Myth: Infertility is God Telling You Not to Have Children

This week is National Infertility Awareness Week and as a way to increase awareness Resolve has started the “Bust an Infertility Myth Blog Challenge.” I have chosen to bust the myth that infertility is God’s way of telling someone not to have children. I picked this topic to address because faith is a large part of my infertility journey and theological issues are kind of my full-time job as a seminary student. I will be speaking from a post-modern Christian perspective, but that does not mean that those of other faiths cannot find helpful information. I could probably write a book on this myth alone, but I’ll try to keep this short and to the point.
            My first response to this statement is, “How you do know what God is telling me?” I,m sure there are a few people out there that can honestly see infertility as God guiding them in a different direction in life, and I do not doubt or discredit those individuals/couples. However, for most of us on this journey it is rather a question of “why me?” and “how do we fix this?” If a person has cancer do you tell her that God is telling her that she is going to die? If someone is in a tragic accident do you tell him that God wanted you to be disabled?  Then why tell an infertile person/couple that God does not want to bless them with children? I believe that God instills desires in our hearts for a reason and for those struggling with infertility one desire is parenthood. Infertility has done a lot of things to my life but one thing it has not done is diminished my desire to be a mom, if anything it has increased it.
            Second, I feel this statement is a direct attack on an individual's or couple's ability to parent. This may be a personal statement more than a theological one but I do not think that makes it any less valid.  When someone hits me with this myth I get a little defensive. With all the cases of child abuse/neglect and shows like 16 and pregnant, I feel like I am being told that these people will make better parents than I would. I realize that this is not the intention of the statement (at least I truly hope not) but you have to understand that a woman undergoing infertility treatment does not always think clearly.
           Lastly, “barren women” have some great company. Imagine if Sarah and Abraham had believe that God would not bless them with a child even though they were told otherwise, and at their age I think they had a right to think that. In fact Sarah’s first response to the promise was laughter, the same response she had when Isaac was born.  Hannah is a woman whose weeping prayers for a child were answered with the birth of Samuel.  Then there is Rachel, her son Joseph was the answer to her pleas. And we cannot forget Elizabeth, the barren woman that was blessed with John (the Baptist). I would say that is some pretty good company. These women did not always believe that they would conceive, but with faith they gave birth to some of the greatest men of the Bible.
         Like I said before I could write a considerable amount on this topic, but I think this will suffice to bust the myth. I truly believe that God will bless us with a child whether that is with the help of fertility medications, IVF, surrogacy, or adoption. I do NOT believe God is telling me not to have children.  

Basic understanding of infertility
Background information on National Infertility Awareness Week

One of Those Days...Okay Weeks

Yesterday was the day we found if the Femara help my follicles reach their full potential on a good timeline. That means another ultrasound, I am getting so sick of doing them but it is necessary. The Femara doesn’t have as many side effects as Clomid but it does have a warning not to drive or operate machinery until you know how it affect you. I was not to concern about this since I only have a 2.5 mg dosage, but come to find out it puts me to sleep like no other. I took a lot of three hour naps last weeks. From the start of our visit today I wasn’t doing well, there was a younger couple in the waiting room that just had a 4D ultrasound done and were gushing over the printouts. I don’t hate pregnant people, but it is defiantly hard to deal with some things like this. I am not usually in the best state of mind before my ultrasounds anyway, and this was sending me over the edge. I even said to Jeremy, “I wish they could do that somewhere else.” It is hard to explain to others that have/are not experienced/ing infertility, and I know it is irrational and selfish but it happens. Thankfully we got call back before I could break down. We are at the point now that they don’t even give me instructions to prep for the ultrasound, we just go straight in there and I do my thing. (I get my ultrasounds done at my ob/gyn’s office instead of my RE’s office because of insurance coverage.) There were lots of follicles which is good, but no dominant follicles which is not good.  I had not given to much hope to the follicles being good this early in my cycle but it was still disappointing. I had told Jeremy I just had a feeling this drug wasn’t going to work.

The call from the RE’s office a few hours later confirmed my suspicions. First of all I was asleep when they called and when Jeremy woke me up I freaked out because I thought I had missed my ultrasound altogether. It was funny after the fact. Anyway, the conversation with the RE office is one I would have rather not had. They were not happy with the ultrasound results, and gave me a couple of options. I could go up there and get a blood test done to confirm the ultrasound – which is pretty much useless. Or we just “cancel the cycle” now, in other words there isn’t anything else we can do this month. As if my hope was not already shatter, she also told me that it is highly unusual for women not to respond well on their first round of Femara. I wanted to tell her that I was the definition of highly unusual. It is possible that we will not even try a second round of Femara and go straight to injectables. That is a big step for multiple reasons. The obvious is that no one wants to have to inject themselves with something and the second is cost. Shots are exponentially more than pills, and then there are higher risks as well. Our RE called it the “triplet medicine,” my friend and I have joked about triplets in the past but with the possibility looming in the future it isn’t as funny. That is a bridge will cross if we come to it, I’ll be happy with however many babies God blesses us with at once. Needless to say, I’m not in the best place mentally right now. It is difficult to get all the good news we did last month and not be disappointed when it doesn’t happen the way we want right away. As much as I know it is not my fault, this is the first time I thought maybe there was something I could have done differently. And I know that is probably not true and I need to be patient, we’ll hopefully find something that works. It gets really hard at times though, and that is part of the reason that many people struggling with infertility chose to remind silent. This seemingly little thing touches every part of our lives. I just have to continue to rely on God to see us through this storm.     

Plan C?

Well, this past week brought a lot of things to consider. We finally saw the reproductive endocrinologist on Monday. I was a nervous wreck, my digestive track was unhappy with me and my blood pressure was through the roof. I have to thank my wonderful friend, Michelle, for making the journey with us. Without her, I probably would have completely lost it in the waiting room and won’t be able to remember much of what the doctor told us. For most the most part we got promising news. The doctor said that my pervious care had been excellent, which made his job a little easier. There are three things that can be problematic when attempting to conceive: 1) sperm 2) eggs and 3) blocked tubes. We know for sure it is not 1 or 3 so it the eggs, something we already knew. He said we could try to figure out the exactly reason why this is but it wouldn’t really make any difference in treatment. As we have already attempted the first option he would use, he indicated if our current cycle was not successful we would move on to Femara. It is a drug that is marketed for breast cancer but has also show to be effective in fertility treatments because of the way it suppresses hormones. One bonus is no side effects like Clomid. We will do up to two cycle of this medication, one on a low dose and one higher. If those are unsuccessful we would move on to injectables. The only problem with injected medication is that the risk of multiples would be increased, something that my body may not be able to handle well. With both of these treatments we would continue with the ultrasounds and trigger shots. He is pretty confident that once we are able to get my follicles to grow at an acceptable rate, we will get pregnant rather quickly. In fact he was hopeful that this cycle would be it. Even though we did not really get any answers we didn’t already know, it was encouraging.     
            A couple days later I went back to the herbalist and after looking at my charts she was really hopeful that this would be our time as well. Everything went as well as it could this month. Needless to say, I was getting pretty excited. That excitement was short lived, as I started to feel the onset of my cycle. The tests indicated my anticipation, that this was not yet our time. And I’ll have to admit that my coping strategy was to check out, I have not dealt with reality for the past couple days. To be honest I don’t what more to say because I have not thought much about it. I just know it means we are moving on to plan C, Femara and another round of hope.