(I had a different post written for today, but after this morning it didn’t seem fitting).
I have never had so many people tell me they’re praying for me. Friends, family members, and complete strangers from across the blogosphere have left me comments and sent me emails telling me their prayers were with me and my husband as we journey towards starting a family. One dear friend even prayed with me over the phone, praying blessings over the child either in my womb or soon to be there. I have been unspeakably uplifted by all these kind and generous words.
This morning I found that my temperature dropped, after only nine days of highs. Meaning not only that I’m not pregnant, but that I couldn’t have even gotten pregnant this month. As far as my understanding goes, the embryo needs at least 10-11 days in a luteal phase to implant. [If none of this fertility lingo makes any sense to you – don’t sweat it. The point is that I now know that pregnancy was once again impossible for me].
Not that I’m really surprised by the short luteal phase. Nothing else in this cycle was really pointing to fertility anyways. But I still felt crushed to see it spelled out in numbers on my expensive thermometer like that: still no baby for you. Your body’s broken.
That marks month nine.
I was still crying by breakfast time, my teardrops falling into my oatmeal, my husband sitting across from me speechless at the table. He understands that I want a child but he doesn’t understand the emotional toll that all of this takes on me. He doesn’t understand why I take the long way around the store to avoid the baby aisle. He does his best, though.
As for the prayers, I can only come up with three possibilities:
- The people who said they were praying for my fertility were lying
- Prayer doesn’t work
- Prayer does work, and God was listening, but for some reason he hasn’t granted it. Because maybe he wants something different for my life. I don’t know. Maybe he wants me to write.
Even though I believe in theory that God wants to give us good things and that possibility #3 is the most heartening, I can’t help being a little upset with him.
I thought you wanted me to have babies! I thought you were telling me nine months ago to quit school and quit the Pill and start a family! Or are you even paying attention? I’ve been taking all those %$@-&#*@*! vitamins and reading those stupid parenting books . . . for what? So you can taunt me every month with the hope of a child, just to dash it over and over again?
I don’t actually mean any of it. I know God doesn’t behave like that. In theory.
My friends are having a girls’ night tonight. I don’t think I’ll go. Everyone there is either a mom, expecting, or planning to get pregnant soon. Almost all of them are now practicing FAM thanks to me and my stupid blog, which means they’ll all be able to have kids the instant they decide to, which will probably be next week.
Maybe I’ll stay home and write.
I feel like all I ever do any more is whine and complain on here and then you guys say incredibly nice things to make me feel better. I feel like I’m abusing my rights as a blogger. I’m incredibly self-indulgent. Forgive me for that. But it’s hard to write about anything else when I’m feeling like this.
There is no real point to this post except to say that I feel a little hopeless today. So if you’re feeling hopeless today, know that you’re not alone. Maybe tomorrow will be better for both of us.
Maybe by tomorrow I will have gained some insight into all of this, too.
P.S. Don’t forget to take my very quick survey and enter to win a gift card. I know there are plenty of you who took the survey but didn’t enter. You still have a chance!
{ 25 comments… read them below or add one }
You are most definitely in my prayers. Everyday.
Thank you for sharing your story…from your heart. I’ve shared your blog on our site as today’s feature.
Fertility problems are a heavy cross…one a close friend of mine is also carrying. *Hugs*!
hey I’m there with you. for what its worth, last month I didn’t chart temps thinking it would be easier and I’d just have one day of crying (as opposed to several) and that didn’t work either. I have 16 day luteal phases, which are torturous. I was so amped on day 17 and thinking I was pregnant that it hit me like a steamroller when I realized I wasn’t. be nice to yourself on those days that you find out, though. its not only the emotional process but also the hormones that make it seem like the world is ending. here I am a week later thinking “hey maybe I can just go be a missionary or a NFP teacher for the rest of my life” and the thought actually makes me excited. last week it made me cry.
I think the hardest part though, is feeling alone and realizing that its a cycle you’re doomed to repeat. Even with the hubby you can still feel alone, since it hits us men and women differently. And I know that while I feel good today, in three weeks I’ll be a mess again.
We just have to keep taking one day at a time.
Alison, you know me so well.
I too know all about that: last month I also avoided charting in the hopes that it would help me not feel so sad. Wrong. I just felt confused AND sad. What was going on in there?? At least now it’s just sad.
I can only imagine that sixteen-day luteal phases must be torture. At least I only suffered through 9 days of delusion. You had to slog through 17. My heart is with you.
I hope you’re right that hormones are playing a role in my “the whole universe is a hostile place” feelings.
Thanks for your words of comfort.
Hey Kathleen,
I’m sure I’m the last one you want to hear from. Part of the super-fertile-duo, expecting a baby and a dude at that. Regardless, I wanted to let you know that you are my friend, and I am praying for you even though it doesn’t feel like it right now. I certainly have no good understanding of the way God does things, but I am pretty confident that he does things. And I still have faith that you’ll look back at this time in your life years down the road and probably understand it a bit better.
Hang tough, my friend! And please hug your husband every chance you get and let him feel like he is helping you feel better.
Dustin
Kathleen,
Just wanted to stop by with a simple *hug*. We’re going on 18 months of trying, so I know how you feel. Praying for you this afternoon.
Stephanie
Eighteen months!! I honestly broke down and cried when I saw that (not surprising considering my current emotional state). It’s so unfair!! Why, God? Why do some women have to try for more than 18 months? I hope so bad you celebrate a pregnancy soon. Thanks for letting me know I’m not alone.
Yes… 18 months today.
Some months are definitely harder than others. I’ve had to take some drastic steps to maintain my sanity at times. But… I know that we serve a GOOD God, and He loves me. We can’t draw our worth from whether or not we can get pregnant or have children.
And… on the flip side, I know that if I hadn’t had to walk this road, I would never be able to relate to the women under me who will have to walk this road in the future. It’s a bittersweet sort of comfort.
Wow… I’m completely with you. We’re only going on month 6; I know so many women try for so much longer, but I never knew what an emotional toll it would take on me to go month after month of nothing, while almost all of my friends got pregnant the first month they tried! I too struggle in my prayers to understand what God is doing right now… one thing He has shown me is that He is teaching me a lot through this time, and I am thankful for that, yet I continue to pray this season will be short. I also know His timing is perfect… a truth that is easy to say, less easy to know and trust fully, but I’m trying. I’m praying for you.
Trust me, Courtney, by month six I was already having meltdowns, too. I pray that it’s shorter for you, too!
I’ve been up at night praying a lot these days. I AM PRAYING FOR YOU!!! You are so dear to me and I can’t pretend to know the answers. But I do know that God is not out to get us. I will keep praying for you … in faith. Love you sister!
Precious Kathleen…
I want to cry right along with you.
Hi Kathleen,
Not sure if this will help, but I would like to recommend this article written by a web friend of mine about her experience with fertility difficulties and patience.
http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7374&Itemid=100
Thanks, Brian – a good article.
All I know to say is that my heart hurts for you and Ben. Much love, and prayers always.
I feel almost a little awkward commenting to you on such a personal post, since we haven’t “met” yet. But my heart really goes out to you in your longing and that’s a subject I post a lot about.
I have a theory #4 for you. That when we ask for something, and we get something else, what’s happening is we’re being shown the next thing that’s standing between us and what we long for.
So if we long for a child, and we get grief instead, then the grief or the emptiness or the feeling denied is the next thing we need to clear away on the path to having a child.
It’s funny, Corey actually spoke to this very thing in his guest post. He says that the marriage is working on us, not the other way around. I believe that’s true with any deep longing. It’s working on us.
Sometimes I think it’s God’s way of turning us into who we were always destined to become. That our desire gets dangled in front of us as the hugest incentive to keep transforming ourselves in a way that will make us completely ready to have what we’ve always wanted by the time we actually get there.
I don’t know if this helps, but I hope so. I’m glad to have discovered you and these heartfelt posts.
I think you make a great point, Susan, and I’m glad you brought it up. Perhaps the grief itself has a purpose. Perhaps, for example, it will make me a better parent when the day comes. I’m deeply touched by your suggestion — thanks.
Hope
by Emily Dickinson,
for my fellow writing friend when she needs it most
and for Stephanie and Courtney,
brave, open souls that all of you are to share your struggles so others can find comfort too
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune–without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
What a lovely poem, Mrs. Levine. Thanks. I think I need to print it out and tape it onto my nightstand.
Kathleen,
I am new to your site – and I love it. I was over 2 years conceiving and a big part of my journey was letting go – and when I did get pregnant, and birth my son, it was absolutely at the right time. Blessings,
Joan
Kathleen, i just linked into your site from Corey’s, who I just started to follow and I think this post was the reason!
I went thru everything you said. We went thru fertility treatments up to IVF, We couldn’t do that cost. NOTHING was wrong with either of us, yes we started at late 30s, but all tests showed perfectly fine.
We went thru highs and lots and lots of lows-mainly on my part- guys tend to compartmalize better, women tend to blame themselves (human nature i think).
We had 2 churches praying for us daily. Finally one day I said ENOUGH to the tears and depression and talked to hubby about foster care. Adoption is so expensive and iffy (but I knew thru a best friend that it can be just as wonderful as physically giving birth to a child), but foster care- you CAN help a child who NEEDS you.
LIteraly the week after we finished classes we were called in the middle of the night to come pick up a 5 week old infant. When I looked in her face it dawned on me- the grief God sent me was to prepare me for motherhood – I knew I would need the strength the whole fertility experience had given me to give this child the strength she needed.
I am very happy to report that 8 months later that infant became our daughter officially, but she was in my heart the moment I held her. I realized at that moment that God had had a different plan all along for us, we just were blinded by desire to physically have a child. Our daughter couldn’t be more like us in looks or temperament.
Sometimes it takes strength you didn’t know you had to close a door, so God can open the next one for you. So don’t give up, the prayers are working, you just don’t know the answer yet!
HUGS
Wow, Nicole, what a beautiful story. Thanks for sharing! In the midst of grief you never know what God has in store for you. That’s amazing.
I know this was months ago, but just knowing that I am not that only one that gets overwhelmingly sad over frustrating cycles and can be brought to tears seemingly at the drop of a hat makes it all a bit easier. Thank you!
I didnt ever conceived now i am pass the age as society see to do
so my hurt still exist daily but i go on given up is not an optional but
living on daily is a journey that we must do. so when the blessing of
a child and children don’t come only we who have gone and are on
the journey understand. there are time when God may give a answer
of no. be good to yourself today and to cry is not a sign of weakness
it is just who we are.
love you