF is unacceptable because it only has a 20% success rate; no one should willingly risk the life of a child with those odds.

This statistical argument angers me on many levels. According to this line of thought, I should be sterilized since I have a less than 10% chance of a successful outcome without intervention solely based on the number of miscarriages we’ve had. For me to get pregnant naturally or otherwise would be child endangerment. Of course, the problem with this argument is that it doesn’t take a rational view of any other statistics, like those surrounding miscarriage. It is estimated that 20% of all diagnosed pregnancies end in miscarriage and perhaps as many as 50% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage when very early unknown pregnancies are included (this stat came from the March of Dimes, but you’ll see it a lot if you research miscarriage very much). If a naturally occurring pregnancy has a 1 in 5 chance of failing, possibly even as high as a 1 in 2 chance of failing, why aren’t we berating all women for getting pregnant and risking these innocent lives? Again, we’re willing to assume some risk and loss in nature but not from science.

Opinion: IVF is tantamount to cloning, gene manipulation and genetic selection.

I have seen more than one opinion piece claim that couples can choose the gender of the eggs that are implanted, and we are only days away from genetic screening that would allow couples to choose more desirable traits and not transfer the embryos that may have less desirable qualities. Maybe there are labs that do this. Our doctor has yet to offer or guarantee that we could choose the gender of the embryos we transfer, and the genetic testing to make this guarantee risks damaging the embryo, which I’d guess is why our doctor hasn’t even mentioned this option. There is a bit of selection that occurs before transfer: every doctor I’ve ever heard of chooses the strongest looking, most well developed embryos for transfer to have the best chance of those embryos being able to implant themselves once they make it to the womb. Couples are generally screened for genetic abnormalities that could cause life endangering genetic birth defects for which their offspring might be at risk before any doctor will proceed with IVF. That allows doctors to know if there’s a genetic reason for recurrent miscarriages or infertility, and it allows couples to choose whether or not to proceed if they could pass on a risky gene, all without creating embryos to test. I’m sure that there are and will be doctors in the future who will manipulate the genetics. I do agree that this practice is wrong, and as a patient the only way to avoid this and ensure that you are not supporting doctors who encourage genetic manipulation is to do your homework before you choose a doctor and to report any abuses you see. I’m not sure how and where to draw all the lines, and the ethics of cloning and gene manipulation have been hotly debated in the scientific community for decades.

Opinion: Couples who choose IVF are “tinkering” with God’s work in the process of having children. Maybe these unnaturally conceived children were never meant to be born.

I invite anyone who holds this opinion to reevaluate their use of modern medical procedures and then come back to the discussion. We accept medical tinkering all the time in the form of medicine, surgery, respirators… The list is longer than ever before in history. If you have no problem with organ transplants or pacemakers or insulin pumps, I think your logic is inconsistent if you disagree with infertility treatments on “tinkering” grounds. And you’ve also limited God by stating that children conceived through infertility treatments were never meant to be born. Either God is all-powerful or he’s not. Do you really think God would allow the birth of a child he couldn’t love or use to glorify him? I suppose this opens the free will versus predestination argument, but I don’t think it’s a terribly important topic for anyone to spend a lot of time on. Either God is omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent, or he’s not. End of discussion. 😉

Opinion: Perhaps infertility issues are a sign from God that the couple should adopt. There is too much emphasis placed on having biological children, especially when there are so many orphans who need homes.

Malarky. I would no more try to tell someone, friend or stranger, that their present difficulties were a sign from God unless God directly told me to. We don’t go around telling cancer patients that breast cancer is a sign from God to eat more broccoli and never miss a screening test. God certainly sends us signs, but there is no biblical basis for telling anyone that God is telling them to adopt just because they are dealing with infertility. The most often quoted passages about being patient through infertility are about Sarah and Isaac (read Genesis) and about Hannah and Elkanah (read Samuel) and neither passage speaks of either couple adopting as a means of fulfilling God’s promise to give them children. Sarah took matters into her own hands as her future granddaughters-in-law would also do, and Hannah waited for God to intervene on her behalf, but both gave birth to their promised children. God does give us signs, and sometimes he uses other people to show them to us, but resist judging the signs you think you see in someone else’s life unless you feel God leading you to point them out. You have no idea what God has put into the hearts of a couple struggling with infertility, and we’ve usually considered and prayed about every option you’re going to throw in our faces. If you’re still sure that we as a society are placing too much emphasis on biological children, consider this verse in the New Testament: “But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.” 1 Timothy 2:15. I have yet to hear a decent answer about why this verse is even in the Bible if we are all saved through faith. As a Christian woman, how am I supposed to interpret this in my life? Do eight (now nine, actually) consecutive miscarriages imply that I am not able to be saved? Personally, I find this verse extremely difficult to live with because it only speaks judgment to me. Men tend to skip this one because it doesn’t really apply to them, and they can’t understand the female perspective of this idea. Trust me men, there are a lot of hurdles presented to women in this single sentence, the least of which is a direct emphasis on biological children.

Opinion: IVF is an expensive procedure, and the couple would be better off not wasting their money on something that may or may not work; they should spend that money on adoption since it’s a sure thing.

IVF is expensive, but adoption costs just as much or more unless you manage a private adoption that doesn’t require any agency assistance. Since most adoptions go through an agency, most adoptions cost more than IVF. Some couples have insurance coverage for IVF and other infertility treatments, reducing their cost. And adoption may be more of a sure thing statistically than IVF, but it is not a guaranteed sure thing. All of us must be good stewards of the money God entrusts us with, so all of us have to make these decisions based on our financial status. We all have to make responsible decisions, and I agree that it is irresponsible to spend so much on IVF or any other infertility treatment that you have nothing left or are facing extreme debt. We’ll be facing a decision point soon about whether to begin the adoption process or whether to give IVF one more shot. No matter what we do, we have to make sure that our financial house is in order before proceeding.

The bottom line is this: we are all human, and none of us has a complete grasp on the will of God at every moment; we pray, and we seek counsel, and we make the best decision we can based on the direction we think God is leading us. If you think that anyone, especially a Christian, lightly makes the decision to try IVF, you’d better keep thinking. If you as a Christian feel that IVF is morally wrong, then you should not ever under any circumstances do it. If you feel that God is leading you in any direction, you’d better follow, whether it’s IVF or serving the homeless or sharing your faith with strangers. Go where God has prepared for you to go, and you’ll be walking in the right direction. Don’t go, or run the other way, and God will bring you back (maybe in the belly of a giant fish…) to where he wants you to be. In the meantime, if you feel tempted to tell someone going through IVF that they are a murderer or perpetrating a great evil, stop. This tactic will not work unless you are a proven and inerrant prophet. If you really feel led to confront someone, you should speak from love and not the hateful words that fill out so much of the rhetoric surrounding IVF and other fertility treatments. And, if you feel that you should confront me, tread lightly and lovingly; I have had lots of time to pray about what I believe and about our current course of action, and my b.s. rhetoric meter is pretty sensitive.

My conscience is clear, but that doesn’t prove I’m right. It is the Lord himself who will examine me and decide. (1 Corinthians 4:4 NLT)

Signs and Wonders

Yesterday was obviously a difficult day; after a week of waiting, we found out that our suspicions were correct and our pregnancy had not continued. One thing I always question God about in this situation is why he doesn’t perform a miracle for me. It’s selfish and a little silly to compare what God is doing in my life with other people who have had miraculous intervention that saved their baby when the pregnancy was endangered. But it’s a hard pill to swallow if I look at it too long from my human perspective without considering that I can’t see the bigger picture of what he’s doing through our losses.
Here are the miracles that did happen yesterday: two people separately and specifically prayed that
God would be enough to sustain me and my husband through this loss; a whole mass of people sent us love and support and prayers through messages and phone calls; we were directly loved by God through an amazing network of family and friends who will continue to hold us up with prayer and physical comfort through the next weeks and months. We have been the body of Christ supporting others, and now we are receiving the support of the body of Christ.
God could have performed a miracle and continued our pregnancy, and he would have received glory from that. It would have been a great story. But what’s the better story? Which ending gives more glory to God? I don’t know, but I am grateful to be able to see that his love being expressed through dozens of people is also a miracle that not everyone will experience. Any loss can be isolating, and miscarriage tends to be even more so because people don’t share it or family and friends feel uncomfortable discussing it. We have the blessing of feeling the wagons circling around us and isolating us from the loneliness instead of the other way around.
I heard more than once yesterday that I should be a bigger mess than I am because of this pregnancy loss and because of the sheer volume of our losses. There are two reasons I haven’t fallen apart yet. Right now the news, even though expected, doesn’t feel real; it will become real and painful soon enough. And, I can confidently say that I have faith that will sustain me, and I have the love of Christ expressed in so many ways in my life that I have no reason to fall apart. This walk would be impossible without that knowledge; logic alone would give me the right to give in to the self-pity and depression. Faith and the sacrificial love of Christ demand and empower me to work through it (trust me, there will be depression and anger and every other stage of grief in its time) and not let it cripple the rest of my life. The song “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger” has been extremely popular, probably because people cling to the thought that just surviving a trial makes us stronger, better people. I won’t pretend to know enough of the words to claim that the song as a whole has any sort of biblical message, but the title certainly does. God uses our weaknesses to show his strength. When we can demonstrate his strengths rather than rely on our own, we are stronger, better people who thrive rather than just survive a trial.
While it certainly isn’t the miracle I was hoping for, God is showing us signs and wonders of a different sort. The weeks and months to come will certainly hold different perspectives for me, and most of them will not be this reasonable or faithful. Once survival mode ends later this week or next week, the even greater miracle will be continuing to seek God’s face through the pain.

Good News, Bad News, and More Waiting

So we have some good news: the pregnancy test is positive. The bad news is it’s just barely positive. The hcg level is low, which is not a good sign, but I go back for a recheck on Wednesday. To paraphrase the nurse who called, we don’t see a lot of numbers this low that work out, but we have to wait and see. I love the staff at Alabama Fertility Specialists – they do a difficult job with grace and sincere concern for their patients. That’s a rare gift for couples like us, especially if you’ve dealt with difficult circumstances like our multiple miscarriages at a regular OB/GYN office.

I’m glad to have the positive test result no matter what happens from here. Regardless of the outcome here, we’ll have a better idea how to proceed and when to change directions. Positive, no matter how faint, means that we have made every attempt medically possible to ensure a good outcome. If things don’t end with a healthy pregnancy this time, we’ll have the benefit of a great doctor’s expertise on whether to try IVF again or not, and we’ll be able to walk away from this path without any doubts. If things stay positive, then we’ll have an exciting path to walk right now. Either way, God has answered our prayers through this particular journey with a positive pregnancy test, and he’ll lead us to the next step.

I keep (sort of) joking that a positive pregnancy test is akin to Gideon’s fleece prayers (see Judges 6 – I LOVE this story!). I have been telling God that I really need a positive test no matter the end result because if it works, that’s a great and immediately answered prayer; if we still miscarry, then I’ll be content to walk away. People keep telling me stories about couples who start to adopt and then have successful pregnancies. Usually these stories are prefaced with, “They had a hard time, just like you guys…” I hate these comments with a passion that’s hard to describe. Adoption has always been an option for us, but I want to pursue it wholeheartedly, without any part of me thinking that it’s a consolation prize. Essentially, I need God to close the other doors if he’s not going to audibly tell us, “Go forth and adopt a child.” We are reaching that point, and I’m excited to see what God is up to. It has to be spectacular because he’s spent a long time preparing us. We could not have even tried IVF a few years ago – our marriage wouldn’t have weathered the added strain, and I would have been a neurotic, depressed mess before we even got potentially bad news like today’s. But we not only survived the IVF process but also grew through it: my darling husband has become an expert with a hypodermic needle, and our marriage is stronger than ever.

I would never have imagined this would be part of our story. Sometimes I think I’d like to change our story, but then I know we’d be missing out on something God designed. Waiting patiently isn’t exactly my forte, but I keep finding myself in this wait-and-see mode. We managed the first two-week wait; now we’re in for the real two-week wait in our story. And my fleece is waiting.