You see, the first time I encountered the word "infertility," I was at my OB/GYN's office. I had been handed a worksheet with instructions on how to carry out the prescribed ovulation therapy. At the top of the paper, the header read "Infertility Worksheet."
I've written before about how that moment affected me, but let me just say again that I felt terrible panic over that. Of all the time I had spent at the doctor's office, no one had said anything about my being infertile.
Sure, getting pregnant was as easy for Hubster and I as it seemed to be for some of our friends ("We decided to try and then he looked at me and I was pregnant!") but that didn't mean I was infertile. I just had Endometriosis. LOTS of women have Endo. Infertile women have bigger problems than I do, and they spend LOTS of money on treatments way more invasive than just taking a few pills each cycle.
Nevertheless, I found that worksheet label to be troubling. So much so that I memorized the page of instructions and threw the worksheet away, sure that I never needed to see that again.
And as I've waded through this fertility journey, I have come to decide that using the word (in)fertility is silly. Lots of women and men are labeled (in)fertile and later become pregnant through various means. And since "infertile" actually means "unable to reproduce," the label is off base.
It's more accurate to say that you are struggling with your fertility.
But I digress...
Either way, the struggle of fertility is very real and very painful. I admire women who deal with it for years and years before the issue is ever resolved, because it's month after month of emotional turmoil. Each month you are forced to confront the issue, only to be bitterly disappointed again and again.
As I have dealt with this struggle over the past year or so, I have gone through a process of realizing what the struggle is really about.
Of course, achieving pregnancy is the goal, but I have come to believe that the struggle over my fertility has been largely a Spiritual one.
As women, we are biologically hardwired to conceive. It's in our natures--we can't help it. Our hormones and physical bodies drive us to have children at some point. When that ability is thwarted, some serious struggles arise. My bestie and her husband have recently been struggling through the process of deciding whether or not to go through with a form of permanent birth control. She wrote a beautiful post on her blog, Dear Young Mother, the other day about this. She talks about the consequences of letting go of her ability to conceive anymore children.
Struggling to conceive attacks our ability to do the thing our bodies were programmed and designed for, and since there's really no way to control your fertility, the struggle becomes...maddening.
For me, struggling to get pregnant has been a Spiritual battle, one that has seemingly attacked me on a very base level, and caused me to question just about everything I know about myself. It's forced me to face up to my weakest character traits and see myself for what I am: someone who likes to have control, stability, and certainty. I like things to work, and when they don't work, I want to find someone or something to blame for it.
These are not traits that I feel particularly proud of. In fact, when I really think about it, they make me feel rather ashamed. But as my mom reminds me, our weaknesses are strengths and vice versa, so I have to think on that as well.
Order, stability, and certainty are huge assets to being a teacher, and the ability to identify a problem, find the source of it, and then come up with a solution is likewise an important skill in my profession. In my life too, I suppose.
But when these get out of balance, they become a problem.
And fertility has thrown these out of balance, for sure. I can't control my fertility, nor can make myself become pregnant. Finding the problem was easy, but there's really no one to blame for it. Except myself. And that's not a healthy practice, I can assure you.
I have taken care to manage my health through diet, exercise, rest, and care from a great Naturopathic Doctor, so past that, there's not much else to do but continue trying and waiting.
This is the part where the Spiritual Battle becomes a problem for me. What I really want is CONTROL. What I am really saying through my thought life is that I know what's better for my life than God does, and that's simply not true.
I've watched His providence, His goodness, His faithfulness play out in my life in big ways.
He's answered my prayers and given me the desires of my heart. So why should this time be any different?
It's taken me most of the past year to come to terms with that question.
The struggle for me is bigger than getting my body to a place where it can have a baby. The struggle is more than just wanting something I can't have.
It's about placing trust in the hands of my Father, who knows what is best for my life.
It's so much easier to say that than to live it, isn't it?
But since I've made Isaiah 12:2 my mantra, I keep reminding myself that placing my trust in God is an every day occurrence, not just a one time thing.
Each day (usually several times a day) I repeat that to myself--"I will trust and not be afraid; surely God is my salvation"--and remember that I am choosing to trust God with my life.
That's the truth of my struggle to become pregnant--it's much more about trusting God than it is about having a baby.
Although, having a baby, whenever it happens, will be pretty spectacular :-)
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