An Infertility Story, Part 3

If you’re just joining us, click here for  part 1 and part 2 of the series.

By June of 2003, we’re well into a familiar pattern: I get emotional, Christian gets frustrated. He feels that I won’t allow him to get excited when we see signs that might mean pregnancy, but I counter that I just want to keep our feet on the ground in anticipation of the fall. Trouble is, it doesn’t really help. Every time we discover that we’re not pregnant, it’s like a big pit opens and we fall right in, and spend two days crawling back out of it. He can’t stand seeing me weeping every time I leave the doctor’s office.

2002 is a rough year all the way around. But there are moments of incredible beauty, too. Like the day when I stand in my parents’ kitchen with my mom and her mom. Up till now we’ve shared our struggles with parents and siblings and a few close friends, but we haven’t gone public. As we stand in the kitchen that afternoon, Grandma tells me about her two miscarriages; and before I know it, we are crying together for the pain of the past and the pain of the present, and it’s a moment of connection I realize I would never have had were it not for this cross I’ve been asked to bear.

Cycles continue to be long, with ambiguous signs. The pain of every failure does not dull, but I begin to understand that God’s will for me is not yes or no, but wait. And as I wait, I find my heart changing. I think that perhaps this is one of those testing times. Not a test to see if we pass or fail, but a chance for us to learn our own strength—to decide between abandoning our principles or accepting the unknown. And all of a sudden, one day, I find myself able to let go. I call my older sister, who is on the wait list to adopt from China, and for the first time I really consider the adoption option.

Finally we decide to do something we’ve been avoiding because of distance: namely, go see the NFP doctors, two hours away. At the end of June, we have our first appointment with Dr. Mark Stegman. He speaks our language. He asks questions, looks at our charts, tells me that treatment regimens can only be determined after we know what the problems are; we have some in-depth diagnostics to do first. It’s a moment of incredible hope.

A week later, we have a huge fight. Christian’s sick to death of infertility ruling our entire existence. He wants to quit treatment altogether. I nearly hyperventilate, and eventually we work out a compromise: we’ll keep going, but I have to be more positive about life.

I learn to chart Creighton NFP, a much more detailed record of secretions than what we learned through CCL, though it lacks the temperature cross-check. Certain types of observations point to certain diagnoses, and this helps trained doctors dig down past the symptom (infertility) to the cause behind it. The advantage of NaPro technology is that once you know the problem and address it, your body can do its job properly, not just for this time, but the next and the next. It’s a more holistic way of addressing infertility.

We cross another milestone early this fall: we decide it’s time to go public. We break down in front of our church choirs (at that time, each of us had one) and tell them what’s been going on; we send an email to uncles, aunts, cousins and the large list of friends.

In one way, this is good; now we have a vast support network praying, cheering us on. But we also have many more people offering unsolicited advice and comments. “But you’re so young to be worrying about this!” they protest, even though I’m not—not for having children; I’m 28 at this point, hardly a vast age, but certainly not young to be having children.

People toss around the word “adoption,” as in: “Well, if you can’t get pregnant, you can always adopt. As soon as you adopt, you’ll get pregnant.” Perhaps they don’t realize that no agency in its right mind will let a couple adopt until they’re sure the parents have “resolved their infertility issues.”

And of course, there’s the doozie: some variation on, “You’ve got to relax! As soon as you stop stressing out, you’ll get pregnant!”

Nothing can provoke an infertile woman to near-violence more quickly than the words “relax” or “stress.” How am I supposed to respond to that helpful piece of advice? “Oh, silly me, how right you are; I think I’ll relax now, all better!” Rrrriiiight. Of course I’m stressed! Being told not to be ratchets the stress up a notch or two with every repetition. If you come away from this series of posts with nothing else, carry from it this lesson: NEVER mention the word “stress” to an infertile couple. True or not, it is absolutely the most counterproductive thing you can possibly say.

At my next visit to Dr. Stegman, he performs a physical examination. There’s another rectal exam, but he warns me first, and he’s very gentle. Nonetheless, I hiss with pain. He pauses. “Now, I need you to separate the discomfort of the invasion from actual—”

I’m already shaking my head. “No, it’s definitely pain, and it’s definitely inside.”

He nods. “There’s something there that shouldn’t be,” he says. He suspects that it’s endometriosis. The only way to know for sure is to do a laparoscopy. He also sees what he calls “cervical eversion,” which is when the cervix turns partially inside out, exposing the fluid-producing glands to the hostile environment of the vagina. This causes them to go crazy producing secretions, and that confuses the signs of fertility we’re trying to use to get pregnant.

I think: How did Doctor #1 miss this? But I know the answer: because Dr. #1 is too focused on his standard regimen and not enough on finding the problem.

I go in for surgery on the first anniversary of 9/11. Dr. Stegman comes into the pre-op room, perches beside my cot and prays with me, and I’m filled with gratitude that I’ve finally found a doctor I can trust.

Join me tomorrow for the last part of the story.