How did I get here?

“So much has been given to me, I have no time to ponder over that which has been denied.”  -Helen Keller

Hey, Y’all!  I was thinking the other day…have you ever been driving and upon the arrival to your destination, you look around and think to yourself “How did I get here!?”?  I remember during the 13 years I worked at my brother’s dental office, I’d often find myself pulling into my parking spot at work, look around and asking myself that exact question.

The majority of those 13 years were the most stress-filled years of my life, so I would take the 25-minute drive to work to mull over whatever current event(s) troubling me.  I would talk to God (because I feel totally awkward trying to pray and prefer just to talk to Him like I would my best friend).  And, oftentimes, I would be brought to tears with the internal struggles I was fighting against.

One of the largest struggles during that time was our fight with infertility.  I guess before I get into that a little, I need to give a short back story.  Six months into our marriage, I became pregnant.  To say I was elated would be an understatement.  For many small girls, they dream of careers and high paying jobs, or to live in an extravagant home and drive a fancy car, etc., etc.  For me, the ultimate goal was to be married to a good man who loved me and treated me well, to live on a farm with lots of animals and to be a Mom….preferably before I was 30.  Why 30?  Because my parents had me late in life, at the age of 41, and I often hated that people thought they were my grandparents instead of my parents, and just generally wished they’d been younger.  The age gap between us always seemed to make it harder for them to understand me…or, so I thought at the time.  So, I decided that I wanted to be done having kids by the time I was 30.  I’m laughing to myself right now as I type that out….because, as I learned, it doesn’t matter what MY plans are.  What’s the saying?! “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him about your plans”.  Boy, did we give Him a LOT to laugh about.

Anyhow…back to becoming pregnant and being elated…..I remember the day I had the pregnancy confirmed.  I remember the nurse asking if I wanted to use their phone to call Tom at work, and the conversation he and I had. Word for word.  I remember getting my then-four-year-old nephew to tell my Mom and then also Tom’s Mom that he was “getting a baby cousin”.  I also remember each of their reactions.  And, then I remember being at work on a Wednesday morning in late April.  I was a bank teller at the time, and suddenly started having stomach pains.  I thought I just needed to go to the bathroom.  But, once I did, I found I was passing blood.  I told my bank manager, who encouraged me to call my OB/GYN.  I did and was asked to come in immediately for bloodwork.  After the bloodwork, I was told to go straight home and go on complete bedrest until the next morning when I would need to come back for more bloodwork and an ultrasound.  I, of course, immediately called Tom to tell him what was going on, and then headed home to do as my doctor had instructed.  Not long after I had planted myself on the couch, I heard the back door open.  Tom had left work to be with me.  We were only six months into our marriage, but he was already proving himself to be the husband I had hoped and prayed for as a little girl.

As the day progressed, the blood loss did also.  I could feel my dream of being a Mom slipping away.  I tried not to get upset, to stay positive, thinking I could literally WILL myself to save our baby….as if I had any control over the situation.

The next morning, we headed to my doctor’s office.  Tom’s Mom was there also.  I remember the three of us in that little ultrasound room, Tom holding my hand as the ultrasound technician searched, and found our baby.  I was so relieved to see that tiny image on that screen.  And then, to hear the heart beating!  Our baby had survived the night!  I was filled with hope…but only momentarily.  Because, as I asked the technician, “What do you think?”, she responded with, “I don’t like its position”…which left me with more questions than answers.  Following those words, she excused herself from the room.

When she returned, she had brought a nurse with her.  The nurse asked me to come across the hall to an exam room.  So, the three of us followed.  Once in that room, I was placed in stirrups for an exam.  Tom to my right, again, holding my hand.  Tom’s Mom, right behind me.  All of a sudden, the room became very full as nurses began coming in and out.  I was so confused.  Up until, that is, my doctor came in, sat down, looked at me and said, “Teresa, you’re passing fetal tissue.  You’re miscarrying.”.  Almost 20 years later, and those words still ring in my ears, and the tears still stream down my face as I recall them.  I remember looking to my right, Tom still holding my hand, looking so calm.  He squeezed my hand as the tears ran down my face.  I looked back at my doctor and asked, “When can we try again?”.  Her response was, “In eight weeks.”.  And, with that began what I refer to as “the roller coaster ride”.

I was given the choice of either passing everything naturally, or having a D&C performed.  I am not one to elect to have any procedure under anesthesia unnecessarily, so I chose to be checked into the hospital overnight for observation and let my body do what God made it to do.

I, of course, remember everything about that day/night as well….up until the Phenergan kicked in, that is.  Before that happened, though, I called my Mom to let her know what was going on, and that I would be spending the night in the hospital.  It was a very busy weekend for them at their campground, so she was unable to come in to see me.  But, I had more than enough support from Tom, his Mom, his step-Mom and a couple of friends who had found out and stopped by.

I had a difficult time dealing with the loss and depression set in.  Looking back, I’m sure a lot of it had to do with the fact that my hormone levels were all messed up.  But, at the time I just felt very heartbroken with the loss of the picture in my head of the life we were going to have with our little one.  I’m a planner by nature, so even though I was only eight weeks along, I’d already been making lists of potential names. We didn’t find out the sex of our baby, but my heart has always said it was a boy.

As soon as those eight weeks were up, we started trying again.  I was like a woman on a mission.  It became my sole goal in life.  I had a pocket calendar where I would track my cycles.  I had a chart where I kept up with my temperature so I could find the window of time when I should be ovulating.  I began to live a life two weeks at a time.  The first two weeks I would be tracking, and we would be trying.  The next two weeks would consist of me waiting to see if I started or not.  When I would, I would mourn and then start the process all over again.  This went on for nearly a year before I got so discouraged that I went back to my doctor who suggested we do some testing.  All of the testing came back normal, so she then suggested I take a few (if necessary) cycles of Clomid, hoping it would be the trick to help me ovulate. After three cycles of Clomid (which I believe was the limit) I did not become pregnant.  Next, she suggested a drug more often used for diabetics, Metformin.  I took that medication for a few months, but still no luck.

I got frustrated with that Doctor after a few years with no success in becoming pregnant and moved on to another.  She had little to offer from what we’d already done, and suggested we see a specialist in Nashville.  There, we did more testing.  This doctor suggested we use injectable fertility drugs, which would require multiple consecutive days of ultrasounds to check for the appearance of follicles on my ovaries.  Thankfully, I was able to have the ultrasounds done here at home to keep from driving to Nashville every day.  Once I had the right size follicles, we would return to the Nashville clinic for an IUI, or Intrauterine Insemination.  After no success with this, which included countless number of 2-hour drives to and from Nashville, me missing work, all while Tom was working midnight shifts, we decided to take a break from it all.   Well, that’s what I tried to convince myself anyway as a way to try and trick my mind. In actuality, it was always on my mind in one way or another.

So many drives to and from work I would talk to God about our struggle.  I would cry to Him, beg Him, bargain with Him to GIVE me what I wanted.   I just couldn’t understand how He could ever instill this deep desire from such a young age and then deny it to me.  I couldn’t understand how He could allow others, whom I deemed unworthy for one reason or another (as if it were for me to say!), to become pregnant so easily.  Then, there we were…a loving couple, both with great jobs, a home built specifically for a family and NOTHING.  No child to love and raise.  I was completely miserable on the inside for so many years.  I would put on the best front I could for most people, only allowing a select few to see the depths of my sadness and frustrations. I hated Mother’s Day because it was just a reminder of what I wasn’t.  I hated Thanksgiving because I would have been due around then.  I hated celebrating Christmas because we were missing out on all of the joys that come from a child at Christmas.  So many holidays I made myself miserable with sadness on the inside.  I look back on that now and am angry with myself for allowing such control to be given to something that I had zero control over.  What a waste of life that can never be regained.  But, when I was in the middle of that time in life, I felt like it was the end of the world.  I felt like I was being punished.  I had certainly made poor decisions in my younger years, so it made sense to me at the time that I was reaping the punishment.  It wasn’t until I stopped focusing on the blessing I felt we’d been denied, and instead began focusing on all of the many blessings in my/our life that I would be able to completely close that chapter of our life with a full sense of peace and acceptance.

As the years went on and my talks with God continued, He revealed to me many things during those drives to work. One being that He may not have blessed us with a child here on Earth, but when He brings us Home we would be reunited with our little one, never to be separated again; that I AM a mom and Tom IS a dad.  We would just have to wait to be together as a family.  I found great peace from these revelations and a new perspective to look at our situation.  So in reality, my childhood dreams HAD come true!  I had married a good man that loved me and treated me well, we lived on a farm with lots of animals, and I became a mom before I turned 30.  It wasn’t the picture I’d had in my head as a little girl, but it still all came true!

When I turned 38 I decided it was time for us to discuss getting off of the roller coaster ride, and me on birth control.  If the good Lord saw fit for me to get pregnant, we’d be overjoyed.  If not, we were perfectly happy being a family of two. Tom was on board.  Even after we decided we were jumping off the roller coaster ride, I would sometimes revisit those old, sad feelings. That was until God would whisper in my ear.  Like when I was watching the trial of Dr. Larry Nasser.  He was the doctor that was convicted of molesting hundreds of girls while working as the team doctor for the US Gymnastics Team.  As I stood there, listening to the vial and disgusting acts committed by this man on such young girls, God whispered, “Your child will never know the ugliness of this world.  They will only know the love of Jesus”.  Once again, peace flooded over me.  As I see our world, our country changing…and not for the better…I remind myself of how fortunate our child is to never experience any of it.  How amazing would it be to only know life in a world full of love!

I just turned 47 recently, and now when I look around and think, “How did I get here?” I see things so differently.  I appreciate all of those hard and sad days.  I appreciate the journey that God took Tom and I on during those 10+ years we struggled with infertility.  I recognize that He brought us closer together through those struggles when in so many cases, situations like ours will only drive a wedge into a marriage.  For us, it seemed to make us stronger as we clung to one another through some of the toughest and most disappointing days of our life together.  Those days built us into the couple we are today.  We are far from perfect, because that simply doesn’t exist and anyone striving to achieve such is only setting themselves up for disappointment.  Instead, I like to say we are “perfectly imperfect”.  And, I honestly couldn’t ask for more in this life than what the Lord has blessed me with, including what I once saw as punishment.  His plan for our life is always better than the one we have for ourselves, we just have to trust in Him and let go to see it sometimes.

xoxo, T

Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails. -Proverbs 19:21

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