I received an email the other day from my friend Maria who is suffering from infertility. She forwarded the links to two blogs (all you who hope.blogspot.com and the apostolate of hannahs tears.blogspot.com) and one article in This Rock that helped her deal with her cross. I found the All You Who Hope blog to be especially touching since I went though some of the same things.
Taking Fertility for Granted
As some of you may know, Brian and I have had our ups and downs with conceiving and maintaining pregnancies. The first year of our marriage, we hoped to get pregnant right away but it never happened. I was shocked since I figured I’d take after my mom who had nine children. It was a time of pain and soul searching as I was reminded of my BC days (Before Christ) when I didn’t want kids. (But we’ll save that story for another time.)
I was not seeing any doctor at the time but I knew that my crazy cycles (they would be really long with no signs of ovulation) always improved when I was at a healthier weight. I changed my diet and lost about 20 pounds but our first anniversary came and no baby. Our disappointment was tempered by the incredible opportunity to start the new year with a trip to Rome. We made it our prayer pilgrimage, asking Our Lady to help us conceive a child. Two months later, everything seemed to click and we finally conceived Bella.
Secondary Infertility and Miscarriage
After Bella turned two years old, we tried to conceive again. Nothing happened. We tried more self-help means with diet and such but it wasn’t working this time. I was getting fed up and with trying and failing and tried to just be happy that we at least had Bella. Two years later, we got a huge surprise. I was unexpectedly pregnant. We were ecstatic! I remember starting another baby journal as I did for Bella and writing to our little one. Unfortunately, our joy shortly turned to despair when I suffered my first miscarriage. We were devastated. It happened during Lent and I remember how keenly I experienced the sorrow of the season. But as painful as it was, it brought me so much closer to Our Lord.
For another year, we tried again to conceive. I hated living under everyone’s assumption that we purposely chose to have only one child. They assumed that if I was pregnant once, I could easily do it again. And when I thought of my other friends dealing with infertility, I felt guilty to be suffering this incredible longing for another child when I already had one.
Then it happened. We conceived again. I was filled with mixed emotions. It was Lent again, one year since losing our first baby. I feared it would happen again. I could not let myself be happy. I recalled my mom’s words that we should embrace our child with love whether God allows them in our lives two weeks or fifty years. So I poured my love out to our little one and a few days later he was gone. Again, Our Lord asked me to experience his passion and death in a special way.
Figuring Out What Is Wrong
After our first miscarriage our doctor told us that it was normal to have one or two miscarriages in a row and that testing wasn’t done until after a third miscarriage. I couldn’t imagine suffering this one more time before figuring out what was wrong. I recalled some information a friend gave me regarding the Pope Paul VI Institute. I went online and found a Catholic pro-life doctor, Dr. Mary Davenport, who could help me. She was 2 ½ hours away but at this point, I didn’t care. First, however, I needed to meet with Sheila, a fantastic Creighton Model NFP teacher, who helped me analyze a month or two of charting before I could see Dr. D. Through charting and various tests, I found out that while I was ovulating and my eggs looked ok and that many of my hormones were normal, I did had some symptoms of PCOS and low progesterone. The first thing to work on was my insulin resistance. I had to change my diet and begin strength training. The book that really helped me out with my diet was The Insulin-Resistance Diet–Revised and Updated. Dr. D also put me on metformin. My weight and health improved and I reached a point were they could properly test my progesterone levels. (My body was still recovering from the miscarriage and things were out of whack for awhile.)
They found that my progesterone was not at the levels it should be at the right times of my cycle, which most likely was making conceiving difficult. And the times it did work, it did not stay high enough to maintain my pregnancies, hence it could be why I miscarried. (There is no way to know for sure.) Dr. D put me on progesterone and advised me to stay on it through most of my pregnancy if I were to conceive since Bella was born a month early, which could also have been due to my low progesterone.
New Hope
Well, we started the process in the spring after my second miscarriage. By the end of fall, we had conceived our little Andrew and, well, you know the rest of the story. I hadn’t intended to get into all this now but since Andrew has fallen asleep on my lap and I’ve become proficient with one handed typing, it just came out.
For those suffering from infertility or miscarriage, my heart truly goes out to you. I have tasted the pain in a small way, compared to those who have been infertile for years but what I have learned is that God has not abandoned you. It is especially easy to lose hope when you see everyone around you conceive with ease or you hear of the countless women who pay someone to brutally abort and remove a child from their body. I know your heart cries out to God as you try to comprehend how He allows these women to conceive children they do not want when you are desperately trying to bring one new life into the world. It doesn’t make sense to you!
Spiritual Motherhood
When I suffered through this pain, I tried to take all my tears and offer them to Our Lady. I told her I couldn’t make sense of any of it, but please take it all as my prayer to God. Learning to embrace this suffering is like spiritual childbirth. In physical childbirth, the pain comes in incredible waves that at once seem to overwhelm you. In spiritual childbirth, the emotional pain comes in waves that seem to overwhelm you. You just have to go with it and focus on Christ and know that the spiritual pain has a purpose and will eventually end.
Like childbirth, there are times when the suffering subsides and you feel better. Then here comes another spiritual contraction and you are engulfed by the suffering all over again. Just breathe. Focus on Christ. Cry out if need be, but remember that it will be over soon. You just need to hang in there and keep at it. Let Our Lady be your midwife. She’ll comfort you and support you because she knows acutely the pain of spiritual and emotional anguish. She will help you through.
For me, my spiritual labor pains ended in real labor pains. For others of my friends, they will not see their spiritual children until they reach heaven. Then they will see the results of their infertility cross. They will hold the babies that their spiritual suffering saved. They will meet the souls of people who were granted the grace of conversion because a childless woman offered her tears for God’s lost children. It is then they will realize that they were called to be the most brave and generous of all mothers because they suffered the trials of motherhood without any of the visible blessings. It is then that they’ll truly rejoice.