As you’ve seen twice now. Wednesdays are for fertility!

This post has been ruminating around my brain for a few weeks, hence the holiday weeks of radio silence, on how best to describe my current state of emotions. So here goes nothing. I hope everyones Christmas and New Year were filled with joy and family. And, that the before and after christmas sales didn’t hit anyones bank account too hard. Also that the undesired but perennially present holiday sickness passed over your house instead of through it.

I have a friend, a well…good acquaintance who became a mother through, the often believed last resort, of IVF. At the time of her first pregnancy our journeys seemed worlds apart, but now seem to be next door neighbors. I watched her path of reaching for that invisible tether to fertility, and ultimately a baby. [She has an extremely well written blog by the same name as my blog post, I hope she doesn’t mind me borrowing the name for one post]. She now has two beautiful children, each through two separate successful IVF transfers.

Growing up with and continuing to have a Christian belief in God has lead many uncomfortable conversations about children. Over the years we have received many questions like: Do you have children? When will you have children? Why don’t you have children? See according to the Christian Bible and even the Jewish Torah, it is God’s plan for all of his children to “Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth” and yet some of us can’t seem to naturally do that. (Gen 1:28) What an unfair disadvantage compared to the ever fertile 15, 16, 17 and 18 year olds who are too often forced into the dread of something some of us desire so desperately: motherhood.

When a baby first starts to grow it is an invisible force no one can see, miraculously manifesting inside a woman’s body. I am working so hard to catch that force. Most don’t need to put in so much effort beyond timing the woman’s cycle and having a romantic evening to be blessed with a child or even three, but we unfortunately do. For a couple more details on our fertility journey back in 2017, we learned that Brent has something called CBAVD and a mild case of cystic fibrosis.

“Congenital bilateral absence of the vas deferens (CBAVD) is a rare obstructive anomaly that contributes to male factor infertility. The prevalence of CBAVD in the general population is approximately 1 in 1000, which accounts for most infertile males with cystic fibrosis and 1–2% of all infertile males.”

The vas deferens for those who don’t know is the sperm transportation tube and without it no babies. No vitamin regimen or special diet will correct Brent’s infertility issues, therefore our only options for possible biological babies consist of various fertility treatments. So far we have attempted two Intrauterine Inseminations (IUI) one in June of 2021 and the second in June of 2023. Sadly neither IUI was successful. So our next step is IVF.

This holiday season has been a rough one on the baby front. Several moments have set my emotions on edge with tears exploding out of me without my permission. Something at every turn ready to trigger emotions. And boy have I been easily triggered. A few days or perhaps a week before Christmas (I don’t remember), I naively opened facebook to post about something else. Only to instead be confronted by yet another baby announcement, causing a memory lapse of why I opened facebook in the first place. This particular announcement was not for the couples first child, they already had multiple children. The unfairness of our personal baby situation in comparison to the announcement immediately provoking a downward spiral, followed by an unsuccessful attempt to choke back tears.

I want to be outwardly happy for them. I want to send congratulatory remarks, instead I clicked the like button and moved on with my scrolling, before remembering why I was had opened the app in the first place. Tears involuntarily welled up in my eyes. What an unfair way to start my day. What a cruel way to derail my productivity; especially, when I had so very much to do before the fast approaching holiday festivities. Please don’t miss understand, I am inwardly happy to witness good news and blessings in others lives, it sometimes just takes a few minutes of well deserved self pity for the rest of me to catch up.

No updates or new news on the baby front at the current moment leads to a pretty crippling lack of motivation to get other things done. This journey is akin to wearing adult ‘days of the week’ underwear but wearing Tuesday on Friday, and being completely unable to find Wednesday’s pair: utter chaos, where most days it’s hard to even remember up from down.

I just try to remember the adage from Disney’s 2015 Cinderella, “Have courage and try not to cry.” Oh wait. That’s not it. In all seriousness do “be kind,” of course to everyone, but most especially to those trying to catch this something invisible. The only place to go from here is forward from where I am right now.

We are still at the beginning stages of our IVF journey, and not quite ready to share the intricate details of everything. Though even that specific pathway to children is also on hold at the moment, for reasons I am not ready to disclose here today. We are, however, keeping busy with house projects, and will show you our updated Harry Potter room soon. (Yes we have a whole HP room, 2.5 rooms in fact).

Happy Year of the Dragon friends!

According to Washington.edu, “in the Chinese culture, the dragon represents good luck, strength, health and also the male element Yang. The dragon is unique because it is the only mythical creature of all the animals in the Chinese zodiac and babies are born in the year of the dragon more than any other animal.” I hope the baby statistic is indeed true and that we can figure out how to be among the parents of dragons this year.