Exceedingly, Abundantly... Despite Infertility

I met Kirsten and Mike when they were well into their infertility journey. They’d had a spontaneous miscarriage at 18 weeks. “When you go through a miscarriage that’s further along in a pregnancy,” Kirsten said, “a big, huge hole opens up in your life. You feel like you’re completely isolated. You know in your mind that other people have gone through this, but you never expect it to happen to you.”

When they felt ready to try again, they had four unsuccessful IUIs and an IVF cycle that resulted in no embryos. Their doctor, a well-known infertility expert, told them they had infertility “of unknown origin” – and then dropped a bomb. As Mike recalled, “The doctor actually said to us, ‘You will never have kids.’ It took every bit of emotional strength to try to get through it. Kirsten was nuts. She was hitting herself and saying, ‘I’m worthless!’ It was really tough.”

Their doctor pushed them toward egg donation. Mike was willing to think seriously about international adoption. But Kirsten felt a need to try IVF one last time. “I needed a period at the end of the sentence that said, ‘It will not work.’” They found a doctor at Cornell who was trying a new IVF protocol.

When Kirsten woke up from the retrieval, they’d recovered ten eggs. “Now, there was hope,” Mike remembered. A couple days later, there were five embryos. After the transfer, they flew home and waited for test results. The call came. She was pregnant. “I didn’t relax the entire pregnancy,” said Mike. “It was horrible – I was so anxious something would happen. I didn’t exhale until the babies came.”

Two of them. A boy and a girl.

“God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! [Eph 3:20]”

Their dismal track record indicated no chance. Their doctor said, not possible. Their common sense told them, not realistic. Their fear repeated, not happening. But their faith affirmed, I still believe. And God breathed life into their hope.

The story doesn’t end there.

They brought their twins by to visit me recently. Laughing as they shared the news, they told me, “We’re pregnant again.” This time, it’s completely natural. Unplanned. Definitely unexpected. A total gift from God.

He can do anything.

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Find more cause for hope at PregnantWithHope.com

Less is More, Even with Infertility

“Taking the 5 loaves and 2 fish and looking up to heaven, Jesus gave thanks…” [Mark 6:41].

My friend, Toni, is jokingly referred to as “the one egg wonder” by the staff at her reproductive endocrinologist’s office. Having crossed the imaginary line between fertility and infertility on her 35th birthday, she was told to get busy getting pregnant. “When we talked to the doctor about statistics,” she says, “we realized we’d better try to do something, or it might be too late to do anything.”

Many failed IUIs later, after extensive soul-searching, she decided to go forward with IVF. The retrieval resulted in one egg. Toni was ecstatic—until her doctor explained that one egg was statistically dismal. Not easily discouraged, Toni chose to cling to the hope that one egg was all she needed.

“The doctor told me, ‘you may want to consider adoption.’ Before even trying the IVF she was already expecting a negative outcome! I remember saying, ‘I know you can only do what you can do, but there’s another factor involved here. I didn’t want to say, ‘God is doing the work’ because I didn’t want to offend her, but that’s what I was thinking.”

Everyone at the doctor’s office regarded Toni as mildly delusional—until her son was conceived and delivered.

What did she know that they didn’t? What gave her the sense that something virtually impossible was perfectly possible? And how did she hold on to that confident expectation, even when the experts thought she was crazy? According to Toni, she prayed with a thankful heart. “I’ve always prayed ‘thank you’ for everything. I learned the scriptures that were relevant to infertility. Once I had that going for me, I just felt really confident.”

Jesus modeled that same confident expectation just before feeding 5,000 people with just 5 loaves and 2 fish. Everyone around him saw lack, but Jesus saw plenty.

In the midst of infertility, it is our tendency to dwell on insufficiency. We become obsessed with numbers that aren’t high enough, follicle counts that aren’t large enough, options that aren’t plentiful enough.

One egg? Get serious!

We need to remember that the gap between our “realistic” perception of insufficiency and God’s knowledge of plenty is enormous. And there’s only one way to bridge it: by faith. We aren’t given the gifts of foreknowledge or control; those are God’s territory. But, we are invited to believe that “very little” can be “more than enough.”

It worked for Jesus. It worked for Toni. It could work for you.

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Hope > Optimism During Infertility

“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams”

- Henry David Thoreau

This is how every infertility journey starts, isn’t it? Full of confidence, we set off in the direction of the perfect pregnancy. It will happen effortlessly. At most, within a few weeks of trying. We’ll tell everyone the good news, buy lots of maternity clothes, enjoy baby showers with friends and family, have an easy delivery, and poof… have the perfect baby. What a plan!

Sort of like the perfect wedding, we’ve unconsciously come to desire — and expect — the perfect path to parenthood. Unrealistic? Infertility makes that pretty clear. Unreasonable? That’s harder to answer.

Clearly, some women do sail through pregnancy and delivery. Too often, we see them on the cover of People magazine, smiling blissfully as they enjoy their moment in the spotlight. It’s hard to look at them without wondering, “Why her and not me? Why is she blessed and I’m…” What? Cursed?

Not so fast. Maybe this detour is for a purpose.

Consider these words from Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church: “Optimism is psychological; hope is theological.” This one sentence from his recent sermon got me thinking….

Optimism is what Thoreau advocates: choose to be confident, and set out. It’s the favorite advice of all Type A’s: Go for it! You can do it! But that you-can-do-it confidence is rooted in the belief that you can do it. Infertility teaches each one of us: No, you can’t.

But God can. That’s why hope—real theological hope that is God-centered and God-focused—is more than optimism. It’s more than believing you can if you just try hard enough. It’s admitting that you can’t, but trusting that God still can. It’s acknowledging that your limitations are not His, but your dream of becoming a parent… is.

Ground yourself in this kind of confident hope, and wait expectantly. Trust that this detour is for a purpose—part of which may be teaching you humble God-reliance. God will honor your trust in His perfect timing with His very best.

Wait and see.

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Find more cause for hope at PregnantWithHope.com