I have always wanted to be a mommy. I remember how thrilled I was when I was able to hold a baby for the first time. The baby’s name was Melissa and I was about 4 years old. Somewhere I have a picture of the moment and you can see from the expression on my face that I was about to explode with joy. When I was old enough I started babysitting and would have done it for free just to be able to take care of kids. When it came time for college I had no idea what field was a perfect fit, but knew I wanted to work with children.
Sometime during high school I started becoming concerned that something wasn’t quite right and that having children may not be easy for me (I won’t bore you with all the details). In college I talked to a doctor and found that my concerns were justified. About a month after graduating college my fiancé, Kirk, and I got married. I really wanted to just be married for about 5 years before starting a family but my possible fertility problems encouraged us to get started early. I read every book I could find on fertility issues and lost the weight the doctors suggested and my body did not cooperate. We tried for a few years without any medical help since we couldn’t afford what our insurance wouldn’t pay of the treatment. Then we decided that my husband would join the military and two of the biggest reasons were for financial stability and medical insurance to help us start a family.
About a year after arriving in our first duty station I started fertility treatment. I hated it. I was so miserable. Month after month I tried treatments that my doctor suggested and month after month my body did nothing. I felt like a failure, like less of a woman. I didn’t understand why I had to have such a strong desire to be a mom and then have my body fail me. Why couldn’t I have been one of those women (whom I have a lot of respect for) that have high career aspirations? All I really wanted out of life was a family: a husband, a few kids, soccer practice, Church, and family BBQ's on Saturdays.
After about a year of going through all of this medical help I found myself at the last month of the last step of treatment that I thought I could handle. I was on the last dose of Clomid that my doctor would prescribe and my body hadn’t responded to any of the smaller doses at all, so I really didn’t have any hope that my body would respond that month. The next step was that I would have to do the self injections. I really didn’t think I could do this. I was going to listen more to the doctor, if it came to that, but I thought that I would be getting into something that I was really uncomfortable with. My concern was the high order multiples that are sometimess associated with the more aggressive forms of fertility treatments. I desperately wanted a family but I didn’t think I could live with myself if I ended up with 6 babies in me that could possibly have compromised health from not being able to develop long enough. I have always liked the idea of adoption….. We had not looked into it but it seemed like something I could do.
Ok so here I was in what I now call my last month of fertility treatment and I really didn’t think anything was going to happen. I had been trying to “get a life” for a few months. What I mean by that is that for 4 years I had been in this state that my life was all about getting pregnant. If you asked me how I was I thought you were asking “ Did you ovulate this month?” or “ what are the doctor’s wanting you to do now?” . My life was really one dimensional: “I must have a baby.” I was starting to feel that maybe I wasn’t going to have a baby, maybe that wasn’t God’s will for my life and I tried to find other things that would make me happy. I got my first (and so far only) manicure, starting reading again, and got really into going to the gym. I was starting to learn to have a good time again and was coming to a peace that it could be possible for me to have a good life and not have a biological child.
Then the unexpected happened and my body started to cooperate. I knew something was going on because of information that I read out of one of the books about fertility that a doctor suggested I read (God bless that doctor). After so many times of hoping that I was pregnant and finding out that I wasn’t, I was determined to not get my hopes up this time. I actually did not think that I was pregnant and wouldn’t have taken a test if it wasn’t for a very good friend who insisted and even bought and dropped a pregnancy test on my doorstep. I took the test so that I could prove to her that I wasn’t pregnant and she would quit telling me that I was (Thank you April).
I was so shocked when that line showed up that all I could do was screamed. I had so many daydreams of how I would tell Kirk if/when I found out I was pregnant. None of that happened, he found out because I was screaming and pretty hysterical. That was one of the most nerve wrecking and exciting days of my life. I was able to tell everyone I was pregnant in a different way and got such a thrill out of sharing such wonderful news. All I wanted to do was be happy after so many years of being so unhappy.
I know that I romanticized motherhood but even on the worst day I am able to see what a wonderful blessing my little guy is and am able to see that he was an answer to my prayers even though God’s answer was “not yet” for many years. And by the way my original plan was to have our first child after we had been married about 5 years. We started trying after 1 year of marriage however Matthew was born about 5 ½ years into our marriage. So I got exactly what I had hoped for. GOD IS GOOD!!
AMEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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