Happy Heavenly Birthday
March 26, 2017. The day Malachi was born into heaven. Day 1 of a year filled with the unknown, the unexpected, and a roller coaster, wide array of emotions.
April 19, 2017. Day 24. My first appointment with my new doctor after finally having insurance. I chuckled, as her name was Faith. I just knew that I was in for a journey that now I know was to challenge my faith, to challenge who I know God to be, to challenge my faith in God and will I still believe that His promises are true even when they have yet to come to pass. Will I still believe that He is for me, even when He’s watching and present in the brokenness of my heart, even when He’s present while I’m curled up in the fetal position on the floor in a dark closet. Will I still believe that He is for me even if He’s not actively rescuing me from my pain. Will I still believe. Will I still have faith in Him. Will I still believe that He is faithful.
May 22, 2017. Day 57. Labs and an ultrasound, followed by my first round of fertility treatments–Letrozole. Letrozole is to women with PCOS what Clomid is to women sans-PCOS… it aids in ovulation. Cause, well… no ovulation no pregnancy. Days 4-9 take Letrozole.
May 29 – June 4, 2017. Days 64 – 70.Track ovulation. Aka, every morning wake up, urinate in provided cup, insert test strip into cup only to indicated mark on test strip, wait for one line or two to say whether or not you’re ovulating. On day it’s positive, rabbit. I’ll just leave that there. Then anxiously wait to see if you start your cycle or are late and have a positive pregnancy test.
June 19, 2017. Day 85. No pregnancy test needed; Aunt Flo knocked gently, then quite loudly on the door…. right before she pushed her way in without anyone letting her in. We all have that 1 family member, right? Ha.
[July 9, 2017. Day 105. The happiest event in months: Winston. Our pup-child.]
There were 4 more rounds of Letrozole+Ovulation Predictor Kits over the course of the next 3 months. And with every round of fertility treatments then starting a period, my heart began to sink a little deeper. See, we went through the miscarriage with no one beside us. We named him Malachi “My messenger, my angel” Daijon “God’s gift of hope”, and just knew that God would be glorified through this experience, and not that He hasn’t. But we had high expectations that working with this nurse practitioner that supposedly specialized in infertility would result in a successful pregnancy. We were on one side a little naive to think it would happen after 1 fertility treatment. However, we also weren’t anticipating for our doctor to tell us months down the road, “Oh, well sometimes it takes 3-4 rounds before it works.” Thanks, doc. Probably could’ve warned us, oh, maybe 3-4 months ago.
These were some of the most difficult months, April through September. But the sun started to rise on August and light up some lonely, dark places. At the end of April after our moving to Springfield, MO anniversary, we attended Hope Church for the first time–the last year of church hopping and searching was… rough at best. Hope Church was a breath of fresh air. It was home and we were sold after just day 1. We were so excited to finally have community with like-minded, Jesus-loving folk. Then they announced they were at the end of the semester for Life Groups and they’d be taking a break for the summer. BOOOOOOOO!!! So as soon as the time came to sign up for which group we wanted to be apart of, we were contemplative and excited! We went after service to sign up and our choice had just filled up after 1st service. What?! So we made our decision on which leaders were the next closest to us. Alright, I guess we’ll do David and Kristin Marshall. And like any wise young adults would do, we Facebook stalked them as soon as we got home. They seemed like an interesting couple… had 4 kids… they were cute, had a couple redheads… much redder than Mason’s. Sure. Let’s see how this goes.
August 20, 2017. Day 147. Life Groups Day 1. 4 cute kids, a few other couples, a few singles… everyone’s getting to know each other. And, in retrospect, we met our best friends that day; best friends with whom long, in-depth, vulnerable conversations would happen into the wee hours of the morning when work was still to come the next day. We met other couples and friends that would be joining us in prayer for our future family, providing joy and laughter and fun and camaraderie and conversations about our relationships with God and our upbringings. August 20, 2017 we were given the gift of life-lines. God gave us support like Aaron & Hur holding up Moses’ arms in battle when he was growing weak. August 20th was a game-changer. I’ve never felt the power of people like I have since then.
August 21, 2017. Day 148. Mason had a specimen analysis. We had people to pray with us.
August 22, 2017. Day 149. I had a procedure done called a hysterosalpingogram. Say that 10x fast, just makes your mouth tired before it starts sounding like tongues. A procedure she told me I’d need to go to the hospital for because it’s considered a surgery and that it could take up to an hour or more. I was more than relieved–I’ve never been hospitalized or had surgery before so I was a bit nervous–to find up once I got there that the procedure itself would take no longer than 20 minutes. Good bye bullets of sweat! Hellooo deep exhales of relief! It was at this point God taught me that He knows better than we do. That sometimes He answers, “No”, to our prayers because we don’t really know what we’re asking for. In a hysterosalpingogram they insert this safe dye into the uterus to show if there are abnormalities in the uterus lining and to see if there are any blockages in the Fallopian tubes preventing eggs from being getting to the uterus and sperm from getting to the egg. I prayed that there were blockages, cause in my understanding, that would explain why we hadn’t yet gotten pregnant; so, we just needed this dye to break up the blockage. Right? Wrong. After the procedure, the doctor told me there were no blockages. So, I asked him if it would’ve been better if there were blockages because that would provide an explanation or if having no blockages is better. He responded, “I’ll tell you this, if there would have been blockages, IVF would have been the only option for you.” Stunned. Stunned at my naivety. Stunned at God answering my prayer with a “No,” that I am forever grateful for… it was as if He was saying to me, “Charis, you have no idea what you’re asking for. I know. I know what that means, though it’s not above My abilities. That’s not what I want for you. That’s not what I have planned for you. This ‘No’ is My love for you. Trust me.” I’m thankful for God bypassing what we think we want when we really don’t know what we’re actually asking for.
September 22, 2017. Day 180. Had a Follicle Study. That evening was Imagine, the women’s conference at my church. Things shifted that weekend, Friday and Saturday.
September 25, 2017. Day 183. Mason and I did an intrauterine insemination (IUI) done. I’ve never been more… concerned? Nervous? Anxious? I couldn’t explain how I was feeling, but me insatiable need to pee and my rare-for-me high blood pressure that would keep the doctor from doing the procedure was how my body was communicating how I was feeling. In less than a year, we’d done all the things and I desperately wanted this to work. I knew that after an IUI was either more IUIs or IVF, and I didn’t want to have to do IVF.
October 9, 2017. Day 197. The day we found out the IUI didn’t work. A negative pregnancy test. We were filled with such hope. We’d allowed ourselves to get excited and not be pessimistic or skeptical of it working. We’d allowed ourselves to feel. I didn’t want to skeptically take the pregnancy test and then flip emotional sides if it was positive. I wanted to feel as if it was our first test. But allowing yourself to feel makes you vulnerable… it puts you at the mercy of the situation, to feel happiness and excitement and elation if it goes your way OR to feel sadness and disappointment and grief if it doesn’t go your way. I woke up early cause I couldn’t sleep and took the test. Negative. My heart broke. I climbed back into bed with Mas and wept. He knew. He just held me.
The night before our Life Group was hinged on hope with us. We all felt like maybe this is the one! At the end of night, our Life Group leaders told us before we left, “Whether we’re celebrating or something else, we want to be there for you either way. So let us know what you need of us. If you want to be left alone, we’ll do that. And if you don’t, you guys come over for dinner.” I told Kristin that night, “No matter what I say, do not leave me alone.” I knew how taxing this process had been on my heart, and I knew that last thing I needed was to be left alone.
I texted Kristin that morning and told her the news and how much I didn’t understand why followed by over-analyzing if I drank too much water and it diluted any possible HCG, cause I still hadn’t started my period… over-thinking central. I so deeply wanted it to just be too early. It was just negative. And just encouraged me towards Him. I’ve been told more times than I can count, “I want to be there for you.” “What can I do to help?” Kristin asked me what she could do and all I had was, “I wish I knew. I have no earthly clue what I need… But if you come across something encouraging, funny, happy, lovely, etc. send it on over.” I needed a smile. So, instead she showed up at my work with her 4 beautiful children, a hug, and a bouquet of flowers. She wanted to be there and she was. That evening they had us over and we ate and we laughed and watched a movie and we talked til the wee hours of the morning and they were there like they said they wanted to be and like we’d never experienced. That day that started in sadness and heartbreak ended in togetherness and joy and medicine for the heart; and it changed the whole trajectory of the week. God showed up in the time spent with and in the arms of our friends.
October 11, 2017. Day 199. Called my doctor’s office and told them we were taking a break. And a break we took.
October 13, 2017. Day 201. A normal day at work turned into Mason wanting to surprise me. Now, I’m usually pretty good at figuring out surprises… especially if I’m blindfolded and being driven somewhere in town. But, see, I’d never been to the airport here in Springfield and that’s just where the surprise was. Knowing how hard every other fertility disappointment had been the last several months and how devastating this last negative pregnancy test had been, SO he surprised me with flying my mom up to spend the week with me before Jeremy & Marlo’s wedding. I get out of the car, open my eyes, see my mom, and hug and cry like my life depended on it. Cause well, sometimes a girl needs her momma.
It was like we got fresh breath in our lungs and more brain space, not having to worry about fertility treatments and ovulation predictor kits and lack of spontaneity. We got to breathe for Thanksgiving and Christmas spent with framily, though I also cried because it would’ve been Malachi’s first Christmas. There have been random moments of crying and moments of longing for the moments in pregnancy that I missed in miscarrying. But the end of the year ended in smiles and joy and time with some pretty great people.
January 1, 2018. Day 281. A new year and faith in finances test begins.
January 9, 2018. Day 289. Exactly 3 months from our last negative pregnancy test, we met with Dr. Poppy after Kristin encouraging me for months to look into her. I’d researched her long before the appointment and read her story, her blog about her own pregnancies and who she is as a practitioner. With as much as she’d gone through, I was sold! The first appointment we told her our story, our infertility issues, our experience with our previous doctor, and we proceeded to do tons of blood work after she found I’d barely done any at all. At the end of the appointment, she told us how overwhelming she knows the process can be and how stressful it is, but that if she’d seen that my previous doctor had exhausted all resources she’d be more concerned or have less options to offer; however, she felt like it was more that we were at the beginning as no hormone or thorough blood testing had yet been done. We left the office with two different experiences: Mason was uber excited that we were starting over and there are still so many options including embryo adoption (which somehow we’d never heard of) and I was both pissed that we’d spent all this money on a doctor that didn’t do all that she could have and should have which now sounded like basic testing she should have done. I also left with this deep feeling of being afraid to hope again after last year had been filled with so much disappointment; I didn’t want to get my hopes up again just to be even more disappointed. I dropped Mason off at work and stopped by the church where Kristin volunteers to fill her in about the appointment. Long story short (as they rarely are in my book) I was down. She knew. I was not myself. She knew. I cried. She talked. I talked. We prayed. We hugged. I left less down. Sometimes you have to be reminded that not only is Jesus on your side, He put people in your life that want to be there and will be there when you least expect it and will confront your crazy, not allowing you to believe lies that are swirling in your lowness. She didn’t let the lies keep swirling in my lowness.
January 18, 2018. Day 298. Got our test results! Didn’t fix things, but it did give us some answers. Mason has a common genetic mutation that affects fertility; and I had high insulin and deficient in Vitamin D, Ferritin (in iron), and Magnesium and needed to take supplements. Oh, and she suggested doing a paleo, ketogenic, or whole foods diet to help on the dietary side with insulin management. Yay. “This is my happy face.”
January 27, 2018. Day 307. Someone made a fraudulent charge on our account for about $1500, mostly wiping out our entire savings account we’d been working on building up. Height of frustration, yet evidence of trusting God with our finances. “Will you trust Me even when your finances have been stolen right from under you?” Not that He caused it, but I believe that there are some things that He allows, and they can be opportunities to trust Him more and lean on Him more.
March 5, 2018. Day 344. I started doing SHAPE ReClaimed with my practitioner, Sherry Neill at Absolute Wellness (www.shapereclaimed.com, if you want to know what it is). Long story short, as of today, March 26, 2018, I’m down 15lbs from not eating sugar in anything, no grains, no starches, 8oz protein daily, at least 4 cups of approved veggies daily, and 2 approved fruits daily. Goal: getting into and staying in ketosis so I can look in the mirror at my body and in a deep, movie mafia-like tone say, “You work for me now.”
March 26, 2018. Day 365. Today. Today I’ve reflected on the last year to date. It’s been overwhelming to say the least. Overwhelmed with sadness, with joy, with disappointment, with hope, with frustration, with happiness, with aloneness, but with togetherness. Overwhelmed with people praying for us, both that I’ve asked to pray and so many others that would just text/message me to tell me God put us on their hearts. Overwhelmed with getting excited for others’ pregnancy announcements, then losing the excitement for others’ pregnancy announcements, to rejoicing when other women I know with PCOS or fertility issues get that positive pregnancy test, back to being excited for others again. I have had some powerhouse women pray for us and believe God for us that will not cease to believe for our family until His promises are fulfilled. There have been opportunities galore to trust Him more, to trust that He will do what He says He will do.
“And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment
of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”
Luke 1:45 ESV
I have learned that when you “delight in the Lord” that doesn’t mean you get the “desires of your heart” right away; it’s not some checklist that says, “Okay, I have delighted in the Lord; check. Now, where are the desires of my heart?” Delighting in the Lord is evidenced in how you live your life, how you live your life surrendered, how you follow His voice. I have learned and am learning again to “trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, but in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your path” (Proverbs 3:5-6). I’m learning to not let my own weights leave me incapable of being used in the lives of others. I’m learning to put things in His hands. I’m learning that life can be enjoyed in the midst of struggles. I’m learning to trust Him and keep my eyes locked into His in the midst of storms. I’m learning to remember the moments, the people in which to remember what God has done while I’m waiting. I’m learning it’s okay to be human and to feel with all I am, but to invite Him into my process and feeling not leave Him out. I’m learning to find Him in the waiting, but not idolizing what I’m waiting for. I’m learning that this adventure is not just about falling asleep to the stars and the sound of creation or waking up to painted sunrises across the sky, but it’s also about slipping in the gravel, rolling down the hill, and still getting up on your feet once you’ve hit level ground, then letting your friends help you get where you need to go. So wherever you are in your adventure, don’t go it alone, find solid friends that will stick by your side and encourage you in the right direction, and adventure on, my friends.
Malachi Daijon.
My messenger, my angel, God’s gift of hope [to me].
My precious boy, my sweet little one, I miss you entirely, but I know the life you live could not be more beautiful in the presence of God.
Happy birthday in Heaven, son.
I carry you with me wherever I go.
Mommy loves you. Daddy loves you.