The Dream of Motherhood…Revised.

There are literally millions of people in the U.S. who struggle with infertility. Even so, I felt alone. It seemed like everyone I knew made a decision about parenting and it happened. Wasn’t that the way it was supposed to be? Build your life responsibly, have God as the head of your life and wonderful things will happen. God did have wonderful things in store for me, but they came in a different way.

My husband and I were ready to begin a family. I was excited about a baby. The dream was still alive. It became our monthly goal to get pregnant. I didn’t overreact when it seemed to be taking time. I made excuses … like maybe we were too stressed from work.

After a year, my doctor sent me to a specialist. As much as I wanted a baby, I really dreaded the first visit. I remember getting off of the elevator and heading toward the fertility center. My feet felt like cement. With my ovulation charts in my hand and my heart beating out of my chest, I opened the door. Somehow my inner most being knew I was entering a part of my life that was going to be painful. I kept telling myself I had nothing to base these feelings on, but I just knew in my gut I was right. Within a month of the first visit, I had surgery and was diagnosed with severe endometriosis. Even so, the doctor was optimistic about our post-operative chances.

My husband and I were very dedicated to“the dream.” I now desired a baby more than ever. The dream consumed my thoughts and actions more and more each month. I would buy pregnancy tests praying for a positive result. I would stare at the test, willing it to be positive, but to no avail. Every month, my husband would emotionally put me back together.

The end of each month would leave me more crushed than the month before. I can’t remember exactly when the act of holding a baby transitioned into sheer torture, but it happened. Why were we failing? Everyone else could create their families the way they wanted. Sure, you would hear someone say it took them a while to become pregnant. But sooner or later it all worked out. Well, why couldn’t we create a life?

After a year of constant appointments, procedures and pain, we still had no child to show for all the tears and prayers. My doctor felt like he needed to perform yet another surgery.

I found this news out the day before Thanksgiving. He said we would do it after the holidays. The holidays? I was already dreading Christmas because of how empty my arms felt. How was I supposed to get through the holidays with his hanging over my head? I burst into tears when the doctor told me the news, and I cried all the way home. My mind swirled with worry. What if the surgery didn’t go well? What if they wanted me to consider in vitro fertilization (IVF)? What

would I be getting into, and what choices would have to be made? I was scared and angry. I prayed God wouldn’t lead me down the path where I would have to make those kinds of choices.

When I awoke from the surgery, my husband was sitting beside me. He looked like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. We sat in the room almost an hour without him telling me the results. The silence was deafening. I finally asked. He told me the doctor felt like our only chance at having a child was through IVF. At first, I was numb. Ironically, by that evening I was almost relieved. I didn’t have to try every month for something unattainable. My husband was crushed though. He was angry at the doctors and scared for me emotionally and physically.

We had some decisions to make. I still ached for a baby. I wanted us to make a new plan right away. The next day, I went on the internet to learn about IVF. I told myself to think with my head and not with my heart. I had always been pro-life, and something about creating life this way was telling me to be on guard. I wanted to be responsible. I soon learned that my fears were warranted.

One of the sites showed an IVF procedure just like the one in which my doctor’s office specialized. The woman had taken hormones to help her ovaries produce as many eggs as possible. Those eggs had been removed and placed in a Petri dish with the husband’s sperm. Fertilization had occurred. The video was showing two embryos being implanted into the women’s uterus.

During the procedure, the female doctor stated she was saving her “extra embryos” … the ones patients didn’t need after they were done creating their family. She could not in good conscience destroy them. She kept them frozen, hoping that science would catch up with the problem. Suddenly the room was spinning for me. She had said out loud what I feared the most. I started crying hysterically. My husband came into the room and told me I needed to rest. I tried to tell him what I had just seen, but I was crying so hard I wasn’t making sense. He walked me to the recliner and told me to rest and try not to think about it. I literally cried myself to sleep.

When we went for the post-op appointment, we had our questions ready. The doctor confirmed that I was a wonderful candidate for IVF. I asked him to explain the procedure. We told him our concerns about embryos. We asked about limiting the number of eggs fertilized. He told us our chances for success would be so low, it wouldn’t be worth doing.

I thought maybe I was overreacting about the embryos, so I asked him to define a human embryo. He said it was a multi-celled organism by the time it was placed in the patient. The DNA would be present. This meant genetically every thing making up the person was present.

He said it was the potential for life because it couldn’t survive unless it attached itself to my uterus. He went on to say that the clinic had learned what hormones a woman’s body produces when normal fertilization occurs. The doctors would carefully nurture my embryos in synthetic hormones to create the same results. This was a “light bulb” moment for me! I thought how amazing it was that God had made a woman’s body capable of nurturing an embryo before it even attached itself to her uterus.

Why was this important? It told me that before any pregnancy test could prove I was pregnant, my body would know something special was happening. I knew from the scriptures God’s wonderful view of life. The Lord told Jeremiah “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” Maybe this was part of what the verse meant.

We left the doctor’s office with our heads swirling. During the next few weeks, we went back and forth on a solution. We sought advice from Christian doctors, preachers, friends, and family. We could see in their eyes the anguish they were feeling for us, and how really unprepared they were for such questions. Many times I ended up educating them and trying to talk them into a position I knew I had already made.

Finally, it came down to us as a couple making the decision. If we created embryos, should we treat them as souls? Through prayer and conversation, we decided that embryos were seen as life to God. If we did create them, we wanted to be able to follow through on all of them. Financially, this was probably impossible. If we began IVF, we had to resign our control. Did we want to lose control over something so sacred? The answer for us was no!

It was at this point we looked seriously into adoption. We are so glad we did! We can look back at our story and see how God led us to our beautiful daughter. We ended up only waiting four months for her! I think God knew how desperately I needed her. The moment I first held her in my arms I knew we had done the right thing. I am thankful I listened to that little voice in my head telling me to go another way. He timed everything out so that we could not just be parents…but our daughter’s parents. My dream came true in a perfect way!