Feeling Lonely

When I was younger, one of my favorite games to play went something like this: I was at home minding my own business, there was a knock at my door, and I answered the door and found a baby in a basket on the porch with a note that told me to take care of the baby forever. So I did. I loved the feeling that someone else trusted me to care for their child.

As a young married person, I have had probably 30 dreams in total wherein someone around me has a baby and that person is unable to care for the baby for whatever reason. So the baby is given to me to care for forever and raise as my own child.

When Dave and I decided to try to get pregnant, my prayer was always that God would give me peace through the whole thing. I don't remember ever once in the first year or so praying that I would get pregnant soon. It was always asking for peace with God's timing or comfort in the sadness. I didn't plan to pray that way; I just realized a few months ago that I had been praying that way.

When we told people we were starting to try to get pregnant, I always warned, "this could take a while, so don't go crazy just yet" or "who knows what will happen or how long it will take."

Maybe my own intense desires for children clouded my sight for the past 24 years, but I'm beginning to see that God has been preparing me slowly and surely for a struggle with infertility.

I'm not happy with this struggle. As a girl who grew up in church, a young woman figuring out her own faith and the way faith works in general, it's hard for me to say that I'm not happy with where God has placed me. There are days that I'm angry and sad, disappointed with myself, frustrated in my place in life, days that I'm searing with jealousy, days that I want to sleep it off and numb myself to 'infertile living.' There are days where I am lonely for a child in the very pit of me and it's too much to ignore. I absolutely have the desire to carry a child, to give birth, to experience pregnancy, and it hurts me to imagine my life without that experience. Maybe it will happen for me someday. Maybe it won't.

But there are days where I understand a small piece of God's perfect plan. Days I can look at the past and think, "even if I don’t understand it, I was made for this." There are days where I know that my timing wasn't great, and I am thankful I didn't get pregnant right away. I have great joy for friends who are pregnant. I have the desire to live my life to show God's glory, no matter what that means for me and my journey to parenthood. I can honestly say that if this is how God wants to use me, I can handle infertility. Some days it is hard. Very very hard. Some days it isn't.

I definitely don't want sympathy for writing this post; I just want to be completely honest with my life. It's not all perfect, it doesn't all make sense. Infertility is something that's not really talked about very much. So if there are even two people out there who read my blog and are going through the same thing, I want them to know I'm here. I get it. I'm sorry for what you're dealing with, friend. I'm praying for you and I wish so very much that you didn't have to go through this. As you're going though, know you're not alone. There are so many women thrown into this same crappy battle. If you're in the Nashville area and you're struggling with infertility and you would like someone to talk to, email me. We can get together for coffee. I will just sit and listen, if that's what you need. I will cry with you, if that's what you need. I'll pray with you and try to encourage you as best I can, if that's what you need. I have good days and I have bad days, just like you do. So let's do this together.

Hopeful

There's a fine line between obsessing over something that may be unhealthy, and allowing yourself to think about that something. I went a long time in my life assuming that any negative feelings I may have had were automatically bad and should be ignored. This was all me, by the way, it's not something my family does that has scarred me for life. My mom is so great at saying, "hey, I noticed you don't seem like yourself. Is something going on?" It's one of her greatest traits, in my opinion. But I still always had an overpowering urge to stifle any hurt or sadness. Turns out, that's not always healthy. Who'd have thought? I'm still learning this, slowly but surely.

One of those things that I still have an urge to totally ignore is my infertility. I'm trying to find the balance between obsessing day and night over the fact or ignoring it completely, letting it fall to the back of my mind. I like not being reminded of it at every moment. I really like hanging out with the wonderful neighbor kids without thinking, "why can't I have sweet kids like this?" And I like feeling... normal (in my mind there exists this magical thing of 'normal' that I don't quite understand, but it really seems exciting) most of the time.

And then I have moments where I think, "as soon as I get pregnant, I'm going to throw a huge party and I'm going to decorate it like this, and have this type of cake, and we're going to announce it like this..." and my mind goes to a really exciting and hopeful place, if I'm doing the thinking right. If I'm not doing it right, I watch a movie about a woman who has a baby and I'm in a funk for three days because it just hasn't happened yet and that makes me really sad. So what's the difference? I've got no clue.

So, in the excited and hopeful stage I'm in right now, I am mentally planning the big announcement party that I throw when Dave and I find out we're going to have a baby. This could be four years from now, but I'm still excited. And I really feel like that's an ok place for me to be. I could be wrong, of course. I've been wrong about my own mental health many times before. That's surprising isn't it?!

I'm excited that I might someday be able to sit down with a friend and say, "hey guess what. I'm going to have a baby." And I'm excited that someday I'll be able to sit with a friend going through something as painful as infertility and say, "I know exactly how you feel. I'm here for you." And I'm excited that I can someday sit with my child, whether natural birth or adoption take place, and say, "do you know what? I wanted you SO much. More that you will ever understand, and I waited and waited for you to get here because I already had a heart filled up with love for you before you were even born."

And if that's not the healthy kind of thinking, I'm not sure what is.

Answers. Maybe.

Yesterday morning I had a follow up appointment to chat with the doctor about the blood work they ran last week.

As soon as my doctor came into the room, she had a big smile on her face and said, "I think we can help you!"


Relief.

Everything she said after that was pure encouragement. She told me about steps towards my health and possible relief for the fertility issues I've been facing. She was positive and helpful. I'm so thankful for that.


It seems that my body is producing too much insulin. I'm not diabetic, but they'll put me on the same type of medication that diabetics often use. On top of that, I'll be on a pretty strict diet and exercise plan. The foundation of which is no simple sugars, very few carbs, lots of greens. I also need to be REALLY active at least 5 days a week. That's the hard part.

When you sit at a desk for 8+ hours a day, and try to leave time in the evenings for blogging and such, it leaves a quite small window for the rest of life, ya know? Considering I have about 20 minutes of being at home on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from now until Christmas... that means maybe exercising on the weekends? YUCK. But I have a real goal. An awesome goal. A baby goal. So maybe I'll be able to find the time.


The medication they want to put me on should help regulate my insulin production. But it's most likely going to make me sick for two or three weeks. After the initial introduction of that stuff into my body, I should be able to stomach it. UNLESS I eat something high in sugar. Then I'll probably get sick again. I suppose that's motivation to eat right. Plus, there are some healthy foods that I just cannot get enough of. That will help. Like this little guy. This is my good friend, Okra.



The doctor also offered to provide another prescription that would boost fertility and is a very common prescription for women trying to conceive. We opted for skipping that medication now while we just wait and see how the first plan works out. But when she was explaining it to us, she said, "Now, this medication does increase the likelihood of twins." Dave got a panicked look on his face. The doctor smiled and said, "twins can be a really great thing." Dave's response was, "Yeah. I suppose if you're getting them into acting..."


So basically, the appointment went really well. I was thankful to have Dave there with me, I was thankful that the doctor had concrete things to tell me. Answers. At least for this point in the game. I'm hopeful and encouraged. And that's never a bad place to be.

The "I" Word

I visited the doctor twice this week. Wednesday morning I went in to talk about the questions I'm having and hear about some possibilities for why I haven't been able to get pregnant yet. Thursday morning I went in for a follow up exam and quite a bit of blood work.

I wasn't really nervous going into it like I assumed I would be, and I know the prayers going up for me had a lot to do with that. Thanks so very much, if you were one of those praying people. I didn't really even get overly emotional about it. Until my doctor said Infertility.

There's a lot packed into that word. It doesn't mean sterile, thankfully... but it's still a little jarring. Some good friends have been asking about the appointments, and I normally say, ‘fine’ or ‘okay.’ I haven't been able to digest it all yet, I don't think. My emotions are little on edge, but I'm also a bit numb to it all. I'm not sure how those things coexist within me, but I assure you, they do. It's like I'm on a bicycle, coasting down an easy hill. There are people on the side of the road telling me to enjoy my ride, and I am. But every once in a while I see a pebble in the road and then I just know it's going to send me careening over the handlebars, and I have a small breakdown before I go back to coasting. It’s something sort of like that.

For my whole life I’ve been waiting to start a family. For about a year I've been waiting for a positive test. For another week I'll just sit and wait while my blood is tested. When those results come back, hopefully we can begin to get me started on hormone treatments or insulin blockers or whatever else science has figured out to help women become pregnant. And then I'll wait for all that to work. Lots of waiting, but I believe that my plan and timing for my life aren't always the best things for me. I don't always feel that way... but I do believe it. For now I just have to watch out for pebbles and hold on until the ride is over.

If You Know, You Know

I am completely aware that this post is not meant for everyone, so feel free to just stop reading if you're a little sick of me talking about babies (at least 90% of you.) But that's what I'm feeling at the moment and that's what I'm going to write about. There's your get out of jail free card.

Also, you should know that I'm actually in a good place this week emotionally. A place I can't confidently say I've been over the past few weeks, but I'm here now - I feel healthy and relatively stable - and that feels good and it feels like relief and it feels like hope.

So this is where I am now: August marks the one year "anniversary" of when Dave and I decided to try to get pregnant. In the scheme of things, one year isn't much, and I know that. But what one year means to me is that some hovering date I was given by my doctor is just about here and we are encouraged to "investigate" any issues Dave and I may have because pregnancy hasn't happened yet. So, seeing that close approaching is scary and it's sort of overwhelming my life.

But before all of that is today. And today I have seen about 7000 examples of super sappy mommy talk. If you want babies - YOU KNOW what I'm talking about. There are several types of sappy mommy talk. There are the really annoying examples. Mom's who are really into letting everyone know how their lives are so much better because of their children, their kids are the sweetest and the cutest and the most snuggly and even when they're in trouble it's really no trouble because life is beautiful with their babies in their arms. It hurts me to hear those comments. Maybe you just happened to get pregnant during the same month I decided to try to get pregnant, and maybe you didn't realize that your brand new soft and perfect baby is just a reminder to me that maybe something is wrong with me.

Another example of sappy mommy talk: cute stories. These are honest and a much sneakier way of making those of us without kids feel badly. Moms don't mean to do it. I don't even want them to stop doing it. I really like hearing stories about how kids figured out how to shoot beads out of their nose, or how they ate an entire box of Oreo cookies while mama was in the shower, or how they somehow misunderstood the meaning of a word that turned into something really embarrassing in public. I really love hearing that stuff. Just not today.

But the very worst kind of mommy talk, for me, is the mom who just wants to complain about her children all day every day. How much she doesn't get a break. How the kids don't listen or how getting in the car is so much harder with kids. I understand that it's not okay to say to someone, "fine - if you don't want your kid, give it to me." That doesn't normally work out. We have all either experienced first hand, or heard MANY TIMES PLEASE DON'T SAY IT TO ME AGAIN that raising children is really hard work. Think about it... is there ever a moment in life that telling someone who has yet to experience something is just as eye-opening as someone actually experiencing something? We're not going to get that it's hard until we do it. You know that more than we do. So why keep telling us? Maybe you didn't mean to have kids and you were thrown into motherhood. Maybe your children really, honestly are hard work. Maybe I understand more than you know that not taking care of yourself before you take care of others is hard on a soul. Obviously I know that ranting sometimes feels really good at the moment, but I also know that it doesn't accomplish a thing. But I'm still totally going to publish this blog post.

I don't want to be that girl who nobody can be around because they're not sure what's allowed or what's totally off limits and may make her cry or make her super uncomfortable. I really am NOT that girl most of the time, I hope. Can someone vouch for me? I don't want you to be afraid to talk to me. Because 98% of the time, I want to hear about your kid and about your life and about your honest feelings. But sometimes... like today... everything baby or child related that I see or hear makes me sad or angry or jealous. Even if I'm in an otherwise healthy emotional state.

Pre-Mother's Day

Before the big mother's day festivities, I want to talk about my own "before motherhood."

To get a bit of background on my thoughts of being a mother someday (if you haven't been following this blog long) check here and here.

Last Mother's Day was rough. I'm pretty sure I cried through the whole day off and on. Everything about that day was a reminder to me that something was missing from my life and I felt totally alone in that. Everyone was pregnant. Everyone had kids. Everyone was celebrating except for me. I was bitter and sad. I was frantic about all of the unknowns - thinking about getting pregnant but not being able to, wanting to have kids but knowing a wait was in store... it was all just very overwhelming. I was afraid of infertility, of instability, of timing outside of my control, and of so many other things.

Because I've written about all of that before, I just want to say to any of you that may be going through some of that this weekend: you AREN'T alone. Everyone is not pregnant. Everyone doesn't have kids. Lots of people are hurting along side you. These words won't help. I know that. But I needed to say them. If nothing else, just so I could read back over them and know that I thought that at one point in my own life and that I said it. I'm hopeful that this Sunday will be better for me than last Mother's Day was, that God would calm my anxious spirit, and that anyone else going through infertility, waiting, miscarriages, sadness, hurt, or bitterness would have an overpowering hope this weekend.

Haiti - Days 4 and 5

Going into the blogging about Haiti, I knew days 4 and 5 would be hard to sum up. I knew that it would be hard to make it accurate to my experiences without being overly emotional and dramatic. I knew a lot of things about blogging days 4 and 5... none of which helped me figure out HOW to do it. So, let's just start with pictures.This is Judson. He lives at the Cretch, which is the orphanage for infants through children around 8 years old. Judson is the exact description of precious. He's tiny and cuddly and smiley. He's got a great snorty laugh, and he babbles in his sleep. He's 6 months old and weighs 10-11 pounds. He has a problem eating which will need to be fixed with surgery, and he changed my life. That sounds like an exaggeration, but I can't explain to you how much it is not.


During the week, several of us were paired with babies who were sick. We each got our partner and made sure they got their medicine, were fed at the same time every day, and got extra love and care. Judson was my partner. His favorite place while we were together was laying on my chest, like the picture above. If I tried to put him on my lap, or on my arms, he would wiggle and kick and scrunch his nose up until he was back on my chest.


I would sit for hours each day like that. Just holding him close to me and letting him sleep or feeding him or letting him chew on his shirt or my shirt or a bib or anything else he could reach. Being the person to care for Judson that week was absolutely the most purposeful my life has ever felt. I was needed, I was loved unconditionally, and it felt like our hearts were made to be together for those few days. I believe that his being sick at that moment and my broken ankle were planned long ago so that we would have a few days together under the banana trees at the Cretch in Haiti. That Judson specifically was put in my arms out of all the other sick babies, that our nurse Pam thought to pair people from our team with sick babies from the orphanage, and that he was as content a baby as can be. That every small detail of this trip, and his life, and my life had been orchestrated by a God who knows exactly what Judson and I need every day of our lives. That week, we needed each other.

On day 5, we were told that it would be our last day in the Cretch, and that we'd be going to a village for the next days - to say our goodbyes. I cannot remember a time in my life where saying goodbye was more difficult. I couldn't look at his face without crying. I couldn't hold his hand without imagining my life without him in it. I couldn't say goodbye. It hurt on every possible level.



Judson taught me that family doesn't have to be organic. Children within my reach need mothers. I've got enough love in my heart to share with kids who need love. He taught me that adoption is not only a great option for some people, but that it's a great option for Dave and I. Because of the love I felt for Judson, I would be able at some point in my life to have a child by adoption and know that we could love each other well. Because of the love Judson showed to me, I could confidently say that I'll never be able to turn my back to the adoption needs in the world.


I found out a few days after the trip that Judson has a home in Wisconsin. He's got a family that loves him dearly that's working right now on getting him home on a medical visa. You can read about him and his family here.

Hope and Timing

Let me start by saying I wasn’t sure this would ever make it to the blog. It’s just not the type of thing one goes shooting off to strangers about, but the past few weeks have been nothing if not a lesson in opening up and trusting. Even sometimes to strangers. So bear with me, please as I share a little more than you may expect.

There is something in me that has ALWAYS wanted to be a mom. I’m not sure if it was the big sister in me that just needed someone to take care of, or if I was just born to nurture. But I have, for as long as I can remember, wanted so much to be a mother. In elementary school when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said without hesitation, “a mommy.” And I meant it from the bottom of my teeny heart.

Now, as a woman who has no children of her own, who is surrounded by hoards of pregnant woman and newborn babies, and has this strong natural inclination to be a mom, I have a lot of hurt. Hurt for women in the same position as I, hurt for myself for not having a child yet, hurt for my husband for being forced to trek over these same fears and wants over and over with me, and then more hurt for myself again. I go through periods of time where I’m fine with not having children yet. I can handle it, I can enjoy my life as a wife and as a free-to-do-what-I-like woman, and I have faith that “it will happen when it happens” as so many people say. But other times… I cannot handle it, I can’t enjoy my life without children, and I assume it will never happen for me.

Dave and I have been trying to get pregnant for a while now. Long enough that I have grown concerned, but not so long that I’ve seen a doctor. We’ve got time. I know that. And kind, thoughtful people keep reminding me of that. But I’m still here waiting and hurting.
Sunday afternoon in the car on my way to a meeting about our trip to Haiti, I was stressed beyond measure with planning and worry and financial concerns and being late and I just wanted to crawl back into bed and forget that the day had ever begun. But it had, and I was in the middle of it. So I just took care of things as they came. I wasn’t thinking about “my trip to Haiti” at all, I was thinking about the heat of the room, the stress I was under, the tasks ahead. I sat down at the end of a long black table in an office surrounded by the 30 other people who are heading to Haiti with me. Slides were flicking past, one after the other, depicting the children I’m going to meet in just 2 weeks. The babies. The babies that want so very much to have mothers, but don’t. The babies who live 24 hours a day in white rooms full of cribs because the last home they had crumbled to bits in a natural disaster, and the home before that was crumbling in a completely different way. The babies who need me to hold them, and feed them, and love them. And maybe I needed that too. I was filled with such an overwhelming hurt again. Not that I didn’t have my own baby to hold, but that these babies didn’t have their mothers to hold them, and how much worse that must be.

I’m not saying that being a childless mother isn’t hard. I’m not saying that it’s not important, because it is so hard and so important. But being a motherless child… I cannot even imagine. And through my hurt, I was also filled with fear. What if I can’t help these kids they way they need to be helped, what if I decide I want to adopt them – we can’t afford that, what if my heart is softening to adoption because I will not ever conceive a child, what if, what if, what if. And more slides ticked past. And more fears ticked past. And more smiles, and more cribs, and more tiny hands and feet, and more opportunities for me to let go of my stress and my fears and remember why I’m going on this trip in the first place. People are hurting everywhere. If I can make a difference in that world of hurt, I am certainly going to try. That may mean being uncomfortable, and being punched in the gut with others’ hurts, but maybe God’s timing and His compassion is so much greater than mine.