Getting our ducks in a row

It will come as no surprise at all to you to hear that I pray every day that God will fulfill the desires of my heart and give me a baby. Recently, however I have been challenged to match these prayers with actions, steps of faith if you will. I feel strongly that God is in our ivf treatments despite the fact that it has been filled with complications and heart breaking disappointments. Us doing ivf was a huge step of faith and obedience and the troubles we've had have shaken that faith considerably. But we're still standing.

When I felt God saying I needed to match my prayers, hopes and faith for a baby with actions that demonstrate that faith I was surprised. What could demonstrate actively perusing my desire for a baby than doing ivf? But He has made me see I need fill my life with acts that demonstrate how ready our hearts and lives are for a baby. We need to get our ducks in a row.

With that in mind we have started to make significant changes to our lives. Next week we are picking up a new (to us) car. Our current car is fine but it's quite small and the boot is not big enough for a buggy. There are also issues with it that are fine for us as a couple to live with but could pose difficulties if we were to use it as a family car. The car we are getting is bigger and doesn't have the issues we have grown used to. And there's ample room in the boot for a buggy and other paraphernalia. It will be more expensive to run and it'll take us a while to pay off but we feel it is a step of faith. I've always known we would need a new car when we had a baby but I always thought I'd be pregnant when we did something about it.

The other major life change happening soon is my job. In about a month I'll be starting a job that has regular hours and is term time only. I currently work shifts that are very long and often very short notice. I would not be able to organise childcare around my shifts and the long hours would make working while pregnant quite hard. It is not just my desire for a baby motivating me to change jobs but my new job will give me a lifestyle much more conducive to being Mum! The fact that its term time only is a statement of faith for the future that I'll need to work around school term.

I need to be careful though. If I've learnt anything from all this its that obedience to God is not always followed by him fulfilling his promises to us. I need to guard my heart in this. Just because I'm doing these things to get my life and heart ready to have a baby doesn't mean I'm going to have a baby right away. It could well be several more years before God comes good on this particular promise to us.

Disappearing positivity

On a sunny Saturday in July this year I stood with Neil in our bathroom staring at a pregnancy test willing a second line to appear. You have to wait 3 minutes and we'd waited 1 minute and no second line was showing. We were starting to think this, our 3rd attempt at transferring a frozen embryo was going to end in a negative test as the first one had. Then I looked again and was sure I could see a second line appearing. I thought it was just wishful thinking at first. But sure enough after we'd waited the full 3 minutes there were definitely 2 lines. A second test came up positive straight away. I was pregnant for the second time ever in my life.

6 months previous to this attempt I had been in hospital having a surgically managed miscarriage after the second frozen embryo we implanted had stopped developing at six weeks. I carried my baby to 10 weeks but scans showed no heart beat from 8 weeks onwards. So as we took in the news that I was pregnant again we were understably cautious that this may again end in miscarriage. We were still hopeful though. I was pregnant again, this time we might get to meet our baby. We might finally get to hold a baby in our arms rather than our hearts. I was already feeling signs of pregnancy and started to let myself think about the future as Mummy again.

Little did I know, standing in that bathroom, that I would not even get to be knowledgably pregnant for a week this time. On the Thursday after the Saturday I took the test I was at work and had a niggling feeling that something had changed, something was different. I can't really explain it, I just knew I wasn't pregnant anymore. I was discussing pregnancy symptoms with a colleague and realised I didn't actually feel any of these things anymore. I actually found myself lying and pretending I still felt sick etc. I'm not sure why exactly, I guess I just wasn't ready to think this might be over yet. I know pregnancy symptoms come and go but I just knew. I was on a sleep in shift so I couldn't do anything about it till Friday. I got home on Friday morning exhausted as I'd had a disturbed night so I thought a sleep might make me feel better. If not I'd buy a test when I woke up. I didn't feel any better when I woke up so I went out and bought a twin pack of tests. I remember seeing a sign on a door on t.v. that said 'do not enter if pregnant'. I burst into tears and said to myself that I could go in there because I wasn't pregnant anymore! The test was as negative as they come, this was over. The following week provided 6 more negatives and my clinic finally let me come off my meds. 10 days after the first negative test I began bleeding. As the loss occurred around 5 weeks it's known as a chemical pregnancy. Implantation occurred and my hormone (chemical) levels were high enough to be detected on a test but development halted and miscarriage  occurred almost immediately after implantation. If this had been a natural pregnancy I probably wouldn't have even known I was pregnant. It would just have been like a late, heavier period. But I did know I was pregnant; I did know I was having a miscarriage not a heavy period.

Physically this loss was not as big a deal as the first but emotionally it was huge. Due to my dodgy chromosomes our embryos have been through genetic testing and they are only transferring embryos that are chromosomally normal. These embryo transfers are not meant to end in negative cycles, miscarriages and chemical pregnancies. It may be that all three occurances are just 'one of those things'. It may be there's something else going on. I'm now going to have tests to find out. But at the time it felt like the bottom had fallen out of my world again. We had worked so hard to recover from losing our baby and getting a positive again meant we could start to hope again. But it was over before it had even begun. It felt so cruel. I felt I was having to grieve for a lost pregnancy as well as a lost baby. I sank into a depression deeper than I've felt throughout this whole process. I am now coming out of the depths but I'm still sad that I keep losing my babies. When we had the miscarriage there was a process to go through and an obvious event to mark. With this chemical pregnancy I just stopped being pregnant. It all happened so quickly which I think is why it hit me harder. This was supposed to be the pregnancy that brought hope into our grief. Instead it piled grief on top of grief. I struggled to find God in the dark places but I knew that He is sovereign and knows what He's doing. I can now see that I sank into his arms and I am letting him rebuild my heart.

We have one more chromosomally normal embryo left in the freezer. I'm having some tests before we transfer it. I don't know how that will go but I know that God loves me and is all powerful. I don't know why I keep losing my babies and why we are struggling so but I hope that by sharing my stories others will know they are not alone.