Category: infertility

Whispers from God

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2002-2003

Today I’m going to share another moment in my life where I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the God of Heaven & Earth heard my prayers and answered.

If you know me personally or have read my posts up until now, you probably know how much I wanted to have a child.  I cannot put into words the hormones, emotions, and dissappointments that infertility makes a couple travel through.  The miscarriage had been so many years previous, yet the pain in my heart was still fresh as I  longed for what I had lost.  I cried out routinely to my God to hear my plea.  I wanted a child.  Not just any child, I specificially and selfishly asked God for a blonde haired, blue eyed, baby girl who was just like me.

I had been through several rounds of oral medications and my doctor wanted to try 5 more months of infertility treatments before doing an exploratory laproscopic surgery to look for problems.  I was tired of trying and trying only to be disappointed month by month.  I begged God to tell me if and when I would get pregnant once again.  One night, I felt a still, small voice from within me telling me that I would have 3 months of treatments, have surgery, and then get pregnant.  Not an audible voice, just there in the stillness of my prayer.  Wait…  Did I imagine that?  3 months didn’t make sense!  The doctor clearly said 5 months, then surgery.  Afterall, if God heard me, couldn’t he just touch my body and make it all well without all of the treatments and surgery?  So, I pondered these things in my heart.

As I took injections for the infertility treatments, I started cramping worse and worse.  I was cramping so bad that the doctor was treating me with narcotics to control the pain throughout the entire month regardless of where my body was in the female reproductive cycle.  After 3 months of this agony, the doctor called me back into his office to talk about our options.  He said that I was having way too much pain and he thought it wise to go ahead and do the surgery to see what was going on.  Chill bumps immediately went up my spine!  It had been 3 months of treatment since that still small voice, now I was mysteriously being set up for surgery because of the pain?  Surely not, I wouldn’t let my hopes get up, but I knew that surgery needed to be done.  I knew something was wrong.

The surgery itself was uneventful.  The results?  Stage 3 endometriosis causing the cramping.  They removed the endometriosis as best they could.  I also had cervical polyps that we were told probably caused the first miscarriage.  I had never felt like something was wrong with the baby on the first pregnancy.  Somehow, I knew it was me.  Anytime someone said that there must have been something wrong with the baby, I would tell them, “No, it was just too perfect to be born into this sinful world.”  Now, I know.  It was my body, not the baby’s.  Perhaps God did think that child was just too perfect to be born into this sinful world…

Finally, the time had come when I would do another round of infertility treatments- this time with the endometriosis freshly cleaned out and no more cervical polyps.  Such a long wait in between, but this time I had more hope.  They had found the problem and fixed it as best they could.

I remember looking over the pregnancy test that I took early because I couldn’t wait any longer.  The second line was faint, but it was there.  I showed David.  He looked up shaking and said, “that’s positive!”  It hit me…  That still small voice had said, 3 months of treatment, surgery, then pregnancy.  It happened exactly as I had heard.  My God had heard my prayers and answered them.

Money, Money, Money

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2001

David’s long awaited graduation from anesthesia school had finally arrived!  He looked at positions in California as well as Texas, but didn’t find much at the time.  That search led us to Louisiana just across the Texas border.  So, we said so long to So Cal and made another long hard move across states.  Unfortunately, being fresh out of college and being showered with the first really good paying job in our lives, we turned to material possessions.  Our first search was a home.  We found a large home on lake Toledo Bend.  We were blinded by the beauty of the land and wanting to posess a home that proclaimed David’s hard work at school.  So, the home we purchased was large but outdated which we planned to change quickly.  Our dream home didn’t come without struggles.  We somehow got convinced it was okay to buy the home without an official inspection.  Bad move.  The septic tank was broken and expensive to repair.  The fireplace was set up to blow hot air, which we loved once as it got fixed, but David got his chance to crawl through tiny attic spaces to try to figure that one out.  I know there were more issues, but I can’t think of them right now.  I just remember that it wasn’t as golden of a find as I thought at first.  However, the neighbors and people of Louisiana were extremely nice and the serinity of that place was amazing.

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I had hoped that I would be able to stay home with a baby by that point, but apparently, that wasn’t happening.  So, I took a position at the local hospital working as nurse educator, infection control, and employee health.  This also brought in a bit more money for us to spend.

Since we had owned our first little fishing boat earlier in our lives, we longed to get back on the water to waterski (wakeboard for David).  One of the first purchases David wanted while living on the water was a wakeboard boat.  Of coarse, that came with an expensive boat lift to take it out of the water when not in use!

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The boat on the right belonged to my parents, but they left it there as we had the extra lift and so we could ski or fish anytime we wanted.  There were fish and turtles that would come up to the dock and you could easily feed them by hand.  We also had a duck named Hector that loved our pug dog!  I miss Hector – he was a good duck…

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We finally had money for vacations.  We went on a cruise with my parents to celebrate David’s graduation.  The beaches of the Carribean are breathtaking!

We had just about everything we wanted.  But, my body still longed to be pregnant.  We found an infertility doctor in Shreveport and began testing and treatments.

I do not write this today to make you jealous or to brag.  In fact, David & I are quite ashamed of how frivolous we spent money during that time in our lives.  I remember all to well the frustrations I felt when we were newlyweds and I would just wish Publisher’s Clearing house would show up with a big check, or that we would inherit a bunch of money from an unknown distant relative.  Anything to make paying the bills easier.  I thought everything would be good if I only had some more money.  However, we were blessed to have the chance to experience financial stability, but that did not bring true happiness, just more worries and responsibilities.