For this child we have prayed…

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” Proverbs 13:12

There are so many scripture verses I have clung to for comfort, hope, and perseverance over the past several years, but this proverb has been a resounding gong in my ear. Not because it gave me hope, but because it reminded me it was okay to have a heavy heart, to long for something and not see it through.

I want to share my story with you, not to elicit pity, but to offer some encouragement those of you who have similar stories and perhaps are still fighting the battle and hope-fully awaiting a miracle.

My story begins August 2016….well, actually it begins in January 2010, when my cousin Sophia was born. My Aunt Lisa and Uncle Jim still live in the court behind my parents’ house, so I grew up with sibling-close cousins and family galore. It was the best. When Sophia was born, I was only 10 years old. Young, naive, and just beginning to understand myself as a child of God. Sophia was born on the 21st of the month, and I remember that day so distinctly. It snowed, as it still seems to every year on her birthday, and we went to visit my beautiful baby cousin in the hospital. I immediately fell in love. To my aunt and uncle’s delight, I spent almost every waking hour outside of school over their house after they brought Sophia home from the hospital. I couldn’t describe the draw I had toward caring for this sweet little babe, but I wanted to be there every moment of her early life. To hold her, feed her, watch her hold her head up for the first time, hear her giggle and squeak, all of it. Most importantly though, I wanted to soak in all the wisdom I could from super-mom Aunt Lisa. She was incredible with her new baby, her first. The way she loved and nurtured her so tenderly. I was Aunt Lisa’s “mother’s-helper.” I was too young to babysit on my own, but I was learning the ropes, a mom-in-training. And much to my chagrin, from the moment I held Sophia for the first time, God was growing in me a heart to be some day become a mother.

When Sophia was about 2 years old, Aunt Lisa gave birth to twins, Sarah and Nicholas. Two more bundles of joy! And you bet, I was over my aunt and uncle’s house every day once again. I even earned myself a star role in so many of their home videos, from the time Sophia was born up until the kids got too old to be on camera. Those videos are so wonderfully and hilariously nostalgic to watch with my cousins now. We were so goofy! But once again, at the twins’ birth, Aunt Lisa awed me with her incredible mommy superpowers. Spending my summer days and evenings after school with my baby cousins only deepened my longing and desire for motherhood.

Fast-forward to August 2016. Phil and I had been married exactly one year, and we had wanted to start a family. Aware of my current health complications, we knew this could be a difficult journey for us, but we pursued growing a family. I had been on birth control for 8 years, not for its traditional purposes, but, what I unfortunately discovered too late in life, to mask underlying systemic issues that doctors were too negligent to get to the root of.

I was still recovering from a c.diff infection (read more about that part of my story here), all the while managing my Crohn’s disease, and now I was coming off of birth control. A perfect storm for a body to wreak havoc on itself. I had not regained my cycle several months after stopping my birth control medication, so after visiting my gynecologist, she referred me to Shady Grove Fertility Center. Phil and I struggled with and prayed about the decision to even walk down that road. We sought wise counsel and waited months, until we finally took a leap of faith and scheduled an appointment with Shady Grove.

The first meeting with the doctors and our assigned nurse was so overwhelming. Phil and I walked out of the appointment even more lost, confused, and scared. We decided to follow through with the battery of initial testing required by the clinic, but then once we completed that long process, we pumped the breaks. We were struggling with a lot personally in our lives, and we began second-guessing if fertility treatment was the best option for my body. We postponed any treatment for several months to pray about it some more and seek more wise counsel. Then, we once again took a leap of faith and started our first round of non-invasive treatments. I took Clomid, an ovulation-inducing drug, and followed the rest of the protocol. When the end of our dreaded two-week-wait came, we received the disheartening news that the treatment did not result in a pregnancy.

We began a second round of treatment as soon as we were able, this time, starting with a drug similar to Clomid called Femara. My body was not responding as well to the new drug as the doctor expected, so we had to transition to daily injections of Menopur. Expensive, painful injections that my poor husband had to administer every night, wishing he didn’t have to add any physical pain to the emotional distress we were already enduring as a couple. Everyday for 27 days Phil gave me shots of Menopur, meticulously adjusting the daily dosage like a lab chemist. On day 28 of that treatment cycle, I received the devastating news that my body had all of a sudden responded hyper-sensitively to the injections in what the doctors refer to as OHSS, ovarian hyper-stimulation syndrome. The rest of my treatment was “cancelled” and I would have to wait another month to start a new cycle.

Coincidentally, or not, right after that treatment cycle I left my job at Under Armour, where I had incredible insurance coverage, and the aftermath of that intense hormone therapy left my already vulnerable gut a wreck. The physical, mental, and emotional stress of the treatments wore so heavily on my body, and since I was still in active recovery from c.diff., my gut took a turn for the worse. I fell extremely ill as my body was not able to digest much of anything at all (again, to read more about that part of my story, you can check out my post here). It took months of being on the AIP protocol, a year of working with a function medical specialist, and endless patience, prayer, and persistence to heal my body. And during this year, in 2018, we took time off from any fertility treatment so my body could recover.

I was so scared to ever try fertility treatments again because of the emotional toll it took on our marriage and because of how it so negatively affected my body. Phil and I felt hopeless. We desired to have children so badly, but the outlook on having our own biological children seemed impossible.

Every day I struggled with my purpose in life, crying myself to sleep almost every night. The deepest desire of my heart was to be a mom, but it just wasn’t happening. I couldn’t eat enough of the right foods, do enough of the right exercises, get enough sleep, reduce my stress enough to make my will come to be. I was trying to relinquish my despondent situation to God, but yet I was holding on so tightly, controlling every piece. I finally gave up.

After much prayer, in February 2019, Phil and I decided to give fertility treatment one last try. We both felt that my body was in a better place than last time and that we were ready emotionally to handle the journey.

We no longer had insurance coverage, like we had with our initial treatments, but we were confident that if fertility treatment was the Lord’s will for us, He would provide every step of the way. And that He did. From the moment I reached back out to Shady Grove to set up another consultation to this very day, we’ve seen God’s mighty hand at work. We ended up not needing any invasive treatment that would require specialty coverage, so our insurance covered our regular visits and medications.

Per Shady Grove protocol, we had to go through some of that initial medical workup again and we had to wait longer than I had wanted to start treatment, but it was all in His timing. As soon as I returned home from my mission trip to Jordan, we started treatment with daily Menopur injections. After about three weeks of injections, daily visits to Shady Grove for bloodwork and ultrasound monitoring, and the conclusion of that anxious two-week wait, we received that miracle phone call from our nurse that we were indeed pregnant! Exuberant joy, excitement, disbelief, shock, fear, skepticism all flooded my body. I called Phil right away to share with him and we cried together over the phone, both so joyously astonished. We immediately shared the news with our families, as they had been praying for us throughout the whole journey.

Again, I share my story to simply offer hope to those of you walking a similar path. Infertility is a battle I wish no one had to fight. It’s a long, grueling road. Broken friendships, marriage stress, emotional burdens, physical pain – we experienced it all. Through the hopelessness and sadness, our faith in Christ has always been the cornerstone of our lives, and the incredible support of our dear friends and family have meant the world to us. Knowing that we were so covered in prayer gave me that extra bit of confidence I needed to pursue this last round of treatment. The power of prayer is very real.

We are now in the midst of our miracle pregnancy (literally halfway at 20 weeks!). We praise God everyday for the divine marvel growing inside my womb, knowing we did absolutely nothing to bring about His will; rather, God’s hand has been interwoven in every minute of our lives. Every night, without hesitation, Phil prays over me and our baby, and this sweet, small act brings me more peace and comfort than I could ever describe. It’s a beautiful moment our growing family of three enjoys every night, and I pray it’s something we continue long until our child(ren) grow up.

Now that I have shared my story and have made my pregnancy more public, I will be posting more frequently with pregnancy updates!