My Fertility Journey

We have exciting news to share… but first a little fertility context and a message of hope:

December 2017, a few days after I was married, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and flooded with information overload and uncertainty.

One of the primary concerns of my doctor was protecting my fertility during treatment because I was so young (I was 27, I am now 35), so she referred me to an IVF specialist.

I did not know much about it but I went to my appointment and he ran tests on me and did an internal ultrasound and told me my chances of ever conceiving naturally were already very low prior to treatment and would be worse after, due to my follicle count and low ovarian reserve. He recommended that my husband and I go through with the process to fertilize and freeze our embryos for when the time comes, but ultimately it was our decision.

My husband and I prayed on it and when we discovered that they either destroy the fertilized embryos that are not used or in some cases they are adopted out, my heart sank and I felt a moral conviction not to go through with it. My husband felt equally convicted and so we prayed and chose to have faith and declined.

But hearing the words: “your chances of conceiving naturally are slim,” and the dramatic tone the doctor had when he talked about my low follicle count felt so heavy. His words were a heavy burden I had to shed.

During chemo in order to protect my fertility, I received pellets in my belly to stop my ovulation and put me into medical menopause. I learned what hot flashes felt like, I felt mood swings, and experienced water retention. Due to the fact that healthy ovulation is needed for optimal progesterone production, and mine was shut off, I developed worsening depression and a whole host of other symptoms.

But God, as He always does, refined and helped me through the process through His love and people He placed along the journey.

I dealt with many debilitating symptoms after surgery and chemotherapy, pain that kept me up at night, worsening anxiety, depression, chronic stomach pain worsening a previous “IBS”diagnosis, heavy bleeding, extreme fatigue, brain fog, and swelling in my arms, back, and legs.

After treatment, I was offered medications for my symptoms but felt a deep conviction to probe the depths of what could be going wrong and I ended up down a path of learning how to support my body as a whole and peel back layers of compensations it had been making for me over the years, through a functional medicine approach to wellness.

As a result of treating my body as a whole, I reversed symptoms and “diagnoses” I was told could possibly be a life sentence and started thriving instead of just feeling like I was just surviving.

We waited years to start trying to conceive for multiple reasons.

I wanted time to heal my body after chemo and we both wanted to build a connection and foundation in our marriage and have time to ourselves first.

We successfully used natural prevention and the fertility awareness method to avoid pregnancy over the years (one of the primary ways I reversed chronic symptoms was getting off birth control and replenishing the nutrients I lost from it and the methylation issues it created).

However, over the years, we also kept our hearts open for needs in front of us and even attempted to adopt a little girl we met in an orphanage, but the Albanian laws would not allow it so we took it as a “not right now,” from the Lord.

This year was the year that it felt right and it was so nice to be on the same page as my husband. I felt whole and my body felt ready to receive and conceive. But I also surrendered to the possibility the answer could be “no.”

The capacity to trust and surrender to the duality of two truths (1. I fully believe in my body’s capacity to conceive, despite what I was told, 2. but I also trust the Lord if it is not in His plans and the answer is no) is a gift, a felt experience of peace and acceptance that is hard to explain, but one I am so thankful to have cultivated over the years.

Anyways, we picked February to begin and we conceived within two months. I thought I miscarried and it was an emotional experience. I felt the excitement of the positive test and then the dread when bleeding came and a negative result.

I cried in my husband’s arms as he rubbed my back and comforted me. His faith strengthened mine.

But I trusted God and clung to Hannah’s story in the Bible. When she was barren, she poured her heart out to God and trusted Him. Scripture says while praying, she was deeply distressed and wept bitterly and when confronted by Eli who witnessed her prayer, and accused her of being drunk because she wasn’t saying words out loud, she said she was pouring her soul out between her and the Lord and later we see when she left, “her face was no longer sad.” I can attest to the felt peace that can occur after honest lament and a good cry, and giving up the control to the Lord. I can admit it is incredibly hard to keep things between you and the Lord while suffering.

In one part of her journey, after she conceived and gave birth and then devoted her son back to the Lord, She prayed the words, “There is none holy like the LORD: for there is none besides you; there is no rock like our God” and on the day I saw two pink lines again, at 4 am in the morning in our bathroom in the country of Georgia, I held out my hands and prayed these words to Him and praised Him for answering our prayers.

Though I am not physically handing my baby over like she did, we do plan to raise our baby up in the Lord and so her pieces of story have really resonated with me during this journey.

Which is why I am so thankful for the living words of God that offer words of hope and tend to hit differently in certain seasons of life. Especially now, as I sit in awe while I type out these words attached to these photos, which we took a few weeks ago.

When we walked out to take this photo a rainbow appeared in the sky it was such an incredible moment. Praise God, my Rock, and redeemer, He has blessed us with a beautiful blessing, who is being knit together and growing inside the protection of my womb.

Please know I am sharing this as an offering of hope, because I believe in the power of hearing positive stories. They have the capacity to retrain our brains, impact our nervous systems in a powerful way, and light a fire within us.

And I also have every intention to bring glory to my Heavenly Father, there is none like Him, He works in ways we cannot comprehend.

I am NOT sharing this to shame those who have gone down an alternative route for the precious baby they now hold in their arms.

But the truth is, there is a lot of misunderstanding, and fear mongering in the fertility space, especially when the body is not viewed as a whole.

There is a lot of tenderness when topics like this one are touched, but I am going to touch on it anyways, from a posture of love and deep concern.

Sometimes we need to be brave enough to speak up and humble enough to hear another perspective that may differ from ours and not afraid to start asking questions.

And to remember that no matter how many “specialties,” licenses, or credentials a health care provider holds, they can be WRONG about your situation and their words can cause a huge nocebo effect on your journey that needs to be addressed, tended to, peeled back, and rewritten.

Hope flourishes in the space of trust and openness to what the Lord can do and curiosity, rather than defense and fear and simply listening to the “experts.”

To be honest, there is a lot of dwindling hope due to certain “experts” and narratives being pushed about fertility, and a failure to treat a woman’s body as a whole.

If you’re a Christian and open to hearing an eye opening perspective on IVF, I highly recommend Allie B Stuckey’s Podcast, Episode 1018.

I hope by sharing our story, it inspires hope and curiosity about a holistic approach to health and fertility and also brings glory to God.

And I also wanted to share a request, please pray I continue to have a healthy pregnancy and delivery.

We are so excited to welcome our sweet blessing earth side when the time comes, if the Lord wills