What I learned from infertility

The biggest thing I learned through this process was how to deal with people in grief...any kind of grief. Here's what I learned regarding people in grief:

1. Don't offer advice. Just listen! Everyone wants to help others when they are struggling. It's human nature. We hate to see others suffering. But most of the time, advice is not what the grieving person needs or wants. So many well-meaning people offered up advice to me, and I know they were doing it out of love. But the thing is, you hear the same advice over and over and over. Really, all I wanted someone to do is listen to me. I needed to vent and get things off my chest. If I got advice instead, there were many times that I would be really annoyed.
2. Ask them about it! After I finally came out and told people what we were going through, there were really only 2 or 3 people that would ask me how I was doing and want to be updated on what was happening. I can't tell you how much I LOVE those few people!! It made me feel great that they cared enough to ask, cry with me, etc. I have one sweet, sweet friend that even to this day, when she sees me starts tearing up. (There was even one time where she was with me when it was announced that someone was pregnant. I was fine and not feeling too bad until I looked over and tears were running down her face. It touched me so much that this friend understood what I was going through and cared for me that much!) These days it's because she is so joyful for us. And every time I see her and these tears, I feel such great love for this friend. I want to be that kind of friend. I pray that if I know someone is struggling with ANYTHING, that I will be the friend that asks how they are doing, is not afraid to listen and help bear the burden with that person. Because really, isn't that what Christ does for us?
3. Pray for them and let them know that you are praying. We first announced our struggle to our LIFE Group at church, and I knew that they were immediately praying for us. Then a few weeks later, we did Cardboard Testimonies at church where we shared with the church on a simple piece of cardboard what we were going through. After this, I knew that the church was praying for us. I would have people tell me all the time that they were praying and thinking of us, and I can't tell you how much that meant to me. Then the Sunday after everyone found out that we were having twins, it was like a huge party! People that I had no clue that were praying for us, came up saying they had been. It was wonderful! And honestly, this is an area where I need some work. I tend to easily forget to pray for others, and I am going to make this better because I know how great it was when others were praying for us.

What it feels like to go through infertility

Infertility is such a personal struggle that most people do not talk about it...at least for a really long time. So, it is really hard to know if someone is going through this.


Of course everyone is different, but based on my experiences and talking to many others who have gone through or are currently going through this experience, here are some things that those who are going through it feel...

• It is very hard to be excited for others who are pregnant or have children. This is a horrible feeling. No one wants to feel this way towards others. It's way more fun to be excited and enjoy others' experiences too. But when you're going through fertility, the reality is that much of the time you just can't be excited. Now, this seems to be different for men. It seems like men are still able to be happy for others. Not sure why this is, but it isn't their bodies (at least most of the time) being poked and prodded. And women are just much more emotional than men in general. I can't tell you how frustrating it was though to hear that Chris was happy for others. I know, I know! This sounds completely horrible! I just wanted him so bad to feel everything to the degree that I was feeling it.
  


• You start to distance yourself from those who are pregnant or have children. I have felt bad over the past few years because I know that I have missed having relationships with some women simply because they are pregnant or have small children. As soon as I would hear someone was pregnant, I would tell her congratulations, and unless they were already a good friend, I would pretty much keep my distance from them. In going through this journey, you figure out pretty quick what your issues are and what you need to protect yourself from emotionally. And for most people, they just can't really handle being around pregnant people much. I hate that I missed the chance to form many relationships over the past few years, but I hope to remedy that soon.


• You go through an emotional roller-coaster each and every month. The first few weeks of the month, you get your hopes up that this could be THE month! Then towards the end of the month, you start getting nervous. "Is it going to happen this time?" Then when you find out that you are not pregnant at the end of the month, you are crushed. The worst is when you are on all the meds. When the meds crash out on you at the end of the month...about the same time you find out you are not pregnant...goodness!! Talk about intense! I wound up having to tell a few people at church about what all was going on one week because John, our preacher, prayed and just mentioned the word suffering. I immediately lost it and was a crying fool. I nudged Chris and said "we have to get out of here right now!" On our way out, there were two people that saw me and of course were concerned. I really appreciated these people asking me about it though...it gave me an opening to let people know what was going on for once.


• When you are dealing with infertility it is literally all you can think about. Really. Your thoughts are constantly on this, and it is really miserable. I wanted so bad to not have to think about it, but you can't help it. I can't tell you how many times I told Chris over the past few years that I literally could not think of anything else. And these days with the internet, there is a lot of information out there...unfortunately. I would get on the internet and look up different things about infertility. "Could my problem be this? What about this?" It would probably be a good idea to ban a person going through this from the internet!


• You feel like you are so alone. I love my mom, but she never had a mintue's trouble having me or my brother. And as much as she tried and wanted to, she could not understand what I was going through or feeling. And if you have not gone through infertility, you simply cannot possibly understand what it's like. I realize that is true for so many different things in life. The absolute best thing for me was that my dear, lifelong friend Stacy had already gone through all of this. Stacy is like a sister to me, and I HATE that she has had to go through all of this pain too and is still struggling for a child. BUT, she was the absolute best thing for me during this time. Early on, I told her how I was feeling about everything. By this point, I hadn't talked to anyone and was feeling really horrible about myself. "Why am I having all these bad feelings?" "I am such a horrible person to be feeling this way!" But when I talked to Stacy, she validated every feeling that I had and let me know that this was normal. I can't tell you how relieved I felt when I heard that I was not the only one in the world who had these feelings. Pretty freeing! Stacy also introduced me to an infertility support group that she was attending at her church. Up to this point, I had a pretty negative reaction when I thought about "support groups." There was no way I thought I would ever step foot in one. But since my dear friend had been helped by this group in her struggle and enjoyed her time with the other ladies, I decided to go along for the ride. Stacy and I would meet before the meeting to eat dinner and gripe about how things were going. It was wonderful!!! Then at the first meeting I went to, I fell in love with these ladies. I was blown away by how beautiful and strong these ladies were. We sat there and talked for hours, and it was great!! These ladies knew EXACTLY what I was going through. They spoke the same infertility language that I spoke. They knew what all the crazy letters stood for...IUI, IVF, and on and on and on. The rule is that when you become pregnant or adopt a child, you graduate from the group and do not go anymore since it would be hard for others who are still in the group. I can't tell you how much I miss seeing these ladies, but I treasure the email updates I get from them so that I can follow how the others are doing. So, my attitude has been completely changed on support groups. They are wonderful, and I recommend that anyone dealing with infertility join one.

My Infertility Journey

A little over 4 years ago, we had a precious baby boy named Caleb. Now he is a big 4 year old with tons of personality, and we are crazy about him! When trying to get pregnant the first time, we had no problems. We tried for 4 months, and then embarked on the journey of being pregnant and starting a family.

When Caleb was 18 months old, we decided to start trying for baby #2. We were really excited and just knew that it would happen soon. I remember clearly the weekend that my brother & sister-in-law got married. Chris and I talked about how excited we were to try again.

Months went by, and still nothing was happening. I had some weird things happening with my body that I had never had before, but we kept trying. As the 4 month mark went by, I remember being a little bummed that it hadn't happened yet...and it had happened by then the first time. But I wasn't too terribly scared about it at that time. As each month went by that first year, I got more worried...I cried every month when I realized I was not pregnant. Friends and aquaintances starting getting pregnant and I started getting more and more annoyed by the fact that I was not pregnant. And I even started feeling like I could not be excited for others in their pregnancies.

At the end of the first year of trying, I met with my doctor to discuss what was going on. She was not worried about the minor changes my body had made since having my son...but I was still pretty worried about them. Really, she just encouraged me to keep trying and try not to worry about it and stress myself out about it. Easier said than done!

So, another year went by in which I really believe I was in a state of depression. I couldn't stand to hear others were pregnant, there is no way I could be happy for them, I didn't want to hear other mothers talk about their children. I found this one to be really weird since I had a kid. But I remember being in circles of women at church, etc. where the mothers were talking about their children, and I wanted to scream "Can we please just talk about something else!!!" Things were getting pretty bad.

At the two year mark, I told Chris that I was fed up with the whole trying thing and was going to see an infertility specialist. I really didn't give him an option. It was just like, "here is what I'm doing!"

The doctor put me on a very aggressive program to try to get me pregnant as fast as possible. I had blood work done at the first appointment, and everything looked fine, so she thought this should be a piece of cake. The first month, I took Clomid and just did it all by timing. Didn't work. The second month, I took Clomid plus injections. Didn't work, but it did give me a rather nice large cyst. So, I had to wait a month for my cyst to go down. Then the next round, we did Clomid with injections and then had an IUI. We were really excited and hopeful....but it didn't work. My last round, I did the same regiment with no luck...except three cysts this time!

By this point, I was going nuts. Completely nuts. I felt like we were flushing tons of money down the toilet and getting no results. I was frustratred with the whole situation. But I was a little glad that at least I didn't have to go through the emotional pain of another round of treatment for awhile. A few days after I found out it did not work, I heard that a friend was pregnant. That night I cried and cried and felt like crying the whole next day. The very next night, I got a call that a familiy member was pregnant. And that did me in. I have never been at such an emotional low in my whole life...and I hope I never will be again. I was unconsolable. Chris had a school event that he had to be at that night, so I called my parents to come over and take care of Caleb for me because I was in no way going to be able to function that night. My mom talked with me for two hours as I cried and cried. I didn't feel much better at the end of the night, but at least I had gotten all my crying out. The very next day, I went to the doctor and was told that I was not going to be able to do another treatment for at least another month...which was actually three months because of summer vacations. That was the icing on the top of the cake. I normally was able to leave the hospital without crying until I got to the car. Not this time. I immediately got ahold of a few people at work to let them know that I was going to have to take a mental health day. I was in no shape to go to work. My mom came and spent that day with me, took me to lunch, walked around downtown Wylie looking at shops. Then later that day I went and got a pedicure. After these few days, I was still pretty much an emotional wreck, but I could at least begin to function again.

Some friends of ours had told me about a guy that we lovingly call the "witch doctor." I had held this guy's information for a long time and figured if it ever came to the point that I was really desperate, I would contact him. It was time to pull out this guy's info! I wrote the guy and soon got a response saying that he thought I had an infection and he recommended that I take an herbal supplement for 10 days. I figured "what could it hurt!" So, I took the herbs, and low and behold...that same month I got pregnant with twins! At first I felt like it was all due to this man and these herbs that I got pregnant. As I progress, and talk to my doctors, I'm not confident of this anymore.

Really, I guess I now feel like God wanted to take me through this process and let me get to the point where I was completely broken and helpless to show me His majesty and power. Believe me, finding out you're having twins after 2 1/2 years of trying so very hard is amazing proof of God's great power and is now causing us to trust in Him in a completely different way! I feel completely blessed by God, and I feel like He is rewarding me for the little bit of faith I had along the way....even though it wasn't much, and I was pretty ticked at Him most of the time. Now I feel very favored by God, and I realize that he had a plan for us...even though I didn't like that plan during this journey. I guess He knew all along that it would be better for Caleb to be older when we have the twins. He sure will be able to help out a lot! Whatever His reasons, I am very thankful to be having twins and cannot wait to meet these little guys. And I can guarantee that I will look at them for the rest of my life and remember this journey and give thanks that God answered our prayers.

The End of a Long Journey

I have wanted to blog about this for so long but was not ready. I am finally ready!

Most of you know that I am pregnant with twins that are due in February. I am extremely excited about this and feel extremely blessed by God!

but the reality is...

I haven't felt that way in a really long time.

Most of you now know that Chris and I just finished a 2 1/2 year struggle with infertility. In my head I still call it a struggle...though I am going to change this phrase to "My Infertility Journey"... a phrase I learned from my infertility support group friends and that I like much better than my more negative sounding phrase.

My next few posts will be about this journey, what it feels like, what I learned from it, etc. I hope it will be a help to others who are going through this journey and to those who have friends going through the journey.