Cedar N' Steel

Dear Infertile Woman,

You are not alone. You are not alone. You. Are. Not. Alone. Thousands of women are in your exact same position right now, suffering in silence, bearing the burden of infertility. Women trying to get pregnant, trying to have a baby, but feeling the exquisite pain, fear, and helplessness of having their dreams dashed month after month with the first sign of crimson failure.

I know you are not alone because I am infertile. And through sharing my story, I’ve met lots of other women who are infertile. Most have gone on to have biological children through various levels of assistance and God-given miracle, and a few like me have resigned ourselves to never carrying a child to term, never experiencing pregnancy, never holding a baby in our arms with a beautiful combination of our husbands and us. This is not an inspirational message to just keeping praying and wishing and eventually your dream will come true. This letter is about how we’ve found peace and joy with our situation, even though it didn’t turn out how we wanted.

The fact is, I cannot bear children. I don’t have the necessary female hardware to have a child the normal way. In preparation for IVF, my husband and I decided to follow our doctor’s advice to remove my closed, deformed Fallopian tubes, the pathway the fertilized egg takes from the ovary to the uterus. It was supposed to create a better chemical environment in my uterus for pregnancy. I have no Fallopian tubes which means that I cannot have biological children without IVF or surrogacy.

Over the past five years, my husband and I did five rounds of IVF with two embryos for each transfer and I miscarried them all. We tried various drugs, supplements, Chinese herbs, dietary changes, exercise restrictions, acupuncture, and lots of prayer to try and make my body work right, but nothing worked. I never made it past 8 weeks. God said “No”. We briefly considered surrogacy, but decided for various reasons not to go down that road.

Most people end their infertility journey with a beautiful baby or two or three in their arms with every hope for another should they decide their family’s not complete. Our story doesn’t end the way so many do, the way so many pray theirs will. Our infertility journey ended when we decided we were through. Through with the pills, through with the shots, through with the doctors visits, through with the ultrasounds, through with the complete loss of modesty. Through with the pain and isolation and stress and shame and endless roller coaster of excitement and sorrow. We just decided we didn’t want to do it anymore.

When we were in the midst of our fight, researching doctors and diets and old wives tales to get me pregnant, I couldn’t fathom never having a biological child. Throughout our journey, doctor after doctor told us IVF would work, that they saw no reason that it wouldn’t. But it didn’t and no one could ever figure out why. It will remain a mystery forever why my body didn’t work the way God designed the female body to work. In a world that needs reasons and information, we’ve found a way to be content with the unknown.

Let me tell you what I do know, over a year after our last transfer and miscarriage, a year after we decided not to have biological children. Life.Goes.On. Infertility is not the end of your story and not the end of the world. Infertility is just a season, and it will come to an end one way or another and each day, each doctors visit, each medical procedure, each prayer brings you closer and closer to the conclusion. Hang in there, sister. You can and will get through this.

I know you will get through this because you have to. There’s no other option but for you to keep moving forward, slogging through the pain and suffering, clinging to the joys and successes. Be patient with the journey and know that God is using your pain to grow your character, to transform you into the person He desires you to be. While you are focused on the end goal, God is working His magic in your heart and mind. Let Him. I can honestly say, looking back now that it’s over, I am thankful for my infertility because of the person it turned me into. I am so much stronger, wiser, and more content and I love God more than I could ever imagine. You will come out of this a very different person than when you started and that is a wonderful thing.

Whatever you do, don’t let bitterness take hold. Find something that brings you joy and do it. A lot. For me it was exercise, books, writing and music. A good playlist and a distracting book do wonders for the soul. Be gentle with yourself. I found myself hating my body for what it couldn’t do, thinking myself a failure every time I felt the familiar pangs of another miscarriage. There is a time to grieve and mourn, but don’t let the pain grow roots. It won’t serve you and will only isolate you more from those who love you. Satan wins when you wallow in your grief, but he’s utterly destroyed when you find joy in the midst of suffering.

It’s OK to be sad. It’s OK to be angry. It’s OK to feel jealousy when someone announces they’re pregnant after only a month of trying. Or to feel rage when you hear a story of a teen pregnancy or someone who doesn’t want their child. Or to want to claw the eyes out of the next person who tells you to “just relax and it’ll happen,” or “it’s all in God’s timing.” God is teaching you a valuable lesson with these encounters. Forgive, over and over and over again. Forgiveness frees your soul from bitterness and resentment. Make it a habit to internally forgive all comments made out of ignorance. Satan wants you to dwell on them and hold grudges; God wants you to forgive.

The truth is, this may not turn out how you want it to. You may never have a biological child. I fervently hope that you do, that your dream comes true and someday soon you can hold your precious little one in your arms, trying to decide who’s nose he or she has. The turning point for me was when I finally acknowledged, after three miscarriages, that perhaps a biological child wasn’t in God’s plan for me. It didn’t sit well at first, hardly more than a suppressed whisper in the depths of my mind, but it stewed and diffused and eventually saturated my thoughts until I had no choice but to acknowledge it.

I made the head decision that I didn’t need a biological child to be happy, didn’t need a biological child to fulfill my life, didn’t need a biological child to love God. I say head decision because my heart wasn’t there yet. I didn’t feel the truth of the words for a long time. I simply reminded myself every day that I would find happiness someday without a biological child. I didn’t need God to answer my prayers for me to be happy or for me to love Him. It took another year, two more miscarriages, still no answers, and reaching a crossroads in our journey for my head decision to pierce my heart.

Once we’d transferred all our embryos, we had two options. Try IVF with a different doctor or give up on our dreams of having biological children and pursue adoption, something we’d never considered until that moment. It felt like jumping off a cliff when we decided to see where the adoption path lead. Complete loss of control, zero knowledge of the process, no adoption experience whatsoever. Yet somehow in the middle of weighty life decisions, with only darkness and anguish behind and fear and fog ahead, I felt relief. I felt peace. I felt joy because I no longer had to go through the pain of miscarriage, the stress of medical procedures and special diets, the waiting and wondering and hoping and shame and self-hatred. I felt free.

Three months after our final miscarriage, we began the adoption process to adopt an infant domestically. We researched, asked questions, talked to other adoptive families, read books, filled out forms, and jumped through all the hoops to find ourselves active and waiting for the phone call that would end our childlessness forever. Seven months after our final miscarriage, that phone call came, and two weeks later we held our newborn son in our arms. I’d like to think that angels sang in the Heavens and God wept with joy, but down here on Earth all we experienced was sleep deprivation, spit up, crying, and fumbling around trying to figure out how to keep that tiny human alive. It seems it doesn’t matter when or how they come to you, parenting is parenting.

That’s what our story is truly about. It’s not a story of how we prayed and hoped and then God gave us what we wanted. It’s a story of perseverance, character building, patience, trust, and ultimately submission. Submission to God’s plan rather than our own. Sometimes they line up, but when they don’t only God’s will can prevail. All the while we suffered and waited, God was preparing us to be adoptive parents, preparing the birth family to carry the child He wanted us to raise. Preparing the entire journey to end up the way it did, far beyond anything we could ever imagine. You may not see what’s going on, but God is working on your behalf, preparing the way He means for your journey to go. Trust Him.

The most important lessons I learned from infertility were how to love God better. He shouldn’t have to answer all our prayers and give us what we want in order for us to love and trust Him. He loves us unconditionally and He wants the same from us in return. Without questions, without doubts, without limits. Our faith and trust is not in what He gives us, but in who He is. Our perfect Savior. Our loving Father. Our strong defender and gentle comforter. God is the same no matter what’s going on in our lives. Trust in that and not in your transient feelings. You don’t have to understand in order to trust God. God allowed Satan to send hardships and suffering to Job, but God knew how Job’s story would end.

Here’s the ultimate truth. God is Good. God is good even if you don’t get what you want. God is good even if life hurts. God is good even if you’re infertile. God is good not because of what we experience here on Earth, not because of our circumstances, but because of who He is and what He did for us on the Cross. Your heart may not always feel it, your head may try to deceive you and you may feel as if you’re shouting prayers into a dark silent void. I know I did. God is good in the silence. God is good in the waiting. God is good in the pain and suffering. I know it makes not sense right now, but I hope someday it will.

He loves you and He has good things in store for you, though it may not turn out how you imagined. God is so much more creative than we could ever be with our limited, finite knowledge. I wouldn’t trade our son, who shares zero DNA with us, for any biological child. He is exactly who was meant for us, and we for him. God knew exactly what He was doing all along, and only now after I’ve had time to reflect, and have a son who sleeps through the night, do I understand the truth of that.

You have no idea how this will end, how long you’ll be in this season, what it’ll require of you. Have courage and fight your fears with unconditional faith. There is light at the end of it, and it’s beautiful and perfect. Biological, adopted, foster, fun Aunt status, or no children whatsoever, everything will be just fine. The children meant for you will find their way to your arms. I have only joy in my heart about our story, only love for my son and my God and the journey it took to get here. Though scars remain and twinge from time to time, they remind me to trust God through the hard times, love and serve others He puts in my path, and let Him write the story rather than dictate my ideas to Him. There’s freedom in giving up control to the One who already wrote the ending.

Love and blessings to you as you walk this path. I’m excited to see how it ends!

Rachel