Prayers Please!

Today I have a really important doctor's appointment, and I just wanted to ask all of you for a couple of thoughts and prayers around 10:30 this morning! Adam and I are going in to get our first dose of Clomid, the fertility drug. We have been praying about this for several months, hoping that we would never have to get to this point, but here we are. I guess this is a good opportunity to walk through our whole infertility journey, so if you're interested, please read on.

Adam and I got married in August 2006, and Adam pretty much instantly wanted to try for kids. He really has a deep desire to be a dad; it's one of the things I love most about him. Well, I wasn't quite ready yet, and considering we were both in a 3-year training program with our company that had the potential of moving us all over the world, we decided it would be best to wait 3 years before getting pregnant.

About six months after we were married, I got to talking to a good friend of mine about being on birth control. Both of us were newly married and new to the whole birth control "thing", and neither of us liked it much. We were discussing how it just felt wrong to be controlling our bodies' natural cycles with some artificial drug. She mentioned that she was thinking about getting off the drugs, and since she and her husband were in a good place financially, they would just let nature take its course and not use any sort of pregnancy prevention method.

That really got me thinking. I didn't like the birth control, Adam wanted children (lots of them), and I was warming up to the idea of having children early, plus we were financially able to support a child if one did come along....why not? So for Adam's 23rd birthday, July 20th, 2007, I threw away my birth control. We hugged, and laughed, and promised each other we wouldn't get caught up in trying for a baby; we would just be natural and see what happened.

Well, that attitude didn't last long. Once the baby thought had been planted in my head, I couldn't stop thinking about it! In September of 2007, we moved from Colorado to Houston, TX and joined a new church. We quickly got involved with a bible study group that was made up largely of families with babies. Neither of us had previously had any friends with kids before, so this was entirely new! We just fell in love with the little boy and girl in our bible study. Their laughs, their smell, the softness of their hair, the way they grip your finger with their whole hand and stare up at you with wonder; it was like an intoxicating mommy drug, and I was hooked. Suddenly, I had to have one of those for myself. I had to have a baby!

So I started doing research. I learned about the specific days of the cycle that couples are most likely to conceive, and one of my wonderful friends informed me about fertility charting - tracking your body temperature each day to pinpoint your ovulation. In January 2008, we officially started "trying:" the charting, the testing, and the timing. At this point, we had been off contraception for 5 months, but we weren't worried. After all, we hadn't been trying! Now that we had all these planning tools, it was going to happen for us really quickly!

It's amazing how quickly our attitudes turned from confident to discouraged. For those of you who have gone through this same process, I know you know what I'm talking about. The process of trying for a baby is a draining one, and one that has the potential of sapping all romance from your relationship if you let it. Each month, I had to take my temperature every morning before I got out of bed. Starting at about day 12 of each cycle, I took an ovulation test every morning until I got a positive result. Once you get the positive, its "try try try!" Even if you're tired. Even if you're not in the mood. Even if you're sick. Because if you miss that window, you have to wait a whole month before the next shot. After a couple of days, the window had passed, and all we could do was wait. At first, I was convinced that every month was the month we were going to get pregnant. Starting a couple of days before my next cycle, I would take pregnancy test after pregnancy test. Then, the next cycle would start, and I would crash. Not this time; you're going to have to do it all over again.

We kept this up until May 2008, when we started to have an inkling that something might be wrong. We made a doctor's appointment to discuss with my OBGYN. She agreed that by this point, we probably should have gotten pregnant, so she recommended a few tests. Adam had to go get his "stuff" checked out (I'm so mature), and I had an ultrasound around ovulation to check and see if I was actually making and releasing eggs. Both of our tests came back with flying colors. Nothing wrong. So, the doctor sent us back home with instructions to just keep on trying!

So, we did. Every month, it got harder and harder. Every month, I had less confidence that we would get pregnant, yet somehow I was more devastated when I was proven correct and the next cycle began. I began to feel very bitter and calloused to the whole process. About six months later, in November 2008, we went back to the doctor for the next level of testing. This time, I had to have surgery. Our doctor told us that there was no obvious reason why we couldn't get pregnant, so she needed to perform a laparoscopy on me to investigate: she would make three small incisions in my stomach and put a camera inside to look at the structure of all my "lady parts." She told us that this procedure could have one of three consequences:

1. Everything would look fine, and there would be nothing more she could do for us. We would be diagnosed with "Unidentified Infertility." Fabulous.
2. She would find some serious, unfixable flaw in my anatomy, such as a blocked fallopian tube. Our only option would then be in-vitro fertilization.
3. She would find something wrong that could be affecting my fertility, but it would be non-serious and fixable. If she found anything, her plan was to fix it while I was already in surgery. This would by far be the best option.

We scheduled the surgery for mid-December 2008. To tell the truth, I was not confident that she would find anything. I was sure that we would end up Option 1: unable to get pregnant, and no one able to figure out why. I was so discouraged.

It turns out, the surgery was a success! My doctor performed the laparoscopy and found that I had endometriosis, a condition where the type of cells that make up the lining of the uterus start growing other places and causing all kinds of problems. Evidently it's relatively common, and usually diagnosable by severe abdominal pain. I had no pain, so we would have never known I had this condition if it hadn't been for the surgery! The only way to cure endometriosis is by lasering off the rogue cells, which my doctor did while I was under. So, we ended up under option 3. How wonderful!

Our doctor, however, was cautious about encouraging us. She said that endometriosis could possibly be causing our infertility problems, but not conclusively. She recommended trying on our own for 2 more months, and if we still weren't pregnant, to come back in and start fertility meds.

Adam and I had heard about Clomid much earlier from some close friends who went this route, and I wasn't sure at first how I felt about this. Much like my beef with birth control earlier, I didn't know how I felt about using artificial means to boost my hormones and make me get pregnant. Is this interfering with God's plan? If I take these drugs, am I really saying to God, "I don't trust Your ability to give me a baby, so I'm going to take matters into my own hands"?

Adam and I had many prayers and discussions about this, and through the wisdom of my incredible husband and the advice of a few friends, we came to the conclusion that we are going to try Clomid. Basically, it all comes down to the belief that God is sovereign, and the ultimate Creator of everything on earth. Even if we take Clomid, even if we end up eventually using in-vitro, it is God who ultimately creates the life inside my womb, or the test tube, or the petri dish, or wherever. I cannot physically take it out of His hands, even if I wanted to. All I am doing by taking Clomid is using the wisdom God has provided the doctors and research scientists to overcome the infirmities of my own body.

So, there we have it. The two months since my surgery have passed, still no Bortka baby in there, so it's time. I still have doubt lingering in my head that Clomid will work for us, but I am just partway through this journey of pregnancy that God is leading us on, and I have to trust Him because He's the only one who knows how it's going to end! Thanks for reading my novel of a story, and for your prayers, thoughts, and support through this. I can't wait to see how the journey ends.