The Curse of Infertility

"You'll probably never be able to have kids on your own". A doctor whose name I can't remember, but whose face I can't forget told me that when I was only 18 years old. I really didn't believe him because he didn't know me. He didn't know how much I wanted to be a mom one day. He hadn't examined me or run any tests on me. He was just going off of what my records said about my "female history". But I didn't believe him.

Every missed menstrual cycle I was convinced that this would be the time I would get to tell my husband "You're going to be a daddy"...once we even had a false positive home pregnancy test...I'll never forget the look on his face and the hug he gave me when I told him that it was positive...only to go to the hospital to get it confirmed and for them to say that I was not pregnant.

Years and years go by and you go ahead and discover reasons why it's ok that you don't have kids yet: you can go anywhere you want, whenever you want and not have to worry about packing up kids every time...it is good to get your husband through school without worrying about taking care of kids...this job wouldn't be as easy to get done if you had kids to worry about...finances would be tighter...schedules would be busier...blah, blah, blah...your heart never stops longing for a little voice to call you mommy.

We prayed, tried medications, prayed, went through actual infertility testings, prayed, talked to professionals in the field of infertility, prayed, cried, talked about what to do next, prayed, accepted it, grieved it, prayed, grieved harder, trusted God, and prayed about it for over 20 years. It really only gets HARD around mother's day, father's day and Christmas...those are the days you'd love to spend with a child of your own...the days when you feel like you're forgotten or not a real woman.

Through all of this, I've held firmly to the belief that ONE DAY, somehow, some way, God would fulfill the desire of my heart and give us a child of our own. Not necessarily through my body...maybe through someone else's...but our own child nonetheless. We're now coming out of a dark tunnel with some very bright light at the end of it. Hoping, once again praying, dreaming and so fearful of how this is all going to end.

God's ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts deeper than ours and I know that He has plans for a future for me and Dan. He has shown us how much He cares about us in so many ways over the years, and now all we can do is sit and watch Him work. It's so hard to have no control over the matter and to just sit back and trust Him, but we have no choice.

I'll talk more about how the relationship with the twins came to me in my next posting...