Most people would look at my family
and laugh if I told them I struggled with infertility. It lasted only a year,
and had a quick and easy fix. Even at the time I felt guilty for feeling so bad
about it because I had a child already and most people with this problem had
none. But it was real all the same.
We had our daughter so quickly that
we assumed that this would always be the case. I so wanted her to have a
sibling. I had the name of my next child picked out (I was sure it’d be a boy),
and I could picture exactly what he’d look like. Months went by and nothing
happened. Was it my fault? Was I not a good enough mother for our daughter that
I didn’t deserve another child? Somewhere in my heart I knew we’d have more
children—my husband wasn’t worried for the same reason. I knew that other
people had it worse than I did, but thinking that way only made me feel like I
had no right to be unhappy about it, which of course made everything much
worse. I didn’t get any hurtful comments, but I had one hard moment when
another woman was talking about being able to visit Girl’s Camp despite having a
baby, and saying she’d “better go now because [she] would probably be pregnant
again next year.”
The lowest point was at a family
reunion. I was trying to accept the Lord’s timing in my life and pondering how
I could stop feeling so miserable. Then, at a church meeting, two cousins stood
up one after the other and announced that they were both expecting. They
laughed at the shock on their mother’s face, and I so much wanted to be one of
them that I physically hurt. I couldn’t even allow myself to be jealous, as
this would be a “rainbow baby” for one of my cousins. I had to walk away from
the celebrations with my husband so I could calm down before facing people.
My two-year-old daughter loved
going to her nursery class on Sunday. One morning, she hurried off through the
wrong door to get there. I knew that the church hallway was a circle and that
she would eventually make it to the right class, so I allowed her to go through
the wrong door and followed after her. After a little while, she started
getting upset. Soon, every time we passed a foyer or turned a corner, she would
collapse in tears. “Nursery! Nursery!” she cried. I tried to explain. “We are
going to nursery, I promise. Please trust me. We’ll get there if you just keep
going. Come on, get up.” And she would get up and walk to the next corner,
where we’d have to go through the whole thing over again. At last we arrived
and she ran joyfully into her class.
Then I realized how much my
daughter had been teaching me. My goal was taking longer than expected, and I
too would stop and cry at every corner. I too had Someone with me, telling me
the same things I told my little girl, but with even more patience and love. “You
are going to get there, I promise. Please trust me. We’ll get there if you just
keep going. Come on, get up.”
I too arrived at last. I visited a
doctor, who discovered that my thyroid levels were off. I started medication
and within a couple of months became pregnant with my son (who looks almost
exactly like I imagined him). I learned some important lessons. I still have
trials, and I still stop and cry at every corner when my goals don’t happen on
my time table. But I’m starting to learn to listen to that voice of the Spirit
which is always there, that tells me that everything will be all right if I
just keep going.
