An honest post

I need to express myself, need to release some of the feelings inside. This post may offend, so be warned.

I want more than anything in the whole world to be pregnant and have a healthy baby, even just 1 will do. I think about it all the time, always analysing, hoping, wishing, praying but I get no-where.

Im at an exasperation level of around 10, Im desperate and I sometimes think I am loosing my mind. On Sunday I cried my eyes out, sobbed infact, lashed out and just became a total and utter wreck. I cried until my eyes were so puffy they couldnt even open. I am so incredibly angry, Im fucked off at the unfairness of our situation. Im angry as hell at God, Im questioning Him. Perhaps I dont know my path, perhaps He does, everyone says dont question Him, just accept. Well I cant. Is God really there? Is God someone who can actually help? One day when I look back at this will I say “ah ha thats why I went through that”? Am I supposed to be learning patience? Compassion? Understanding? What? What the fuck is it that Im supposed to be learning from this?

This weekend I saw INFERTILITY, the cold hard, disgusting demon of infertility. It made me so sad that my heart actually ached, pained in my chest. I confessed to my husband that I have had suicidal thoughts, I wouldnt actually act on it but it scares the crap out of me. Successful, vibrant, intelligent me – killing myself over I.N.F.E.R.T.I.L.I.T.Y and what the hell for? Because I feel like Im inferior, second grade woman – cant even do something so natural. Ive got all the bits yet nothing works. So God what is that all about? Its like buying a new toy and you take it home and its missing a part, irritates the crap out of you now doesnt it? Or you invest in a brand new car and when you drive it away it breaks down because someone forgot to put the oil or brake fluid in. The thing is, these things can be fixed, pretty easily without too much bother. My fucked up ovaries cannot.

So with that being said we have decided to definitely move onto donor eggs. I cant do this anymore. If donor doesnt work then at least I can blame someone else other than me. There is no firm POA but we have started looking through the profiles and the best thing about it is that I feel such a sense of relief. Im scared shitless and so is my Dh but together we can do this, we can build our family or I might die trying.

Strange Behaviour

So today, a lady I work with is celebrating her b-day. She is a good friend so I baked her a cake. When I gave it to her she told me this long story about how she has been praying and praying for something (didn’t elaborate too much, but I know it has to do with her ex) and that she asked God that she needed this “thing” to happen before her birthday or else she would loose all faith in Him. So apparently last night whatever it was she was praying about came true and she was bouncing around proclaiming that everyone must pray to get whatever they want. Then she tells me that I need to keep praying to have a baby and that she has also been praying for us and that my problem is that I don’t believe enough that its going to happen. This kind of took me by surprise and Ive been thinking about it ever since. Maybe Im not “believing” enough (2 years of hard core fertility treatments kind of takes your belief away) but what kind of “gets” me even more is the fact that whatever it is that she prayed about has now been resolved and on her b-day nogal (For non-South Africans is mean “aswell”, but it sounds better in Afrikaans) – which is exactly what she asked God for.

 

Not only this but she also told God that she would cut her hair if her prayers were answered so she is now at the hair dresser having her hair cut. THEN she tells me if I want a baby badly enough I must make a “pact” with God to also cut my hair when I fall pregnant. Please tell me is this normal behaviour? Im so frikken desperate that the thought actually crossed my mind that maybe I should make the pact with God.

 

Lets break it down –

1. God is happy and willing to answer her prayers, so is my voice not heard?
2. It happened on the day she wanted, why cant the same happen for me? Should I just pick a day and expect good news that day?
3. Maybe my faith is not the greatest right now, but what do you expect? I feel like Im being kicked to the curb, left to fend for myself. Why did God put me on this earth if He didn’t intend for me to be a mother. I should have been a man then.
4. Im ticked off at this.
5. Im willing to cut my hair should I have a live, healthy baby. (Crazy, I know but Im putting it out there)

Better…I guess….

Last week I felt very down, it seems that as the work for the year winds down and I get less busy my mind wanders more and that’s not good. I feel OK now – a tiny bit better. I had a relaxing weekend which helped a lot and we went to the Carols by Candlelight. The minister told us the story of the birth of Jesus and then we sang carols in-between. It was so, so, so nice. I really enjoyed myself. I LOVE carols and it got me more into the Christmas spirit. I also realised that Ive been feeling down about Christmas being around the corner but in actual fact Christmas has nothing to do with me, its all about Christ and his birth story.

 

I receive a newsletter every month from a woman by the name of Haydee. She is a motivational speaker who I had the privilege of listening to last year. This was her message this month:

 

I firmly believe that to have abundance in any area of your life you need to think abundance thoughts and cancel all thoughts of scarcity and fear.
These opposing thoughts cannot live together in your mind if you wish to be part of universal abundance.

Here are some prosperity and abundance affirmations to change old mental programming of scarcity to abundance. Use affirmations when your mind is most relaxed, upon waking up in the morning and upon sleeping at night. Works best done 3 X a day looking in a mirror and into your eyes. To change the script in your mind – try doing no more than 2 of these over a period of at least 1 month:

I, __________live in prosperity & abundance.
I, __________ accept the abundance of wealth, love and happiness that God is willing to give me.
I, ____________ attract abundant wealth and prosperity.

 

 

“You must be the change you want to see in the world.”

Mahatma Gandhi

 

I will be trying this to get my mind into shape for the upcoming treatment cycle. I no longer want to fear the start of the cycle. I will approach it with gratitude that I am able to try again.

Where are the answers?

Im thinking about God. I saw on one of the forums that someone posted saying that they are no longer pursuing ART as a means to have a baby. The woman who posted has low AMH, never done IVF and her doc wants her to try IVF asap before the AMH declines any further. She also mentioned that she prayed about becoming a mother and God sent someone to tell her that she will have a baby.

 

Now these thoughts have been floating around in my head since reading that. How do you come to the decision to stop treatment? Are you 100% happy about the decision and wait patiently until a baby arrives (or maybe not?). If you are making this decision you may also need to face the fact that you may never have a baby of your own. You see I read into things a lot more than face value and if a stranger told me that I will definitely have a baby Im not sure if I will take this as a message coming from God? There I said it. Well then how do I know that God is communicating to me? Good question, one I don’t know the answer to (part of the reason Im blogging about this – to get your views….)

 

What if God meant that she will have a baby but perhaps not naturally, perhaps through ART, donor eggs or even adoption? How can we be certain of the path laid out for us? I take my hat off to anyone who waits patiently for their miracle sent by God, without seeking the help of a fertility specialist. Should I be doing the same? Perhaps this is half the problem – that Im so impatient, perhaps this is a lesson for me to learn???? Maybe I should also give up spending thousands and just learn to be more patient? Will we be able to conceive naturally with PCOS and MFI – maybe but maybe not.

 

What if you still waiting patiently at 40? Does that mean God doesn’t want you to have children? Then the many stories in the Bible of God blessing the womb of many woman is just that a story? Lets face it there are many women in this world who have been unable to conceive AT ALL so what about them? What if at 40 you realise that God’s message was misinterpreted by you – that you should have pursued ART more vigorous to have that baby that He promised?

 

So what about that saying – God helps those that help themselves? I feel like Im being pulled in so many different directions with all my thoughts. Wish I knew the answer to this one.

The post on Praying

Here is the post I promised on praying. If you feel you may be offended by this post then please stop reading now, these are MY thoughts on the subject and I welcome any others.

 

Firstly a bit of background – When I was younger I went to church every single Sunday without fail, I knew the Bible backwards and could quote out of the Bible. My parents were not especially religious so as I grew older I seemed to find other things to occupy my mind. My hubby comes from a religious family and he often spoke to me about praying. I started praying again and just speaking to the Lord and I did find a lot of peace doing this. Hubby and I don’t go to church but I have yet to find a church that I like. I DO NOT like the happy clappy type church and neither does my hubby. I find the sermons a lot better and after all that is why we go to church – to hear the sermons, not sing for 45 minutes with a rock band?? I actually love going to church, it fills me with a lot of peace and happiness.

 

Anyway back to the topic. What I just don’t understand is often people tell me to pray about our situation, which obviously I do. After I got my BFP I prayed like crazy that everything would work out, every single day I prayed and spoke to the Lord. But maybe I didn’t do it right? Maybe the Lord didn’t like what I was saying or He just decided that it wasn’t meant to be? There is a verse in the Bible Philippians 4:6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. So where did I go wrong? I don’t understand.

 

A good friend of mine is very religious. She was also going through fertility treatment and I actually thought that she would get a BFP “because she has a better relationship with the Lord and prays better than me”. As soon as that thought crossed my mind I realised how ridiculous it sounds but I actually believed it. Well she ended up getting a BFN and I actually ended up more confused! So prayer doesn’t work? That’s the message Im getting.

 

Then I see on forums of someone who has recently gotten a BFP and they said they just prayed about it or meditated for 28 days on a Bible verse. It actually makes me so mad. So why does praying work for them and not me?

 

During my second IVF I prayed A LOT and ended up with a BFP, I became very close to the Lord during this time then came the m/c and the third IVF BFN. Now Ive sort of stopped again. I want to be close to the Lord as I said above it makes me happy and peaceful but again maybe Im not being heard or doing it wrong or what??

 

Which brings me back to “maybe its not my time yet”, maybe this is a message from the Lord to say this to me and Im not listening? Or maybe the Lord doesn’t care? Do I do another IVF and have it fail and then know its definitely not my time or do another IVF and it succeeds and then I know it was my time. So how do I know when my time will be? All very confusing I realise that.

 

Just one last thing on the topic of religion and IVF – Ive always been a bit uncomfortable with the whole “playing God”, making decisions on which embryos to discard, choosing a sperm to inject into an egg aswell as “conceiving” without both parents being present ie not coming together in marriage and out of love conceiving a baby. Ive since decided that surely if this was against the will of the Lord that he would have not allowed even one baby to be born this way and also considering that this technology is around for us to use, He has given the knowledge to our doctors. Why He has given us IF in the first place is, I suppose, another story altogether.