For those of you who don't know what IVF is, and I've encountered many who don't know, in vitro fertilization (IVF) is a procedure in which eggs from a woman's ovary are removed. They are fertilized with sperm in a laboratory procedure, and then the fertilized egg (embryo) is returned to the woman's uterus.
In 2008, my husband & I began trying to become pregnant. After one year, finally, I was pregnant! Unfortunately, I had a miscarriage at eight weeks. Six months later, we began trying again, and I thought for sure we'd get pregnant right away, especially since I knew a few more things about my body. Four months led to eight months, and eight months led to one year. That's when we were told that we needed to visit an infertility doctor.
I remember sitting in my OBGYN doctor's office hearing those words "infertility doctor". I wasn't physically emotional but I was in an internal state of shock. On the outside, I looked just fine, but I was lost. Lost in thoughts like, 'where do we go', 'what do we do', 'how can we possibly afford to see infertility doctors', 'what's happening', 'am I going to have to be on drugs', 'when will I have children', so many things were going through my head.
We went through a series of tests with my infertility doctor and it turns out, my health was great! Perfectly capable of carrying a child but it was my husband who had infertility issues. When we figured this out, we were given a 1% chance to conceive. I remember sitting in the waiting area in December of 2011 to get those results. We saw one or two women walking out in tears and I was in shock that I was still in an infertility doctor's office. When our doctor sat us down in his office and told us the news, we both sat quietly while he told us why. He gave us some options and when we got into the car, I had a moment of tears. How was this happening to us? Would we ever have children? Even animals are successful in having babies! Why is it that God calls us to procreate and yet we can't?! But still there were not many tears. I'm not sure if I was so heart broken that I couldn't produce them or if I felt so stuck in a state of complete hopelessness that the shock took over. I'm not sure. It was Christmas and we were in a horrible emotional state. We hid it well but Christmas wasn't fun and when you are both down you can't pick each other up. It was awful!
My husband underwent outpatient surgery in 2012 to correct an issue after many months of just letting ourselves be. We needed the time to decompress. Six months post surgery, the results were good. One year post surgery (May 2013), the results were exactly where they were preop. Dang it!
Our infertility doctor suggested from the beginning that we should consider IVF immediately but if we thought it was okay to take the extra time and explore what we were facing with my husband's infertility issue, then we could do that to. As you can see we ultimately decided not to drop thousands of dollars on a laboratory procedure and decided it would be wise for us to explore. Unfortunately it worked against us and one year postop, our infertility doctor AND urologist unanimously agreed that IVF is what needs to be done.
That's when we decided to create a Go Fund Me Crowd Fundraiser webpage to raise the funds for our IVF procedure. There's also a link on the left side of my blog. We have a video there where you can watch us tell our story.
It's been a long, emotional journey, and it's very hard to express those emotions to those who have not walked in similar shoes. It's even difficult for my own family to understand because they have children and have experienced parenthood already. I am AMAZED by so many women who have walked this same road and have experienced the same feelings I do. I've realized that I'm not crazy, that my feelings are normal, and the only way to handle them is to walk straight through it.
I've had people ask me how I would feel if I went through life and never had children. I can't answer that because my faith and hope in God is SO BIG that right now I can't mentally go there. I want children! Faith is complete trust and confidence in someone. Hope is a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. Thinking about never having children is allowing doubt to enter my mind and doubt is a feeling of uncertainty. It's a direct contradiction of what faith and hope is. I CHOOSE to have hope and faith that one day God will bring us a miracle whether it be naturally or through IVF.
2008 seems so long ago and many tears have been shed since then. We definitely have had our ups and downs but overall 2013 has been a good year. We've overcome ALOT and we've grown SSOOOO MUCH too. We ask that when and if you pray for us, that you are specific to pray that God would bring us a child naturally or through IVF. That's our faith at work. We are believing God for a miracle!
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