Each week I interview someone who has experienced infertility firsthand. This week I chat with professor, author, and blogger Laura Kenna from When You’re Not Expecting. She shares about her experience with unexplained infertility. Enjoy!
Q. Tell us a little about yourself.
I teach writing and cultural criticism for a post-graduate Christian fellowship program and try to keep up some free-lance writing and blogging on the side. I’m in my late 30s, have been married for 12 years, love to bake, tend to binge on science fiction TV, and—words I pretty much never thought I’d write—am about to have my third kid.
Q. How long did you try to conceive and what issues were you facing?
I first started trying to have kids when I was 30. I suppose I figured that, having gotten married at 25, my husband and I had some time before it needed to be a priority and I was still working on a long graduate program. Turns out it would take 3 years, 2 IUIs, and 4 IVFs to have our first—a much longer journey with many more people involved than I would have ever dreamed.
One of our biggest challenges was finding that people wanted to persuade us all the time to try to have kids. They didn’t know, of course, but as many infertile gals can relate, that hardy ever stops people from offering advice! Because we’d waited five years into our marriage to even try, we were very conspicuously without kids in our church and professional communities. By our 7th year together the Christmas parties were particularly awful:
“You two would make such great parents!”
“Surely you’ve had enough time to travel and have fun by now.”
“When are you going to have a kid?”
There was also a lot of insinuating that I was probably just too into my career or something and I needed to be less selfish. It really stunk.
Q. Which books, quotes, websites, verses, movies, songs, etc. were an encouragement to you during your journey?
Great question. I think there is so much in popular culture and in a lot of church or women’s ministry culture that is set up to encourage moms that when you start facing that might never be you, it is sort of a shock to the system. Like, “Where is something that can speak to this alternative path I seem to be on very much without my choosing?”
I was really struck by how many infertile women were sort of “stars” in the Bible, however. We hear about how in ancient times—even more than our own—there was a lot of shame associated with infertility. But over and over again, God finds no fault with these women. In fact, they are some of the beloved women of the Bible (Sarah, Rachel, several others including Elizabeth, mother to John the Baptist) and he ultimately brings us the whole Jewish nation up to Christ through these unlikely moms. It was a reassurance to me that I decided to internalize big time: God was not judging my fitness as a parent or a Christian. I just live in a broken world and it turns out that brokenness even included my womb.
Q. Did you and your spouse cope with infertility in the same way or do you handle it differently?
We were wildly blessed to handle it in pretty similar ways. I would say, pray for that. Get others to pray for that. Having similar emotional reactions can’t be the experience of everyone, and that’s okay, but maintaining the togetherness of your marriage has to be a priority for everyone, I think, whatever that looks like that for you.
My husband and I spent a lot of time dreaming up new versions of the future during the three years we increasingly thought that we really weren’t going to have children. We realized that we hadn’t ever really pictured childless life and leaving that an open but empty possibility was part of what was making it feel so scary. We reminded each other that we’d married only one another—not our hoped-for-kids. We imagined new ways we’d be able to spend the holidays. We leaned into child-unfriendly vacations, last-minute dinners out, and house parties. We had a blast, actually, and remembering how fun life might keep on being—even if we stayed the two of us as our family—was a huge help keeping our emotions balanced during the IVF rollercoaster.
Q. What made you decide to blog about your journey?
After two failed IUIs and two failed IVFs, I was questioning how much more of this medical intervention stuff I had in me. I was deeply disappointed, of course. I was discouraged. But I was not angry at God and I was not doubting His goodness. Still, around that time I felt sort of invited to doubt God, like many of the well-meaning believers around me figured that the best way to support me at that point was to give me permission to be angry or remind me that there was grace available for questioning God. I’m not saying that I disagree theologically that God has that kind of patience with us. I just didn’t need it right then.
I really wanted to share that I was ok. I wanted other people to praise and marvel with me that my marriage was actually getting stronger. I wanted to talk about how the Holy Spirit was giving me a gift of peace and of feeling God’s love for me all the time, even though so far He was not letting me become a mom. So it was that disconnect, that feeling that I had a lot of encouragement about the goodness and faithfulness of God to share and that wasn’t what folks expected to hear, that disconnect made me want to write.
I’m a professor by trade so the first thing I started writing was a book (getting there but still not done)—a very professor-y instinct. Then I realized that I should also be blogging—it’s so much more immediate and can reach more people sooner. I have to confess though that I’m still very much in the training-wheels phase as a blogger. I am still getting the hang of it and right after I began the blog I (mercifully and miraculously) got pregnant again. So it’s been fits and starts.
Q. How have you taken care of yourself physically, emotionally, and spiritually during your struggles?
I read the Psalms. I read the Psalms a lot. In them I found this really appropriate mixture for where I was. David is so real with his pretty frequent “why God why” laments—really unfiltered suffering and questioning and looking around at the brokenness of life and almost protesting it in front of the Lord. And yet he is also committed to praising God, to remembering God’s faithfulness in times past, to naming out loud how mighty God is, and how he won’t stop believing that God is on his side. Reading the Psalms felt like a real spiritual model for me because usually the lament psalms we’re separate from the praises: they started one way but switched to the other by the end. I took it as a method for praying and it helped me feel authentic about how much I was hurting without focusing only on my own pain. It made me keep God’s goodness in view during every prayer, every day.
I also worked out a ton—or a ton for me: three days a week for an hour. That time in the gym cleared my head and boosted my mood. And, probably if I’m totally honest with myself, it also felt like a way to be in charge of a little bit of what was going on with my body because infertility—mine was “unexplained infertility”—really made me feel like my body was beyond me, doing things no one could explain, and maybe no one could affect.
Q. Have you been able to find a “silver lining” in your infertility?
Absolutely. And I think deciding to look for an upside is so wise, because I think if you pray for one, God will reveal good things He’s at work on to you. I think He really adores us infertile gals. I think He really sees us in a deep way—like he saw Hagar as she was cast out by Sarah and Abraham and alone in a situation she hadn’t chosen (Gen 16:11-13). As I mentioned, our three years trying to have a baby were maybe the best three years of our marriage so far. In that time, God also strengthened my friendships with single women in their 30s and up by revealing to me how much they too shared the uncertainty of never knowing if they’d have a family, not being able to picture what a Christmas would like in their 50s, and feeling like there was little they could do but pray. Also, God gave me new ministry, a new boldness to talk about my physical and spiritual weaknesses in one-on-one times with other women facing infertility and just in general. I know I grew immensely as a person during that time. It didn’t shrivel me up emotionally or spiritually, something I really prayed against and God protected me from so well.
Special thanks to Laura for sharing her story with us. Please leave her a comment below to let her know you appreciate her.
Did you enjoy this interview? You can read 70+ more here!
If you’re looking for more encouragement during infertility, be sure to check out my book, 31 Days of Prayer During Infertility.
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