Hope is a complicated emotion.
Often, it gets lumped in with faith and that’s not really accurate. Faith, you have some control over. You can choose to have faith, to believe, to trust. Hope just is what it is. I know this, because there have been times over the last three years that the last thing I would have chosen was to hope.
Nearly two years ago, my sweet friend Beth asked me to write up a post for her blog and I wrote about hope. You can find it here. That was one year into our most recent journey through infertility. I alluded to it, but didn’t share openly about what we were walking through. As we are now openly discussing our experiences, I’d love to share a few more thoughts.
Almost anyone I’ve spoken with about infertility who has experience with it has compared that experience to a roller coaster. It’s full of ups and downs. But this roller coaster is on repeat. It’s cyclical and repetitive and it feels impossible to have a break from it.
Hope is the up. It’s the thing telling you that maybe this will be the month. Hope makes you hyperaware of your body and noticing every shift and change that’s happening. Hope tells you that maybe that light period was actually implantation bleeding. Hope tells you to buy a pregnancy test. Hope is persistent and tenacious and exhausting.
Because the fact that there’s an up, means that there’s a down. If I wasn’t experiencing hope, it wouldn’t be so disappointing. Let me tell you, statistics are not on my side. At this point, it looks like I have about a 3% chance of a spontaneous (no fertility interventions) pregnancy. And yet, I hope.
In part, I hope because of my faith. I believe God is able. I believe He is bigger than statistics. He’s the God of Hannah, Sarah, Elizabeth, Mary, Rachel, etc. This isn’t new and it’s not outside of His reach. In part, I hope because I desire to grow our family. Noah will be a kickass big brother. I so want that for him. Honestly, that’s been the thing that has kept me going through this.
A few months ago we did a round of IVF. For a couple of weeks I was giving myself injections every day. I think I peaked at 6 injections in one day. My stomach was bruised all over the place from all the different injection sites. I had to take a steroid every morning and that left me with extra energy and a little bit on edge. Every other morning I had to be at an appointment to check how my body was responding to the first part of IVF called stimulation. The injections are hormones that stimulate follicles (future eggs) to grow and mature. I walked into an office with about 15 other women and we all just waited to be called back. It could be anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half before I left. Sometimes Noah was with me, sometimes he wasn’t. They did an internal ultrasound (I’ll let you work that one out) and drew blood. Then they’d give me a treatment protocol for the next couple of days. Eventually they did an egg retrieval, and then we waited. It was a lot.
I believe that hope was a sustaining factor in that process. We were hopeful it would end with a pregnancy and infertility could be behind us, past tense. But this is not a pregnancy announcement. That story didn’t end with a baby.
It was devastating to find out that all of that work, all that my body had gone through, we had gone through as a family, that it was not a success. That was a far height from which to fall and it’s taking us some time to recover.
I don’t believe that God has allowed us to walk through infertility for the purpose of this blog. I don’t believe that everything happens for a reason. I am sorry if that’s an important part of your theology, but I just don’t believe it. I do, however, believe that God can redeem all things. And so I share my story for that reason. Some of you have walked through your own journey with hope and disappointment. Whether it’s infertility, marital issues, a prodigal child, etc., you’ve experienced the roller coaster of hope and disappointment. And if my story, someone else’s language for your experience, helps you feel a little bit less alone, a little bit more understood, well, I see redemption in that.
