A Different Kind of Waiting
On July 19, 2021, I wrote my first letter to our future child.
It went like this,
Dear Baby,
It feels weird writing those words down since you’re more of a dream or a wish right now and we don’t know what the journey will look like to get to you. But if there is anything to know about your mother, it’s that she’s audaciously hopeful, a dreamer AND a planner. So even if you’re just a future dream and a hope, I’m going to chronicle this journey for us – so someday we can look back on God’s faithfulness.
Because Baby, God is so faithful even when it may not always feel like that but please trust me. My story and your Dad’s story and the story of our family is riddled with examples of God’s supreme goodness and faithfulness. So even when life feels hard or impossible, cling onto hope. Because He alone will help you weather the many storms of life, I promise.
Hope to meet you soon (like in a year or so) but I am holding onto the promises of God that even if this journey takes unexpected twists or turns or months more than we would prefer – we’ll meet you someday. And get to love you and welcome you into this family that exists to glorify God and take joy in Him and the gifts He gives!
Love,
Momma
It has been 365 days since I wrote that letter. And the journey did take unexpected twists and turns and months longer than I would have hoped. But as of July 19, 2022, I was 5 weeks and 5 days pregnant. And if I’ve learned anything, it’s that God really is incredibly faithful.
Everyone’s story is different, that’s something I’ve had to remind myself of in this season. Some people sneeze and they get pregnant, some people try for years to no avail. Some people need medical assistance, some people have multiples. Every pregnancy, every woman, every story is different. This one is ours.
We officially started on August 26, 2021. It was right before our trip to Iceland. We really wanted an Icelandic baby. I’d heard horror stories of women coming off hormonal birth control but truth be told, it really wasn’t that big of a deal for me.
In order to set myself up for the most success, I started charting my BBT (basal-body-temperature) immediately. I actually love charting. I’ve read some people’s stories where they didn’t like charting but I think it’s so incredibly helpful for every woman regardless of her desire to conceive or not. Through charting, I realized that I might have a thyroid disorder as my temps were unusually low. Through charting, I started to be able to predict when I might spot, saving me from ruining clothes. Through charting, I started to understand my menstrual phases, know for sure when I was ovulating, and take control of my body and my health.
Immediately, I knew I needed support, so I invested in supplements, a good prenatal, and started learning about cycle-syncing, how to support my thyroid, and started cutting out excessive coffee and alcohol use.
Once I started working on my holistic health, cleaning up our food, exercise, etc, I started getting hopeful. They say it takes three months for those things to affect your cycle and egg quality and fertility so by November/December, we were really hopeful we’d get pregnant and there were several cycles where I really thought it might be happening. But it wasn’t.
I think one of the most cruel things in the world is that early pregnancy symptoms and PMS symptoms are almost identical so there’s really no way to know if what you’re experiencing will lead to pregnancy or another cycle. There’s also nothing quite as brutal as the two-week wait. It’s the two weeks between ovulation and a new period and when you’re trying to have a baby, it’s two weeks of over analyzing every single bodily function. It’s so mentally exhausting and emotionally draining. Thankfully, Adrian was a great support for me and provided prayer, distraction, and comfort.
When we hit the end of 2021 and weren’t pregnant, I knew we needed to do some testing. Doctors will tell you it takes a year and not to worry, but because of charting, I knew my hormone levels weren’t where they needed to be and I wanted answers and an actionable plan. So at the beginning of 2022, we did a cycle long test as well as sent in some blood work for thyroid testing.
We got those results when we were in Kentucky for Adrian’s maternal grandma’s funeral. My thyroid was fine. My hormone levels were not.
Essentially, I was told that I would need hormone therapy for both estrogen and progesterone and that without it, I wouldn’t get pregnant. It was a really painful and challenging time. And honestly, instead of diving into doing anything, I spent the next few weeks trying to wrap my head around the results as well as grieve with Adrian. Being told that your body doesn’t naturally do what it was created to do is a really disorienting feeling. I also knew that I needed to ask for prayer.
I’m so thankful for the community we have around us. While most people didn’t know we were actively trying or having issues, the ones we did share with, were so encouraging and supportive and kind. Our community group offered to make us food when my period would come around and discouragement hit, they also prayed that God would do a miracle and fix my hormones.
So we prayed. And as we prayed, we realized that what the test results were saying didn’t match up with what I experienced in my body every month. In some ways, that was helpful, but in other ways, it really made me distrust my experience. If doctors said one thing but I experienced another, who was right?
So we started to look into other options. I enrolled in a fertility nutrition course and we signed up for more tests.
We found out in May that miraculously, through prayer and hard nutrition work, my hormone levels had balanced fairly well. I no longer was deficient in either estrogen or progesterone. However, the doctor did think that since we had been trying for 11 cycles and nothing was happening, that Clomid would be a good option.
Taking it was awful. I took it on days 3-7 of my 12th cycle, and I felt so numb and not myself. I honestly dreaded having to take it for two more months and then potentially have to increase the dose.
But God, in His absolute goodness, gave us a baby.
The first trimester wasn’t a joke. Between the extreme exhaustion and nausea I barely felt like a human. I’m literally in awe of women who survive the first trimester while also taking care of children because I could barely take care of the dog and cats.
We also experienced some early bleeding and I think that was a watershed moment for me. For me, getting pregnant when we did, was a sign of God’s perfect faithfulness. So when I started bleeding, I thought of Abraham and Isaac and realized that as much as this was a gift, it was also a gift I couldn’t hold onto so tightly. I think learning to surrender is something that’s continuous. But I think having that experience so early on has really helped alleviate fear and worry about this pregnancy and baby. And to that, I will always be thankful.
I still can’t really believe that we’ll welcome our baby 19 months after we started trying to have a baby but I’m so incredibly grateful. God’s faithfulness and perfect timing really has been a theme in our relationship and it will continue to be an anchor for our family.
Things don’t always happen the way I want them to but they’re always so much more beautiful than I could have imagined. I’ll still take those three years of best friendship with Adrian over rushing into a relationship and I’ll take those 12 cycles of trying to conceive over instant gratification. Those things taught me patience, trust, resilience, and how to surrender to God. They taught me to be vulnerable with people and ask for help and ultimately they helped me defeat some insidious lies I believed about myself.
In a world that thrives on immediate results, I’m so glad for the times God has met me in the waiting and the ways He will continue to do so.