The Third

Much of what I have written here is about Alex and my journey through infertility. We will be celebrating our five year wedding anniversary in a couple months, and of the years we've been married, four of them have had some dealing with infertility.

  I've shared our first and second miscarriage story, but not our third. This one caused the most grief. Here's why:

After our second miscarriage, my parents gave Alex and I a "get it together" chat (multiple times) about going to a fertility doctor. We (mostly I) put it off for as long as possible. For me, the unknown was and is much scarier than the known. My anxiety over going to the doctor caused more problems then help. 

Because two miscarriages is actually pretty common, the doctor wanted to focus on us getting pregnant. So we took a bunch of tests, had lots of blood drawn, took some medication, and voilà, I was pregnant! We felt much more confident about this pregnancy because we had gone to the doctors. We had their help, things were on schedule, life was great. 

This fertility doctor has you come in two weeks after a pregnancy test to make sure that it's not an ectopic pregnancy.  During that visit, we discovered the heartbeat to be much slower than it should be. Growth was also not where it should be for that time frame. This had been the same as the first two pregnancies. I knew then at the doctor's that we would most likely miscarry. We scheduled another appointment for a week later. At that appointment, we found out that there was no heartbeat. 
I would miscarry at any time. 

School was about to end and we were due to travel to visit family in three weeks. Both Alex and I did NOT want to be going through the grieving process while visiting family and be away from our doctors. Instead of waiting to miscarry whenever it was going to happen, the doctor gave me some medication to induce the miscarriage. 

 Having a miscarriage is physically painful. A miscarriage is giving birth but on a smaller scale. However, your hormones are all over the place. Half of your body still thinks its pregnant and the other half doesn't. 

I took a Thursday, Friday, and Monday off of work. This medication made me incredibly sick for several days. (When I went back to school, I sat at my desk all day and gave quiet desk work to my kids. I even told a girl I would not mark her absent if she went down the street to 7/11 and got me a ginger ale and crackers.)

Besides my wonderful student getting me ginger ale, I had Alex. He was a wonderful support during this whole thing. He got me tea, hot pads, made me walk around, and more importantly, held my hand and made me sleep. By this third time around, Alex knew exactly what I needed and what to do. He is marvelous. 

At this time we were living in the basement of some very good friends of ours. Alex and I had been saving up to purchase a house and lived with our friends for five months. (Did I mention their house is a pretty awesome farm with a bunch of chickens and several horses? I had the time of my life this past summer.) Momma Lorae was super awesome during our miscarriage. She made sure I didn't overwork myself and helped Alex and I whenever she could.

 

Alex and I really struggled with this miscarriage. We thought for sure that this pregnancy would work out because we got help from the doctor. We were ecstatic about having a baby and buying a house all in the same time frame. But when we miscarried, it was like we became numb. You can go through the same emotions only so many times before you feel like you're stuck on one of these.

 Nothing made sense. It felt backwards to how things were supposed to go. Alex and I did our part- went to the doctor, got help. Where was God in this? How is this third miscarriage supposed to strengthen my faith in God when it feels like I have less faith in Him now? 

To be honest, these are the hardest questions I've had to answer for myself. I know God is always with us, in our mountaintop experiences and our troubles in the valleys. I think the hardest thing for me is the difference between knowing and living based on what I know. I know God is with me always and doesn't give us what we can't handle. God only brings us through circumstances that grow us closer to Him. But acting on that knowledge is something totally different. That's the hardest part.

Alex and I are still struggling through all this. We have a lot more news that we'll share when it's time. Keep praying for us. We have difficult decisions to make in the next couple weeks/months.