Even When It Breaks Your Heart Part 1

08222016 Even When It Breaks Your Heart Part 1 

I was driving down Kingsley Boulevard in Orange Park, Florida to work in a temporary office space we had because a storm had damaged our corporate location.  I was a few years into my marriage, with a solid foundation.  Seven-year itch? Blew right by it.  Decade mark? Celebrated it, and then a couple.  My husband had a great gig in the Navy, which he enjoyed and excelled.  I had been blessed with working in a company I completely stumbled into, for some amazing people who took a chance on a cornfed girl with no education.  As the IT Director for a multi-million-dollar real estate company, I was feeling rather good about life.  Except in one area. 

We had finished the adoption red tape.  We had been educated, investigated, and our home study was approved.  Cleared for takeoff, we started with a young man who needed more than we could provide.  It was heartbreaking talking to the DCF worker to tell them that this wasn’t a good fit, especially since our hearts were invested in being his parents.  It wasn’t fair.  Three of this country’s top fertility clinics tried, we spent thousands of dollars to make fruitless attempts to conceive our own, and now, adoption wouldn’t be going to make us a family either. 

The storm moved us to a different location but only two blocks closer to home.  I worked all hours of the day and night, because, well, IT does that.  I was driving to work in the evening because the office is quiet then.  There are no agents that need anything after 7pm and no staff to be seen.  The phones are quiet, and the bandwidth is great.  I was settling in at my desk when I got the call.  I don’t even remember who told me.  Could have been my husband.  Now that I think about it, it was.  I was so upset, so discombobulated, that I left work and got in my car to start driving.  Where?  Who knows?  Driving had been my escape forever.  I used to drive the gravel back roads in Iowa in the dead of night, during winter blizzards just to drown out my sadness.  The city was a bit dissimilar experience, but the road felt good to be on, nonetheless. 

Someone had told me that my sister-in-law was pregnant. Pregnant by accident.  Not married.  Not even close.  I was bawling my eyes out and begging God to answer me.  Why?  Why could she get pregnant, and I couldn’t?  How?  How is it that a young person without clear direction can become a parent when my husband and I had a five-year plan?  Who lets things like this happen?  Why did God choose her and not me???  I believed in Him.  I worshipped Him.  I taught others to follow Him.  We had money, a place to live, secure futures, love for each other, and faith.  Weren’t we qualified to be parents???  Oh, how my heart breaks even now, thinking about those feelings.  Feeling that crushing blow and how it took my breath away, not knowing why. 

I was angry and sad and mad and disappointed and all the things that a person feels when they have a deep desire in their hearts that isn’t being realized.  I was bawling. Like snot flying, boo-hooing, wailing, child-on-the-floor-kicking-feet bawling.  I called my mother, who could do absolutely nothing to help me.  She couldn’t even comfort me with words because there weren’t any that could effectively console me.  She could only cry with me and say that she was sorry, but she didn’t have any answers.  That’s bad when your own mom can’t make it better.  I felt alone, abandoned, rejected, cast off.  I didn’t believe I had worth, because I was not getting pregnant, and I was getting older by the minute; and here was my young sister-in-law getting knocked up just because she could. 

My mother listened, for an eternity, to her daughter crying.  She listened to the wailing, the weeping, the anger, the words.  She listened to the heart that was created inside of her breaking over a thousand miles away.  She’s a strong one, my mother.  She’s got more grit than anyone I’ve ever known.  She’s withstood years and years of junk and took it like an angel.  I call her a saint like everyone else now, but in my teenage years, I called her Olga Hitler.  For real.  Maybe that’s why God wouldn’t give me a child.  What’s funny?  My sister was pregnant at the time.  With twins.  I didn’t mind her being pregnant.  I’d been through that several times.  Six, to be exact.  But it was different with my sisters.  They were married.  They had grown up.  They lived in their own houses.  With their husbands.  They weren’t bouncing from party to party living large and crashing wherever.  Mom and dad weren’t paying their bills or their way in life.  No, I accepted their pregnancies “better” (not that I accepted them without tears), because they were “entitled” to have children.  At least in my mind. 

Typing that now seems so ridiculous.  But it was a very real feeling.  That feeling still tears at me sometimes.  I mean, seriously, is anyone “entitled” to anything?  But still, there are times when I wonder why people are able to get pregnant and have children.  Especially when they admit that they don’t want children. 

And let’s clear something up right now.  Even though I barely passed the horticulture part, I did take Biology.  I understand how the actual pregnancy part happens.  It’s not that.  Not for everyone.  Please trust me when I say this because my story is very real and true.  I had been pregnant before.  I had a miscarriage.  I hadn’t been pregnant since the first year we were married.  So what happened?  Who makes the determination whose (or which) biological reproduction works?  Who decides who gets to be pregnant and have babies? 

The Jones Institute in Virginia is where they conceived the first “test tube” baby in the United States, what is now known as In Vitro Fertilization or IVF in the infertility community.  The Jones Institute is the authority on Assisted Reproduction Technology (ART for the pregnancy impaired), so I expected remarkable things when I went there after three years of not producing any offspring.  They did some very painful tests, and a doctor named “B” told me I needed a laparoscopy, and just when we were getting a good work going, my husband was transferred with the Navy, so we started all over again when we reached our next destination, which was a suburb of DC.  You can imagine my delight when, after another year of going through the preliminary hoops, we were referred to Walter Reed Army Medical Center.  You know, the place where they take care of The President. 

We had a great time at WRAMC and a great doctor.  Dr. “Mark” was amazing.  He used the tests from Jones and immediately started IUI AI with meds.  IUI AI for those who aren’t in the business of making babies means Intra Uterine Insemination Artificial Insemination.  It involves catheterization and other fun stuff like that which makes making babies especially clinical.  However, we had hoped that this high-tech stuff would work.  After all, this was the biological certainty.  We could both get pregnant on paper – all our numbers were perfect.  I took medication to make everything happen on time.  All the doctor had to do was put the swimmers in the pool and sound the starting alarm.  Which he did.  And then it failed.  Once.  Twice.  Three times.  Then, our dear doctor was put on TAD to GTMO.  In the military, that’s Temporary Assigned Duty and if you don’t know about GTMO, please Google it.  Upon his transfer, I was given a new doctor.  A woman, who knew absolutely, positively NOTHING about our case.  We met with her on a normal day, to converse about a plan.  She informed us that I had DOR or Decreased Ovarian Reserve, which basically means that at 27 years old, my eggs were too old and slow to create any viable, living babies.  And then she offered us a little red folder – a packet on IVF with ICSI and ED.  If these acronyms aren’t spinning your head, you don’t even want to know how many more there truly were in those days.  But basically, what she was offering me was the Rolls Royce of infertility treatments, sort of “guaranteed” to get me pregnant.  Because at 27, with someone else’s egg and them fertilizing it in a dish (with a needle, not “naturally”), and then inseminating me with it would pretty much guarantee success… and success breeds success – not just babies. 

You see, I learned while going through this process that some of the people who were trying to help us weren’t like Doctor “B” or Doctor “Mark” – they had no concern about our emotions, they were looking for success rates.  EDICISIIVF will put a baby in the womb unless there’s something seriously wrong with the womb or the baby.  But – all that stuff was more than I felt comfortable doing.  I’m not saying it shouldn’t be done, but I was not okay with someone else’s egg, I was not okay with them having my husband’s sperm, and I was not okay with the loss of total control that could happen with all that stuff happening outside of our bodies.  So… We left the hospital with our little red folder, and I gave my husband permission to divorce me.  Because he deserves to be a father, and if my old, slow eggs prevent that, well then, he should have the right to return.  He didn’t sign up for that.  He didn’t agree to marry me and have to live the remainder of his life knowing that I couldn’t get pregnant.  We both assumed that after I stopped taking the pill that I would, I could just get pregnant like everyone else.  Neither of us had any idea that we would be placing the deepest, scariest, most private desires and parts of our lives onto cold, bright tables under teal green paper. 

“No.”  He said no.  He said he married me.  Not for the number of heirs I can give him.  Not for my ability – or inability to give him a child.  “We’ll just adopt then,” he said. 

You already read how the adoption part went.  So, bring on the next chapter.  We were going to live!  YIPEE!!! How do you live?  We spent money.  Blew through it like it was nobody’s business.  I had a new $300 handbag every two weeks.  He had four-wheelers, guns, fishing gear, new vehicles, and lunch on the town every day.  I traveled with my job and enjoyed trying new foods and buying touristy items from tropical destinations.  He enjoyed the local fare when on deployment overseas.  We lived in a doctor’s house, and I had my hair and nails done weekly.  If we couldn’t have a child, we could have fun, and we sure did. 

Until having fun wasn’t so much fun anymore.  Then we basically had stuff.  Which is where I was when I was driving down the road in my red Escort, bawling like a baby, wishing I could have one.  I was just tired of stuff.  My life hadn’t turned out the way I wanted it to.  I’d never really wanted to be anything except a wife and mother.  I had things, many wonderfully expensive things.  I had a good man.  I had a great job.  I was happy.  But I didn’t have the desire of my heart.  I was broken physically.  Emotionally, I was great, until I thought about that one thing I didn’t have.  That one desire that wasn’t being met.  Then, I was a mess.  A messy mess. 

This is Part 1 of a 4 part series.  To read the other articles (once they’re published), click the links below. 

Part 2 

Part 3 

Part 4