I’ll be up front with you. This particular post is our story.
It’s not a “how to” or a list of encouraging Scripture for infertility. I will be sharing posts like that, so stay tuned!
But this post is to share how we got here—why I’m writing.
If you’re here looking for a story that matches yours detail for detail, this post probably won’t be it. If you’re looking for a story that has a tidy, happy ending, this post definitely won’t be it.
But, if you’re up for jumping into a story that’s still being written, this post is for you. So let’s get to it!
My husband Brian and I got married in June 2013 right after we graduated from college. Like most couples, we had a plan. Our first priority was to enjoy our new life together. We wanted to give ourselves five years before having kids.
Whether or not we were going to have children wasn’t ever in question. The questions were about on what terms we wanted to have them.
I was 21 when we got married, so being pregnant and having a baby at 26 seemed reasonable to me. Not too young, not too old. Time for me to finish my master’s degree. Time for us to get settled into our marriage and probably buy a house. We’d have our jobs situated. We could be selfish for a few years and do what we wanted, when we wanted.
Yepp, it’s settled then. Five years.
Honestly, over those five years, most everything went according to plan. We got settled into our church and started serving there. I graduated with my master’s degree and got a full-time job at the college. We moved out of our one-bedroom apartment and into a three-bedroom townhome. Brian landed a new job that he really liked and that paid more. We’d traveled to Jamaica, Ireland, and England. We’d enjoyed life with just the two of us.
And so it was time.
We already had our trip to England planned for the summer of 2018, so we decided we’d start trying after we got back. (After all, we certainly couldn’t “risk” getting pregnant beforehand and have that interfere with our trip.)
The day we got back, I stopped taking my birth control pill. We were filled with so much new anticipation and excitement! At any point, I could be pregnant!
After preventing pregnancy for five years by very intentionally taking this tiny pill at the same time every single day, knowing that one missed pill could change everything, we had entered uncharted territory. What would happen? How soon would we be pregnant? Would Brian be with me when I get a positive pregnancy test, or could I surprise him? Ya know, with one of those cliché “Honey, can you take a look at our oven?” ruses where he opens the oven to find a bun I’ve hidden, and I secretly film him as he realizes what it means? Could we time it so we can announce the pregnancy to the family at Christmas? What if it took 4-5 months instead of 1-2 months—how frustrating that would be! What should we have our kids call my parents—Gram and Pap? Grandma and Grandpa? Mimi and Papa?
I even remember joking with a friend that I’d have mixed feelings if it happened right away, knowing I wouldn’t be able to drink any of the special wine we had in the refrigerator from a recent visit to our favorite winery. (lol.)
And so we did what married couples do, and we waited. And waited.
And waited.
And nothing happened.
Literally, nothing was happening. After I stopped birth control, my period hadn’t come back. And no period meant no ovulation. And no ovulation meant no chance at pregnancy.
After a couple months off the pill and no sign of a normal cycle, I threw myself into desperate research. How do I fix this? I Googled a hundred questions and read forums late into the night. I subscribed to fertility blogs. I bought and studied three different textbook-sized fertility books with careful underlining and note-taking. I started taking 8-10 different supplements/vitamins (I wish I was kidding). Give me all the zinc and liver support! I changed my eating habits. Low-fat foods are linked to higher risk of anovulatory disorders? K, full-fat it is! I started acupuncture. Needles in my shins and my stomach? Worth it!
Don’t get me wrong—some of these things may be helpful in moderation, and there most certainly are valid studies linking diet and lifestyle choices to fertility. But to me, these things were the pieces to a puzzle that I just needed to solve. I could fix it. If I researched more, read more, hit just the right combination—I’d get it.
You know what I didn’t do much of? Seek God. And I mean really seek Him. Sure, I prayed that He’d heal me. I prayed that I’d get pregnant. I prayed boldly, asking in His name, and stood in agreement.
But what I “stood in agreement” with wasn’t His plan or His word. It was still mine.
By October 2018, I not only wasn’t pregnant, but I also still hadn’t ovulated. My OBGYN finally agreed to see me. In what felt like a drive-by appointment, she said she’d give me some progesterone for 10 days to induce a bleed first, and then 21 days after that I’d need to have bloodwork to confirm that I was, in fact, not ovulating. Then we could finally talk about next steps.
And so the testing began.
There’s more! Head on over to Part 2 to read the next part of our infertility story.
