Each week I interview someone who has experienced infertility firsthand. This week I’m interviewing Katie from A Hundred Affections. I really enjoy her thoughtful blog, and I love what she says below about letting hope find her. Enjoy her interview!
Q. Tell us a little about yourself.
Q. How long have you been TTC and what struggles are you facing?
Right now, my doctor is trying to diagnose why I miscarried. After numerous tests, all they have discovered is that I am borderline/positive for an autoimmune blood-thickening issue. As a result, he put me on baby aspirin. At the moment, he has instructed us to try on our own or a month or two, and if no pregnancy, then likely, we’ll try Clomid and an IUI next.
The lowest point for me was probably after my second miscarriage. We had gotten bad news early on with our first pregnancy, and I really thought the second one would be different. We got bad news with the second one as well, and with both pregnancies, we prayed for God to do a miracle for us. It was very hard for me to accept that God could have intervened but did not. Not only was I grieving from the miscarriage, but I felt very far from God, too – and that only compounded my isolated feelings. It really rattled my faith in God. I didn’t know if I could be close to God, and I was scared that maybe He didn’t want to be close to me. I felt His comfort so strongly with my first miscarriage, but I didn’t feel that way with my second; it was just the opposite.
Also, my second miscarriage didn’t pass naturally. I had an awful experience with misoprostol. It still didn’t force the miscarriage, so I had to have a D&C. The miscarriage process dragged on for about a month, so I felt like I couldn’t move on, heal and grieve while the miscarriage was resolving itself. In essence, I felt physically, emotionally and spiritually stuck.
There wasn’t any trick to getting through it. I wasn’t feeling close to God, but I kept showing up. I kept praying, reading my Bible and doing what I knew to do, even though I wasn’t feeling better or feeling God at all. I just sort of went through the motions, hoping it would pay off. Eventually, as my heart started to heal and as I was just honest with God about my hurt and pain, I started to sense His presence again. And that is really how I’ve gotten through: God. Every day, it gets better and a little easier.
Q. In a recent blog post, you talked about how HOPE is going to be your word for 2014. How do you plan on nurturing your hope in the coming year?
It’s funny, because God really gave me that word “Hope.” I wasn’t looking for a word, and I didn’t pick “Hope.” But over and over again, I couldn’t deny that He was bringing that word to me. It was EVERYWHERE. So, my take on it is that I am not necessarily pro-actively seeking out hope but just keeping my eyes and heart open as to how God will bring that word to life to me. So, I sort of feel like that since this was His idea, I am letting Him reveal what Hope really means and specifically, what He wants it to mean to me. I’m excited though, to see how God will use this in my life in the coming year. Already, God has been speaking this word to me in so many ways, in so many places – and already, I’ve had some discouraging moments where I’ve been tested in either falling into hopelessness or choosing hope. This word keeps nudging me to the right response.
Q. What advice would you give to women who are currently journey through infertility?
I’m not sure if I’m qualified to give advice, but one thing I have learned through this is to relax. And trust. It is so hard, so counter-intuitive to everything we feel inside. But, I have come to realize that we really have so little control in this situation. We can do all the right things, but we can’t MAKE ourselves ovulate, we can’t MAKE the sperm find the egg, we can’t MAKE the fertilized egg implant in our wombs, we can’t MAKE it grow and develop properly. We can only do so much. Truly, only God is the author of life and every life really IS a miracle. And at the end of the day, it really is out of our hands.
So, this is a lesson I am slowly learning: to let go and trust God. He has a plan for our lives, for our futures, for our families. We just need to let go, embrace His plans and trust Him. It’s not easy, because we really don’t know what that might look like. So, my advice would be to have faith, have hope, do whatever you can to do your part, but ultimately – to trust. And enjoy life while you wait. We rob ourselves – and those around us – if we let our infertility struggles define us and dictate our lives. As huge as this is, chances are that there are still a lot of other things in our lives that are good and going right – and we should fully embrace those as well.
