"Feeling sorry for yourself, and your present condition, is not only a waste of energy but the worst habit you could ever possibly have." -Dale Carnegie
I wasn't planning on blogging today, but suddenly, heavily, I felt it on my heart to share. I have tried to share the good, the bad, and the ugly of our journey through primary infertility, secondary infertility and two miscarriages. So today, I'm going to share a little of the bad...
Sometimes...more often than I would like...I struggle with self-pity.
I know. I know. I have one beautiful, healthy, amazing child. Literally all the wealth on this earth wouldn't even come close to touching what Joseph is worth to me. My love for him literally takes my breath away. He is everything I could have wanted in a child...and more. He is loving, compliant (well, usually), smart, social, and full of life. The fact that we conceived him, and that he survived his very scary delivery, is a sheer miracle. If I never have another child in my life, Joseph is enough...way more than enough. And WAY more than I ever have deserved. I want to make that clear up front, because if Joseph or anyone else ever thought otherwise, that would destroy me.
But still, I struggle. You see, even at my youngest, all I really wanted to be in life was a wife and a mommy. A mommy to LOTS of kids. We are talking about a little girl who had so many dolls (all properly named and assigned unique personality traits) that an attempt to take a picture of me with all of them as a child nearly failed because, despite them being spread across the couch in multiple rows, the camera lens was barely wide enough to capture them all. I had some serious maternal instincts, starting around age 2. Sure, I thought about what careers I would have in the interim, but my life's goal was really just to be the wife of a good, Godly man, and the mommy to as many children as God would bless me with. So for me to say I never feel sad at my seemingly perpetual inability to a) get pregnant again and b) stay pregnant when I do would be a lie.
This morning was one of those mornings. Actually, it's been one of those weeks. I told David last night that I've really dreaded going to bed each night this week. Every night I've been having dreams that I'm pregnant with another baby. In those dreams I am so excited that I can seriously hardly contain myself. And then every morning I wake up, decidedly not-pregnant. Last night, before going to sleep, I tried to think of everything on earth OTHER than pregnancy. I thought, maybe if I didn't have it on my brain at all, I wouldn't dream about it. But this morning, like most others, I awoke from a night full of dreaming of ultrasounds and a growing midsection to realize that I had no ultrasounds on the agenda today and that any growing midsection that exists is just a product of too many late night snacking sessions in the kitchen (hey, infertility stress makes you eat - what can I say?!)
This morning, I started to get into one of my self-pity modes. They say Satan knows what bugs you the most, and in my case, Satan has the tendency to put numbers in my head - numbers of just how many trials we have gone through to try to have children.
We tried 18 months before I got pregnant with Joseph. We have been trying 2 years for baby #2. Satan helps me add those up and starts throwing out those numbers and others from our primary and secondary infertility journeys. A total of 39 failed cycles since we began trying for Joseph 10 months into our marriage. 39 failed cycles! 39 months that I tried to get pregnant, only to see one line appear on a pregnancy test. In addition to that are 2 "successful" cycles where we did get pregnant, only to have it end in the physical and emotional pain (the WORST emotional pain of my life) of back-to-back miscarriages. 2 laparoscopies to remove my endometriosis (the root of our inability to conceive). 1 test to confirm that the removal of the endometriosis was really in vain, because the damage it had done to my ovaries was already too great and irreversible. 2 IUIs (with a 3rd soon coming up). 3 HSGs. 13 cycles of oral fertility meds, the last two at the highest allowable dose ("I've never even heard of someone taking a dose that high!" said my primary care physician when I saw her recently). 6 cycles of giving myself injectable meds (praise the Lord I don't have a huge hang up with needles). The assistance of 2 different reproductive endocrinologists, in addition to my general OB/GYN. 2 ultrasounds a month since last July, just to see what's going on in there. 19 (unless I have miscounted, which is totally possible) ovarian cysts of all different types. So many blood draws that a nurse recently told me that the scar tissue around my veins looks very similar to that of chemo patients she has seen (God bless them, my struggles seem so, so embarrassingly minor when I compare anything I say to that of someone battling cancer...I almost want to delete this post in it's entirely at the absurdity of that comparison). Literally thousands (and I do mean thousands) of dollars, which, with me being a stay-at-home-mom, has required our one-income family to do some "creative" budgeting. And to cap it off, 1 diagnosed stomach ulcer from the stress of it all.
Whew.
So yeah, Satan throws these numbers at me. He knows it is the best way to make me feel sorry for myself. Then, just to add a little extra fun, he starts reminding me of the numbers of people I know who didn't WANT to get pregnant, but got pregnant. So, so, so many. It doesn't dampen my happiness for any of my pregnant friends, it just makes me think those self-pitying thoughts over and over. "So and so didn't even WANT a baby, and she had one. My life's dream was 3, or 4, or 5, and I struggled to have 1!" It's not fair. I start thinking about those years as a teenager, not knowing that some of the symptoms I was having at 15 were already signs of the disease that would later destroy my fertility. I think about the birth control pills I took those first 10 months of our marriage, sure that if I missed one we would get pregnant before we intended. I think about those misconceptions I had. It's not fair. I think, and halfway laugh, about the fact that in my case (as in many) my Endometriosis was caused by my body producing too much estrogen. Estrogen is what makes me female... Being female is supposed to make me able to have more children...and yet, my body chemistry making me " too much of a female" makes me infertile! It's maddening! And it's not fair.
That's right. It's not FAIR.
But God isn't really concerned about what I think is fair, is he? God isn't concerned about what I think is good for our family right now. God is concerned about what gives HIM glory. He is concerned about how I reflect His glory by how I react to all of this. He isn't a magic genie, waiting to grant whatever wish my heart desires. Sure, he sees my tears, and he feels my heartache with me, but he also wants to know what I am going to say each month when I stare at that one line on a pregnancy test (because I do try to inject some humor in my heavy posts, if anyone needs clarity on what a negative pregnancy test looks like please ask me because I am SERIOUSLY the expert). Am I going to say "Poor me. I cannot get pregnant again. I'm so sad. And it isn't fair. God isn't giving me what I want, and that makes me mad. I choose to trust in myself, not in you." Or am I going to say "I trust you, Lord. I trust YOUR way for building our family - whatever that way may be. Or, if you choose to NOT build our family further, I trust that, too. I trust your timing, and I trust your will, and I trust that you are going to show us the way. I thank you for the amazing blessing of Joseph, Lord. I know that he is yours, not mine, but I thank you for letting me carry him for 9 months, and to give birth to him, and for letting me be his mommy during our time here on earth. You have already done far more than I could ask or imagine, and I cannot wait to see what you have planned next." I have a choice to make every month, and every month I have the opportunity to respond the right way if I choose to do so.
I don't know the reasons that God makes getting (and staying) pregnant so hard for me. I don't know that I will ever know those reasons on this side of Heaven. But sometimes I can't help but wonder if one of them is to remind me, in his gentle, loving way, "This isn't about you, Lisa. I have a plan for your life that will exceed all you could ever plan. And I have a purpose in your pain."
I'm so thankful for those times that God comes along and reminds me of all of this, right when Satan is trying to give me very different thoughts. I'm so thankful that my trust is in the Lord, and that HIS voice overrides all others. I'm so thankful for the way he cares for me. And I'm so thankful for the amazing blessings that surround me, including the precious little 28 pound miracle that loves cars and trucks and stuffed animals and who calls me mommy.
Friends, we have decided that this month's fertility cycle is our last. God can do anything in the future that He wills, but, if this final IUI fails, we will be closing the door on OUR active pursuit of more biological children. The logistics and the physical and emotional struggle of it all have taken such a toll on us. The fertility drugs I'm on keep me tired and moody. The bills are mounting. While part of me would like to go on with interventions, I don't think it's a good option for us at this point. Still don't have totally certainty on where we will turn from here, but will you pray for our clarity and closure, as we come close to closing this chapter, that my perspective remains that that God would want me to have, and no other.
So grateful to have had the support of so many on this journey, and looking forward to seeing what God does in the future!
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