Ever since I was little I hoped for a big family someday. I was one of 3 children, which was so much fun. My siblings and I were good friends and we had a great time together. I hoped for at least the same for my own children, but I dreamed of having 6 kids someday. When my husband and I started dating I learned he was one of 5 children. When things were getting more serious for us we started talking about how many children we wanted, and he wanted 5 and thought 6 sounded great too.
When we got married we knew through counseling together and with the Lord that we had about 4 months until we could actively start trying to have children. I wanted to be a mother so much that I secretly hoped our contraceptives would fail and we would be in the small percentage that got pregnant while on birth control, but we didn’t. As soon as we were able to begin trying to start our family I was certain this would come easily (which was only encouraged by a doctor’s spontaneous comment in an appointment that this would probably come very easy for me)… but then it didn’t. After over a year of trying without success we began working with a doctor to find out why. Over the next year or so we worked with her doctor trying to figure it out. I had a hysterosalpingogram (which turned out to be incredibly painful, which I was completely unprepared for) which showed showed polyps in my uterus that had to be biopsied to rule out cancer. The biopsy was extremely painful, but fortunately the results came back benign. Then a blood test showed high levels of something that could be a sign of a tumor in my pituitary gland. I had to have an MRI to know if there was a tumor or not. Fortunately that came back clear. Once the doctors determined everything was normal with my body they tested my husband. After two failed attempts to have the hospital process his test they finally got it processed correctly the third time and his results were normal as well. My doctor put me on clomid and we then spent about a year just hoping it would work out because medically everything was telling us it should. I tracked my ovulation days through temperature and saliva samples faithfully. We both wanted to grow our family, but it was also becoming quite consuming. I would feel such disappointment – quite possibly a form of grief – each time my period would start and I knew we had failed once again. On top of all of that, my periods were extremely painful which just felt like a way of kicking me while I was down. My heart was already broken and I had to bear intense pain on top of it every time I learned we were not pregnant. (My periods were painful from the time they began when I was 12 and I remember frequently thinking to myself, and telling my sister, that my kids better be cute because I was going through all this pain for them… now I was wondering if I was ever going to have those cute kids that I always assumed would make all of the pain I endured worth it.)
Finally, about 3 years into trying to have kids my husband finished graduate school and got a “real job.” While students we had health insurance with maternity coverage but it had a $3,000 deductible, so we saved that money until graduation and then took a celebratory vacation to the Bahamas with our baby money knowing that when we returned we would start looking for a fertility doctor. His initial assessment of our situation was the same, there was no medical reason why we shouldn’t be getting pregnant. We ended up trying artificial insemination with the highest of hopes, but within a couple of weeks we learned that failed, too. By this point I was feeling quite jealous of everyone who could get pregnant in the comfort of their own home. I wondered if we would ever be blessed with a child… particularly wondering if we would ever be able to create life out of spontaneous acts of love, or if it would always require temperature taking, saliva tests, and medical professionals learning the details of our love life and trying to create more scientifically perfect circumstances in a procedure room. Even if that was what was required of us to have children I would have been happy to do it, I just longed for things to just happen for us… but more than that, I longed to get pregnant. I remember during this heartbreaking time the Shania Twain song “It Only Hurts When I’m Breathing” really resonated with me. The chorus says, “It only hurts when I’m breathing. My heart only breaks when it’s beating. My dreams only die when I’m dreaming… so I hold my breath to forget.” When I think about that song I still remember how real those words felt to me. Infertility was crushing me and though I tried to be happy, look for the good and be grateful for the many, many blessings in my life… my heart was broken. I also found this line from I’m Not That Girl from Wicked resonated with me, “don’t wish, don’t start, wishing only wounds the heart.” Every wish for a baby seemed to wound my heart eventually.
Our fertility doctor wanted us to try again, but I felt like there had to be an explanation why all of our attempts, even the medically specific one, didn’t work out. I asked if the polyps in my uterus could be the reason we weren’t getting pregnant. I asked if there was any possibility the polyps could be preventing implantation. The doctor said it was unlikely, but a possibility. He told me to go on birth control for the next month, which felt like the worst thing he could ask me to do. Why would I ever want to go on birth control if we were trying to get pregnant… what kind of sense could that possibly make? He said taking the birth control would prevent my uterine lining from swelling (like it normally should) which would allow him to see the polyps more definitively during a sonosalpingogram. This procedure would allow him to examine the polyps and determine if we needed to remove them.
The sonosalpingogram was surprisingly not painful to me. (After the painful hysterosalpingogram I figured all of these procedures would be painful, so that was a happy surprise. After the procedure our doctor told me to call the office when my next cycle started and we would move forward with plans to remove the polyps. To our great delight and total amazement I never made that phone call… my cycle never came. After I was a week late or so, I took a pregnancy test and it was positive.
I was so excited that we were pregnant. I wanted to tell my husband right away, after all, I had taken the test first thing in the morning… but he was on a work call that didn’t end until after he left for work for the day. While he was gone I went out and bought a bunch of blue and pink ballons to write little phrases on like, “We’re pregnant,” “boy or girl,” and “sweet, sweet, baby”… but when he got home and saw all of this his response was not initially excited. His response was, “Are you sure?” and he cautioned me to not get too excited yet until we knew things were okay. It is understandable because it was such a long hard road to even get that positive test result, but again I felt like our infertility had taken something from me… I felt like it had taken our ability to fully celebrate the blessing we had just been given because… what if something wasn’t right.
We called our doctor and let him know our good news. He said to come in and get a blood test to confirm. When my mom asked how things were going for us I dind’t tell her I was pregnant. Proceed with caution was all we could do. We were trying to protect our hearts from a false positive, from an early miscarriage, from complications. I withheld the truth and told my mom that the doctor wanted to watch things for another month or so before moving forward with the next procedure. Again, I felt like my infertility was robbing me of my opportunity to celebrate freely. We were tainted. Fortunately, when the doctor called me back with the results he said I was “super pregnant” and that my levels all looked great. We got to have an early ultrasound, I think it was around 7 weeks, to check things out and make sure our baby was growing okay and things were progressing well. Hearing that baby’s heartbeat was the most joyous thing in the world to me. I couldn’t believe we were finally pregnant. I couldn’t believe we had actually gotten pregnant in the comfort of our own home, in spite of all of the medical intervention we had needed along the way. We waited until 12 weeks to tell most people. I told my parents and my sister because I needed to be able to talk about it with them (and my brother so he wouldn’t feel left out)… and until our 5th baby we waited until 12 weeks every time… we had to be cautious… we had been through too much heartache to not be.
Before I experienced infertility I didn’t realize how much I judged others. When I knew of a couple who had been married for years and didn’t have children I would often wonder why they were waiting. Was she pursuing a career? Were they trying to save money first? Buy a house? “Get to know each other for a while”? Who cares. It really is none of my business, and it’s quite possibly none of the above anyway. It is between them and the Lord who knows their hearts and their circumstances and I am not to judge, but I had to learn that.
Over the past 10 years we have been blessed with 5 children. We did not need infertility doctors to help us with any pregnancies going forward. Our kids are 10, 8, 6, 4, and 2 years old. To someone who doesn’t know any better it looks like having children was easy for us, it looks like we planned to have our children spaced out every two years. What others don’t know is that after having my first baby I was afraid we would face infertility again and I was so surprised when we got pregnant after only three months of trying. The next baby took us over a year of trying. The next baby took us 9 months of trying. Our last baby was different. I think this time the Lord was waiting on me to be ready to have a baby, rather than us waiting on Him to send us one. We got pregnant the first month of trying to have a baby the fifth time.
Thankfully for us, our story turned out beautiful. We didn’t struggle with infertility more than once. We never lost a pregnancy or a baby. We feel so blessed. The infertile years, however, were heart-wrenching. I cried many nights over it… so many nights. Satan whispered lies to me that I must have married the wrong person otherwise God would have sent us children by now. Satan also whispered that the problem was that I wouldn’t be a good mother and that is why God wasn’t sending us children. His deceit is real. It is powerful. It is overwhelming. I found my peace when I turned to God, but it was often a daily struggle. One of the greatest blessings of not having children right away was being able to work in the temple for nearly a year as a young married couple. During that time I got to learn more deeply the covenants I had entered into with God in that holy place. I read scriptures that talked of God keeping his promises and I received strength. That’s not to say things were easy for me. Eternal perspective didn’t take away my pain. I still nearly cried at a friend’s baby shower. I had to leave the room when my cousin and good friend was snuggling his baby during one family gathering. Sometimes the emotions were just too strong to deal with and I couldn’t bear to be around others who had the blessings I was praying for and I had to leave the situation or I’d break down. It was a long, hard road with daily heartache. I had to choose faith every day… and not just faith that God would send me a child… but faith that His plan for me was better than any plan that I could have come up with for myself, whether that plan included me having children or not. I had my bad days when faith was hard and I doubted, but I know I grew closer to my Heavenly Father and my Savior through the struggle. I know the blessings are sweeter to me because of our longing for them.
Now, when I hear of someone married for a while without children yet I wonder what their story is. My heart goes out to them and I hope for a way to share my story, if it would help them. I long to help them not feel alone, and to recognize what lies Satan is telling them about themselves because of their trials. I also think that if they are choosing to wait they must have their reasons and I wish them happiness and peace no matter what their circumstances. Along with those heartfelt wishes, I truly hope that writing my story here will help someone else find peace and know that they are not alone in their struggles, and give them courage to ignore Satan’s lies. May we all choose faith and find peace in Christ no matter what path he leads us on.