Tag Archives: infertility

Infertility, Messiness and Hope

Posted on by

4

carry on

When my oldest son was almost 2, I decided I was ready to have another baby.  We had always dreamed about having two kids.  We tried for months and months and months to get pregnant with no luck.  I’m a worrier, so with each passing month, my freak-out factor went way up!  And with each passing month, the more upset I got.  More frustrated.  More sad.  More angry.  More depressed.

When we had been trying for 2 years, I decided to go see a fertility doctor.  All my tests came back perfectly normal, so the doctor thought this was going to be easy.  I wound up doing three treatments with this doctor.  Clomid, injections, and IUI’s.  I had to take breaks in between months because I would develop huge cysts due to the drugs.

Looking back, I realize I was massively depressed.  I couldn’t think about anything for 2 1/2 years besides my pain and trying to figure out how to fix it.  I hurt extremely deeply.  But for the most part, infertility is something we don’t talk about.  At least I didn’t feel like I could talk about it.  It felt like no one understood me.  I felt alone.

During this time, a dear friend of mine was already going to an infertility support group, so I finally decided to go with her.  Previous to this experience, I never ever thought I would step foot into a support group.  And had it not been for my friend, I probably never would have gone.  It proved to be a huge help.  It was great to realize that I wasn’t alone.  It gave me a group of people who knew exactly what I was going through, knew the terminology of the treatments, the feelings I was feeling, and the highs and lows of the journey.  I’m a fan of groups like these now.  If you need help, get it!  Find a group that you can connect with to help you feel as normal as possible.

After I found out my third treatment didn’t work, I hit my lowest of lows.  I had begged God to let me get pregnant before a few of my friends got pregnant with their second kids.  This is horrible, I know, but it shows how low I was.  One night, one of these friends called to tell me that she was pregnant.  The very next night, the other friend called to tell me she was pregnant.  This was more than I could take.  My husband was gone to a school event, so he wasn’t home.  I wound up having to call my parents to come take care of my oldest son because I was absolutely hysterical.  My mom talked with me and did everything she could to calm me down, but I was a huge wreck.  Huge wreck!

The next day after this, I had another doctor appointment.  When I went in, I was told that I had another set of really large cysts, and I was going to have to wait three months to do another treatment.  And the doctor thought that the next treatment should be my last.  I wound up holding my tears in until I got to the parking lot, and then I lost it.  I called into work and told them that I was not coming in that day and went home.  I sat on my back porch doing everything I could to calm down until my mom came over to cheer me up.

Along the way through this journey, some friends had told me about an N.D. in Arkansas who had helped some friends of theirs.  I always thought that was kind of weird, but when I was out of options, I wrote a short letter to the guy and a few days later he wrote me back to tell me what he thought the problem was.  I immediately started taking the herbs that he had suggested, and after three days of taking the herbs (trust me!), I was pregnant.  I fully believe the Holy Spirit led my friends to tell me about this doctor, and that the Holy Spirit was at work in this whole situation.

When I found out I was pregnant, a ton of feelings and thoughts raged within me.  I was happy, but I still had a lot of emotions I needed to work through.  I was still angry and frustrated at how the last 2 1/2 years had gone.  And it took a good while to work through all of this.

When I was 9 weeks along, I had my first ultrasound and found out that I was pregnant with twins.  Because of all of the ultrasounds I had endured over the last two years, I had gotten really good at telling what was on the screen.  So, as soon as the picture came on the screen, I knew there were two babies.  I knew before the new ultrasound tech knew. 🙂

The pregnancy was hard.  My back hurt like crazy while my body stretched and I became enormous!!  I wanted to do everything possible to make sure that the babies were healthy and minimize the chances of them being born too early.  So, I ate like crazy.  I went to work, but that was it.  If I wasn’t at work, I was at home laying on the couch.  I quit going to church…really anywhere.

When I found out that we were having a boy and a girl, I was really excited!  And on the way back to work after the doctor appointment where we found out, I realized how much of a blessing I had been given by God.  I had always wanted two boys.  Then after my oldest son was born, I started praying for a girl.  On the car ride back to work, I realized God had given me everything that I had asked for.  I had to wait years to have another baby, but I felt like God was telling me that he had heard my prayers and blessed me more than I could have possibly imagined years before.

Sadie and Luke were born on February 2nd, 2011 during a crazy, crazy winter storm.  Sadie was 4 lbs., 15 oz. and Luke was 5 lbs., 15 oz.  They were three weeks early, but they were perfectly healthy and did not have to go to the NICU at all.  As I lay on the table waiting on my doctor to stitch me up after my C-section, hearing both babies cry was the most beautiful sound I may ever hear.  I lay on the table cracking up at how crazy the last 3 years had been, how crazy it was to have two tiny, tiny healthy babies crying nearby and how crazy things were going to be in our house for a while.

I’m not going to lie, the last three years have been majorly crazy.  They have been really hard.  But they have been beautiful!

Sadie and Luke are my miracle babies.  After I found out I was having twins, I asked my OB and my infertility doctor if the previous month’s fertility meds had anything to do with me having twins.  Both doctors said the drugs had nothing to do with it.  The drugs were fully out of my system.

God had everything to do with it!

Twins

–My Messy Beautiful

This essay and I are part of the Messy, Beautiful Warrior Project — To learn more and join us, CLICK HERE! And to learn about the New York Times Bestselling Memoir Carry On Warrior: The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life, just released in paperback, CLICK HERE!

The Story of Sadie and Luke

Posted on by

9

When Caleb was almost 2, I decided I was ready to have another baby.  We had always dreamed about having two kids.  We tried for months and months and months to get pregnant with no luck.  I’m a worrier, so with each passing month, my freak-out factor went way up!  And with each passing month, the more upset I got.  More frustrated.  More sad.  More angry.  More depressed.

When we had been trying for 2 years, I decided to go see a fertility doctor.  All my tests came back perfectly normal, so the doctor thought this was going to be easy.  I wound up doing three treatments with this doctor.  Clomid, injections, and IUI’s.  I had to take breaks in between months because I would develop huge cysts due to the drugs.

Looking back, I realize I was massively depressed.  I couldn’t think about anything for 2 1/2 years besides my pain and trying to figure out how to fix it.  I hurt extremely deeply.  But for the most part, infertility is something we don’t talk about.  At least I didn’t feel like I could talk about it.  It felt like no one understood me.  I felt alone.

During this time, my dear friend Stacy was already going to an infertility support group, so I finally decided to go with her.  Previous to this experience, I never ever thought I would step foot into a support group.  And had it not been for my friend, I probably never would have gone.  It proved to be a huge help.  It was great to realize that I wasn’t alone.  It gave me a group of people who knew exactly what I was going through, knew the terminology of the treatments, the feelings I was feeling, and the highs and lows of the journey.  I’m a fan of groups like these now.  If you need help, get it!  Find a group that you can connect with to help you feel as normal as possible.

After I found out my third treatment didn’t work, I hit my lowest of lows.  I had begged God to let me get pregnant before a few of my friends got pregnant with their second kids.  This is horrible, I know, but it shows how low I was.  One night, one of these friends called to tell me that she was pregnant.  The very next night, the other friend called to tell me she was pregnant.  This was more than I could take.  Chris was gone to a school event, so he wasn’t home.  I wound up having to call my parents to come take care of Caleb because I was absolutely hysterical.  My mom talked with me and did everything she could to calm me down, but I was a huge wreck.  Huge wreck!

The next day after this, I had another doctor appointment.  When I went in, I was told that I had another set of really large cysts, and I was going to have to wait three months to do another treatment.  And the doctor thought that the next treatment should be my last.  I wound up holding my tears in until I got to the parking lot, and then I lost it.  I called into work and told them that I was not coming in that day and went home.  I sat on my back porch doing everything I could to calm down until my mom came over to cheer me up.

Along the way through this journey, some friends had told me about an N.D. in Arkansas who had helped some friends of theirs.  I always thought that was kind of weird, but when I was out of options, I wrote a short letter to the guy and a few days later he wrote me back to tell me what he thought the problem was.  I immediately started taking the herbs that he had suggested, and after three days of taking the herbs (trust me!), I was pregnant.  I fully believe the Holy Spirit led my friends to tell me about this doctor, and that the Holy Spirit was at work in this whole situation.

When I found out I was pregnant, a ton of feelings and thoughts raged within me.  I was happy, but I still had a lot of emotions I needed to work through.  I was still angry and frustrated at how the last 2 1/2 years had gone.  And it took a good while to work through all of this.

When I was 9 weeks along, I had my first ultrasound and found out that I was pregnant with twins.  Because of all of the ultrasounds I had had over the last two years, I had gotten really good at telling what was on the screen.  So, as soon as the picture came on the screen, I knew there were two babies.  I knew before the new ultrasound tech knew. 🙂

The pregnancy was hard.  My back hurt like crazy while my body stretched and I became enormous!!  I wanted to do everything possible to make sure that the babies were healthy and minimize the chances of them being born too early.  So, I ate like crazy.  I went to work, but that was it.  If I wasn’t at work, I was at home laying on the couch.  I quit going to church…really anywhere.

When I found out that we were having a boy and a girl, I was really excited!  And on the way back to work after the doctor appointment where we found out, I realized how much of a blessing I had been given by God.  I had always wanted two boys.  Then after Caleb was born, I started praying for a girl.  On the car ride back to work, I realized God had given me everything that I had asked for.  I had to wait years to have another baby, but I felt like God was telling me that he had heard my prayers and blessed me more than I could have possibly imagined years before.

Sadie and Luke were born on February 2nd, 2011 during a crazy, crazy winter storm.  Sadie was 4 lbs., 15 oz. and Luke was 5 lbs., 15 oz.  They were three weeks early, but they were perfectly healthy and did not have to go to the NICU at all.  As I lay on the table waiting on my doctor to stitch me up after my C-section, hearing both babies cry was the most beautiful sound I may ever hear.  I lay on the table cracking up at how crazy the last 3 years had been, how crazy it was to have two tiny, tiny healthy babies crying nearby and how crazy things were going to be in our house for a while.

I’m not going to lie, the last three years have been majorly crazy.  They have been really hard.  But they have been beautiful!

Sadie and Luke are my miracle babies.  After I found out I was having twins, I asked my OB and my infertility doctor if the previous month’s fertility meds had anything to do with me having twins.  Both doctors said the drugs had nothing to do with it.  The drugs were fully out of my system.

God had everything to do with it!

Happy 3rd Birthday, Sadie and Luke!!!

090 093

Three things I learned from infertility

Posted on by

0

A friend I have been praying for over the last year is having her baby today.  This friend had struggled with infertility and miscarriages for years.  But today will be a very happy answer to so many prayers!  It’s an extremely exciting day, and I am thrilled that I got to pray for her along a small part of her journey.

I once struggled with infertility myself.  And once you’ve gone through it, it is the biggest honor to get to share in someone else’s journey and be there for them during all of the unsureness, scariness, worries, up and downs, etc.  I hated every minute of my infertility journey while I was going through it.  But now that I’m through it, I’m honestly glad that I had to go through all of it.  Because now I get to connect with more people, and I love that I understand what they are going through and get to let them know that their feelings, frustrations, etc. are perfectly OK!  Recently, I had someone who has never gone through infertility come up to me to ask how she should talk to and interact with someone going through infertility, and I was so stoked that this person asked and that I got to share what I learned with her.

I used to have another blog where I posted a few times about my infertility.  Below is a post I wrote about what I learned from that experience:

The biggest thing I learned through this process was how to deal with people in grief…any kind of grief. Here’s what I learned regarding people in grief:

  1. Don’t offer advice. Just listen! Everyone wants to help others when they are struggling. It’s human nature. We hate to see others suffering. But most of the time, advice is not what the grieving person needs or wants. So many well-meaning people offered up advice to me, and I know they were doing it out of love. But the thing is, you hear the same advice over and over and over. Really, all I wanted someone to do is listen to me. I needed to vent and get things off my chest. If I got advice instead, there were many times that I would be really annoyed.
  2. Ask them about it! After I finally came out and told people what we were going through, there were really only 2 or 3 people that would ask me how I was doing and want to be updated on what was happening. I can’t tell you how much I LOVE those few people!! It made me feel great that they cared enough to ask, cry with me, etc. I have one sweet, sweet friend that even to this day, when she sees me starts tearing up. (There was even one time where she was with me when it was announced that someone was pregnant. I was fine and not feeling too bad until I looked over and tears were running down her face. It touched me so much that this friend understood what I was going through and cared for me that much!) These days it’s because she is so joyful for us. And every time I see her and these tears, I feel such great love for this friend. I want to be that kind of friend. I pray that if I know someone is struggling with ANYTHING, that I will be the friend that asks how they are doing, is not afraid to listen and help bear the burden with that person. Because really, isn’t that what Christ does for us?
  3. Pray for them and let them know that you are praying. We first announced our struggle to our LIFE Group at church, and I knew that they were immediately praying for us. Then a few weeks later, we did Cardboard Testimonies at church where we shared with the church on a simple piece of cardboard what we were going through. After this, I knew that the church was praying for us. I would have people tell me all the time that they were praying and thinking of us, and I can’t tell you how much that meant to me. Then the Sunday after everyone found out that we were having twins, it was like a huge party! People that I had no clue that were praying for us, came up saying they had been. It was wonderful! And honestly, this is an area where I need some work. I tend to easily forget to pray for others, and I am going to make this better because I know how great it was when others were praying for us.