The following is a guest post written by my husband, Tom. He wrote this during the two week wait after our most recent IVF cycle. Honestly, I struggled a long time with whether or not to share it. It’s easy to post thoughts on how God can do amazing things after a successful cycle. Would I still have posted it if we’d received a BFN? I don’t know.
I decided to finally post it for three reasons: 1). My husband keeps bugging me about it! LOL! 2). I hope it can provide some encouragement and hope to those of you with similar issues with embryo quality. 3.) We do believe in a God that does miracles and we want to glorify Him for it. I don’t know why we were the recipients of this one, and not someone else. I don’t know why it took three tries and not one or two or five. I don’t know why some of you have yet to receive your miracle even though you’ve been praying longer and more faithfully than us. All we know is that we want to acknowledge Him as the creator of life.
I know this post may hit nerves for some- especially if you don’t share our beliefs. My intention is not to cause controversy. We just wanted to share what was on our hearts. I welcome your comments on the post and just ask that you be kind!
During each of our first two fresh IVF cycles, we encountered problems with the quality of our embryos. Both times, we received phone calls on Day 2 that our embryos weren’t progressing very well, and that they wanted us to do a Day 3 transfer. As many of you unfortunately know, this is less than optimal, but there is hope that putting the embryos back into the natural environment, the womb, might serve as a better catalyst for the embryo’s progression.
On our first cycle, we received a positive pregnancy test, only to discover 48 hours later that it was a chemical pregnancy. We were also informed that only one out of 14 remaining embryos made it to blastocyst and could be frozen. That was crushing, but we had hope for that one. Unfortunately, after transferring it during a frozen cycle two months later, we received a negative.
For our second fresh cycle, we desperately wanted a positive test so we put back three embryos. We received a BFN and were crushed by the fact that zero embryos made it to freeze. I was a high school football coach, and had to start my season, a grueling and intense period even without infertility, feeling emotionally wasted. We decided to wait until after football season was over before trying again. As I thought about the future tries, my heart sank. It all seemed so hopeless and the roller coaster of the ups and downs of infertility made me question whether or not I could do another cycle.
Eight months later, we started our third fresh cycle. I was less than hopeful. Our history seemed to suggest that we had poor quality embryos. We’d made minor changes in the last few months, like adding a few supplements to our diet, but nothing that gave us any reason to expect major improvement this time around.
A few days before our egg retrieval, we attended church. Our pastor taught from Luke 9:10-17, where Jesus performs the miracle of feeding the five thousand. The disciples asked Jesus to send the crowds away, because they could not feed them. Jesus then tells them, ‘You feed them”. In their doubt, they said they could not since it would be too expensive. Jesus then took what they had (five small fish and some bread) and went to work, prayed over the food, and broke it apart, giving it to his disciples to distribute.
After everyone had eaten enough to feel full, something they normally never experienced, the disciples collected twelve basketfuls of food leftover! At the time, I thought it was a great sermon and a great reminder as to what God can do, but I never applied it to our lives. I felt convicted to ask our pastors and many of our friends to pray for us, but I limited what God could do in my own mind.
After our egg retrieval, we nervously waited for embryo growth reports. Day 2 came around, and no call. Day 3, no call. Night 3, we got a call, but to tell us they were doing well. Day 4 came, and they called to confirm our Day 5 transfer. Still doubt filled my mind. I hoped maybe, just maybe we would have one good embryo to try. We arrived and the nurse had a smile for us. Not only did we have 1 make it, but we had 9 total. 9! I felt so foolish! Due to our past history, I had limited what God could do in our lives and with our human material. God makes things happen sometimes; it is unexplainable and miraculous, but I won’t complain! Humanly thinking, there was no reason for us to have any good embryos let alone 9.
My point to this story is that I know that there is pain, and I know that sometimes the future looks bleak, but hold tight, because God can make something beautiful out of the mess. We still are waiting on a pregnancy test, but I have a renewed hope that we can be parents, and I won’t doubt God’s ability to take my doubt and foolishness and turn it into something quite different.
Image courtesy of Boss Fight.
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