04/30/2018
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The pain of loss never gets easy, nor never fades completely away. Yes, it will ease as time goes on as long as there is time for hope to exist, but with every passing day, month, year, that hope begins to fade. Nothing while I was growing up, in the midst of my education, or actively serving in a combat zone prepared me for how to handle the disappointment of failed pregnancy tests. The fact that one in eight couples will face infertility issues was never discussed, and thus I never imagined that I would find myself in the position of facing the reality that a family born from the combination of my wife and myself may never come to fruition. I always dreamed of growing up, getting married, and having four kids. Today, I’ll be more than grateful to have one child that my wife and I can call our own.
The dream of having a family grew extremely more challenging in early 2017. My wife was diagnosed with hydrosalpinx, and thus, surgery was scheduled to remove her right fallopian tube. The doctor had told us she would take a look at the left fallopian tube while she was in the midst of the surgery to see the condition of it as well. To my shock, amid waiting during the surgery, the phone rang, and the doctor asked to speak to me. What the doctor told me and then asked me left me emotionally troubled. The doctor noticed that the left fallopian tube was not in the best condition either, and thus recommended removing it as well.
What do you say in that moment? There is not time to think things over, let alone talk to my wife as she was the one who laid open on the operating table unconscious. I did the only thing I thought I could do and went with the doctor’s recommendation and thus gave the doctor the approval to remove the left fallopian tube as well. I knew instantly the impact of that decision and faced the fear of having to tell my wife when she woke up from the surgery. Her first words upon waking were, “Did they have to take both”? “Yes.” I can still feel the pit in my stomach from having to tell her. As I held her hand, we both knew that the possibility of a natural pregnancy was forever gone. There would never be one of those miracle births that you hear about after a couple had given up hope. For us, our only hope for having children now lied in the expensive form of IVF.
My parents both passed away within three months of each other in the second half of 2016, just a few months before my wife’s surgery. My parents, outside of my wife, had been my strongest supporters. Now, they were no longer there to turn to for emotional support. What they did offer in that moment was the inheritance money we needed to pay for one round of IVF. I thought what a beautiful thing it would be for new life to come out of death. It sounded so comforting to believe this would be the case and helped ease the pain of having to spend the legacy my parents left on a family of our own. So, we scheduled the IVF process for the earliest time that was advisable and that we could get scheduled in.
Between the shots, and daily intake of medicines, we kept telling ourselves this short-term pain was worth it for the love that will come someday from it. We turned to God repeatedly in prayer asking that he grant us the family that we so much yearned for. We initially started out with the hope that we could possibly end up with our entire family out of this one round. After the egg retrieval and fertilization that hope began to diminish as we were left with only four viable embryos. My thoughts on the family of four that I desired turned to frustration knowing now it would take a miracle for all four embryos to implant and develop into the children we so much sought to love and cherish.
We left the office after the first two embryos were implanted with so much hope as we were told they looked really good. After two weeks, the pain of disappointment overcame our home as we encountered a failed pregnancy test, not unlike all the previous ones we had experienced since our marriage in 2014. We quickly came to grips with the reality that four was out of the question, but we held on to hope that with the last two embryos, one would turn into the child we always wanted.
We quickly scheduled a time for our next try. Our last two embryos were placed into my wife, and we prayed and hoped that we would not have to face failure one more time. However, anxious thoughts were turned into sadness, pain, anger, and every other possible emotion that comes with another failed pregnancy test strip in our hands. No comforting words could ease the frustration of reality. What had been hope that I could turn my parents’ loss into the life of a child fled, and I began to feel the same type of pain I experienced as I said good-bye to my parents one last time at the funeral home.
Life has a way of reminding you of your situation, and we consistently face the fact that infertility is a very real part of our lives and who we are. Mother’s days, father’s days, pregnancy announcements, birthdays, etc. remind us of our pain. Since 2014, we have believed each year would be the year that we add to our family. We have not given up on God on making a family a reality for us, but the way forward is more challenging now than it’s ever been. We are not getting younger, with my wife now 35, going on 36, and recently my position at work was eliminated due to a business consolidation. While I hope to find work soon, in the meantime we are eating into the money that we were saving up to try another round of IVF. Thus, this contest seems like the best opportunity for a miracle that we have.
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