The question is common and the pain is great, and up to this point, it’s a burden Zack and I have shouldered with just our families and a few trusted friends beside us.
The question is this: when are you going to have children?
And the pain is in the answer.
Because for us, after nearly two years of trying without success, after many doctor’s visits and blood tests and uncomfortable questions and having complete strangers making checklists out of the most intimate parts of our married life, after hopes rising only to be crushed again, after talk of surgeries and medications and injections, the answer has settled on this – we are unable to have children.
It was the day after we got this news that I had to attend an all-day conference for work. Outwardly I stared at the presenters of the morning and somehow even took notes, but inwardly I was watching all those hopes and plans disintegrating in the wake of our new diagnosis. I watched the joy I’d imagined on our family’s faces burn away to ashes. I let the moment of telling my husband I was pregnant pass. I let the excitement of a growing belly and fluttering first kicks and picking out a name crawl into a tiny space inside of me to wither where no one, not even I, could see it.
And then lunch break at the conference came.
I had noticed a few old co-workers from my real estate days sitting a few rows up from me. Included in this group was a lovely couple with whom I had connected well. During lunch, I sought them out to say hello. I found the husband first. We had started catching up when his wife came up behind me. I turned to greet her and was met with her very pregnant belly. And when she gave me a hug, her belly pressed into my own and all those dreams and hopes I had been storing away came bursting into my heart again dragging with them all the pain I had hoped to keep at bay, at least for the day, but honestly maybe longer. Because some things are easier to ignore.
While I smiled and chatted about their due date and how their other little one at home was doing and what a great conference this was, those dreams I had begun to stash away took on the salty smack of the sort of nightmare you wake from in the middle of the night, the kind that leaves your chest feeling empty even though you try to convince yourself time and time again that it was, after all, only a dream. The sort of thing that haunts you for days and weeks and years after, always waiting for a chance to creep into what should be a joyful moment and turn it instead into something with edges.
It became the needle hiding in the cotton candy. And maybe it always will be. Because every baby announcement, pregnancy craving post and pair of teeny-tiny shoes carries something with it now – a tremor that cracks at the core of me, at the heartwood that keeps me strong, whatever happens to the scarred bark on the outside. This nightmare is a storm that is hard to weather and still keep my roots buried deep in the ground when everything makes them want to pull up so they can transplant into different soil. Someone else’s soil. Someone else’s soil on someone else’s path.
When we first started the medical investigative journey (one we still haven’t completed in its entirety), I was tested first. Simple blood tests with a looming procedure that was going to be a little more involved, a little more painful, and far more costly. But, before we could even get to that, my blood test results came back. All normal save one. One of my hormone levels was sitting somewhere around 700% lower than it ought to be to accommodate a pregnancy (and probably around 600% lower than it should be for the average Joe).
The initial shock at seeing this was quickly followed by the calming thought that this imbalance was common and easily corrected with daily medications, which I should be taking anyway. It would mean more frequent blood tests once I was pregnant and medication adjustments throughout, and ongoing monitoring of my levels for the rest of my life, but it was all, in a word, treatable. So I picked up a little orange bottle and adjusted my eating schedules to fit the prescribed empty stomach requirement, and Zack and I figured we’d have another sixty days or so waiting for my body to adjust before we could start trying again.
It was perfect. We’d be closing on our first home and, just a few weeks after that, hoped we would be able to celebrate a positive pregnancy test. We thanked God and laid the matter to rest.
Looking back at that time now…well, looking back at that time is hard. Looking back hurts. Because looking back I know exactly what it felt like to be told, “We have a solution that has worked for hundreds or thousands of others like you. Not only that – it’s painless. Not only that – it’s quick. Not only that – it will help you feel better in a bevy of other ways. And not only that – but your insurance will cover it!”
Oh, how the tides have turned since then. Oh, how the $3000 medical bill just to learn that the answer is, “Tough luck” stings that much more. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I started taking the medications and sure enough, even a week later I was starting to feel different. Better. And we were packing to move and it was great. Zack had already gone in to get tested as well and we hadn’t heard the results back, but we weren’t concerned about it. We’d found our problem and our solution already.
Case closed. Moving on.
Or not.
Because that would be too easy. Because we had to defy all the odds. Because our path is not meant to be so simple, and what we thought was a tough hill we would look back on one day with fondness was actually only the beginning of in impassible mountain that we would be left to wander forever, never quite getting over it no matter how many times we think we’ve finally crested the highest peak.
It was the day before we were set to move into our new house. We had boxes crowding our mediocre one-bedroom apartment. We had friends and family lined up to arrive the next morning to help us shift our lives to a new home. We had cleaning to do and final items to wrap up in newspapers and so much joy for what would be our new life.
But when I came home from work and set to packing and checking those final items off our to-do list, Zack came to me with a loss in his eyes I didn’t understand.
My first thought was that his grandpa had been hospitalized again. But he sat me down on our bed in the middle of an apartment with no more photos on the walls, no more touches of us, an apartment that was nearly as bare as the day we’d moved in, and he said six words that would send us up the stoic rock face once more.
“I got my test results back.”
It’s one of the few times I’ve seen my husband cry.
“I’ve never known what I really want to be in life,” he said as we sat together with stunned blankness our eyes fixated on walls as empty as our mouths. “But I always knew I wanted to be a dad.”
We didn’t know anything at that point really. Only that the results were bleak, as bleak as they could possibly be. We talked about a hernia surgery he’d had as a child. Maybe the surgeon made a mistake. Maybe scar tissue had been left behind. This was going to be fixable certainly. Maybe more complex than a bottle of pills, but another surgery would surely set things right.
We were brave little hikers, not understanding that the clouds in front of us would only get darker the higher we climbed.
Still, it was all these encouragements and hopes I shared with my husband that night. These
God-please-let-this-be-true things. I made Zack call and schedule the follow up appointment immediately. I’d been in his shoes myself only a few weeks earlier, and I knew how much better I felt after taking the next step instead of sitting with a test result that seemed so cold and final.
And you know what? It worked for him too.
After scheduling the appointment (weeks out at that point, because apparently these sorts of doctors are busy people), Zack and I were able to place our fears and pain aside and focus on the big move we had ahead of us.
I’ll pause here for a moment to address something. One of the hardest things about this whole situation was this – not everyone knew. We had been holding off on telling our families we were even trying to have children because we wanted it to be a grand surprise when we finally got to share the big news. Yes, I had planned how we would tell them, down to the minute details. I’d pictured it all, thought about how to capture that one-in-a-lifetime moment for us to cherish forever, for us to show our children someday and say, “This is when we told everyone you were going to be here.”
It all seems pretty naïve of me now.
Anyway, when we started this whole messy medical process, we decided it was finally time to let our families know. By that point, we’d already been dealing with the jokes and proddings of when those babies were going to be coming for some time. And it’s not anyone’s fault. Of course. No one would ever joke if they knew. But they didn’t know, and it was only getting harder. So we told our families. We told a handful of close friends.
But on moving day – on that day when we went from a one bedroom, third floor apartment to a three-bedroom single family home – I knew someone would say something. It was inevitable. We’d already heard it all –
“Gee, that’s a lot of bedrooms to fill.”
“Oh look, the previous owner’s had a nursery here. Is that why you bought it?”
“Let’s see – got married, bought a house, you know what’s next…”
And then, on moving day, as we dealt with the stress of moving, the raw pain of Zack’s recent test results, and seeing those bedrooms that, yes, we had hoped would be filled with cribs and nursery rhymes, sure enough there was one more comment to add to the record –
“They’ve got a nice play set in the back. When are you going to have some kids to play on it?”
I made a joke in response. Something about how I was quite enjoying it myself. Some automatic reply that always jumps to my mouth so much more easily than truth. And I laughed at my own joke. I laughed at the way the claw of these inane comments ripped at my chest and brought that wound I was barely keeping concealed back. And before that laugh could fade into what was waiting just beneath it, I disappeared into a different room to collect myself. No one wants to burst into tears in front of all their friends and family. Maybe especially not me.
But I’ve sidelined again. Fast forward a few weeks and Zack goes in for his appointment. We’re hoping to learn there’s some obstruction from his previous surgery and it will be a simple procedure to remove it.
If you haven’t already guessed, this was not the case. Instead we got “genetic condition” and a re-do of the test “to be sure.” And a $3000 bill, with more to come. “Thanks for coming, you’ll never have children, see you in eight weeks.”
That night, after Zack and I talked, I went to the garage to work on my car. Some stupid seal is loose and when it rains really hard, I get water in my car. I wanted to fix it. I needed to fix it. Because I needed to fix something. I needed to accomplish something. I needed something to be back in my control.
So there I was with my car half torn apart, hands all greasy, ten o’clock at night, and I couldn’t fix the damn car. And guess what was forecast for the morning – 80% chance of rain. I swore more than I care to admit as I conceded defeat, threw the car back together and stuck a towel under the spot where I knew I would get leaks the next day.
And oh the next day.
You try going to a work conference the day after hearing that kind of news, after having that kind of night. You try hugging a pregnant friend the day after receiving that news. You try keeping it together for eight solid hours only walk under cloudy skies out to a car with a soaked towel on the floor and I guarantee you will do exactly what I did. I threw on my sunglasses and sobbed all the way home. I let my heart break and opened up that tiny box I’d been shoving everything into and let it spill out like ink all over my soul.
When I got home, I crawled straight into bed. Angry that I could, because I didn’t have kids to look after anyway. When Zack got home, he sat with me in bed for a long time. Sometimes we talked. Sometimes we didn’t.
“I’m angry,” I told him. “I’m so angry.”
And I was hurt. I am hurt. This dream has been dying in stages for a while and you would think that eventually it would stop being such a big deal, but it doesn’t. Every piece of it that dies is just one more drop in a bucket that has been too heavy from the get go. It’s just salt in the wound. Insult to injury. Kicking me while I’m down. All those clichés.
And it looks something like this – my oldest sister Nicole is currently pregnant with her fourth, due in November. My next oldest sister Tawnya is currently pregnant with her second, due in December. My brother’s wife Kyra is currently pregnant with their first, due in February.
And me? In the midst of all these pregnancy announcements and growing bellies, I am throwing wrenches on my garage floor in frustration, and jealousy, and frustration that I’m jealous, and frustration that I always will be. I’m angry that fifteen year olds manage to get pregnant without wanting to, without trying. I’m angry that couples get “surprise” babies to tack onto the end of their families when I can’t get a planned and medically assisted one. I’m angry that other couples are able to space their children perfectly, pregnant whenever they damn well please. And I’m angry because I’m angry. I’m angry that I can’t always just celebrate with these people. I’m angry because these people are my friends. These people are my family. These people are people I desperately want to celebrate with. And sometimes I can’t. Sometimes I just can’t.
A friend of mine recently asked how you know when you've found your voice while writing.
And I think I have settled on this. You're speaking in your voice, honestly and without reserve, when you're scared someone won't read what you have to say all the way through. When you're nervous that they'll take that one paragraph, that one phrase, and turn it into a mantra for your life instead of the mere segment it was meant to be. Because that means you're saying something dangerous, something real, something complex enough that it can't be understood from a sound bite or tweet. Something that requires attention, that requires as much investment from the listener as it did from the speaker.
In an interview with poet David Whyte, he said a phrase that stuck with me (and if you want the whole spectrum of what he was talking about you should listen
here. I don't want to risk sound-biting someone out of their true meaning with my brevity here). But the phrase was this—"You have to say it," he said, "in a way in which it is heard fully."
And so I'm trying to tell this story honestly, poetically even, because the onus for sharing understanding is on me, the speaker, just as much as it is on you, the listener. I want you to hear what I'm saying, fully. I want you to understand the warring dichotomy going on. I want you to understand that I
don't understand everything that's happening to Zack and I right now. And sometimes that makes me sad, and sometimes it makes me mad, and sometimes it makes me feel nothing at all. Some days I can participate fully in celebrating gender reveals and that someone's growing son is now as big as a cantaloupe. Other days I weep when I see forty-year-olds talking about how grateful they are for their parents, because I know I can't have that. And sometimes I snap at my husband over stupid things because I'm already brimming with too much conflict inside and one more emotion, even if it's supposed to be laughter at a meme he found, is one emotion too many.
So where are we now? What does it all mean?
I wish I could wrap it up nicely for you. I wish I could show you the landscape, across a field, the clouds a distant gray over peaks of mountains that we have already conquered. I wish I could zoom out of this madness to show you the grander mosaic being created and prove that this time is just a patch of blue in a sea of grander hues. But I can't.
Right now we are still caught in the storm just trying to keep our raft afloat, trying to strain the salt out of the water so we can drink enough to last one more day, one more appointment, one more hope.
We are wrestling with what options we have available to us now. We are praying for soft hearts, for strong souls, for malleable dreams, for grace while we lay our old dreams to rest. We are trusting in the One who sees the grander picture, who paints in all the hues, and who has walked with us every step of the way. If I make that sound easy, I do a great disservice to myself and anyone else who has battled through this journey. It's not easy and it doesn't always look pretty, but when reality is harshest and hearts are racked in pain...
I don't know how to finish that sentence.
Or rather, I don't know how to finish it without sounding trite, without slapping some Christian-ese band-aid on a wound that requires air to heal. But there is truth in this, so I'll say it anyway — when reality is harshest and hearts are racked in pain, God is good.
And that doesn't mean it's all okay.
And it doesn't have to.
