Pregnancy, Adoption, Our Plans, and God's Plans

Two years ago Jonathan and I were preparing to move to a new city where I would start a new job and he would start at a new school. We had just graduated from college and were in a time of transition. Two years ago we were also staring infertility in the face. We had been trying to conceive for over a year and had absolutely nothing to show for it except a lot of stress, tears, and confusion. I was turning 22 years old, and while others my age either had starting a family on the far horizon or were already having children, I was in crisis realizing that my own plans and expectations were not going to be met. I felt so lonely; no one I knew was facing this, and I thought that no one understood what I was going through.

"Let's Have Seven Children!"

As we sat in the coffee shop at our community college over six years ago, our relationship still young and fresh, we jumped into all those big questions with enthusiasm. "How many kids do you want?" I can't remember which of us answered first, but I remember my answer. "At least seven!" I think he was a little surprised, but if I recall correctly he responded with, "Okay, sure, we can do that," or something along those lines. I was so excited that we were on the same page about having a large family.

I never let go of that vision. My dream even before we started dating was to be a stay-at-home mom with "at least seven" children, homeschooling all of them and being there for everything. I knew that would be challenging. I don't think I romanticized it too much (although I'm sure I romanticized it some) because my mom stayed at home and homeschooled me and my siblings. I had several friends and acquaintances that had large families, and I knew that that was what I wanted. 

I don't think wanting to be a stay-at-home mom means I lack ambition. I do feel that society tends to tell women that "they can do it all," implying that they should do it all. Well, I don't want to do it all! I just want to do the mom thing and do it really, really well. And you know what? I think that's crazy ambitious! There are not that many people these days that want to have that many kids, and while many moms choose to stay at home, many more go back to the work force, especially after their children are school-aged. I checked the census data (because I'm cool that way) and in 2009 5% of women in the United States between the ages of 15 and 44 had four or more kids. And while I don't have the numbers, I don't imagine that all of them want to stay at home and educate all their kids themselves. That's probably a fairly elite group! So tell me again how I'm not ambitious, World. 

My Prayer

This probably goes without saying, but my husband and I have been praying that God would allow us to start a family for years now. My prayers have evolved, though, over that time-frame. In the beginning the prayer was always that I would be pregnant. Today I pray for a child. I used to pray that my husband and I would make a baby together. Now I pray that we would have a baby to hold and love and raise. I can honestly say in all seriousness that I do not care if I get pregnant or if we adopt. I do not care. I would love any baby that was mine to love, and whether or not we're genetically related doesn't matter. Does this mean that I don't want to be pregnant or that I wouldn't be absolutely ecstatic to be pregnant? No, of course not! I would LOVE to be pregnant more than almost anything! But what I would love even more would be to have a baby. One way or another. However God sees fit to give one.

This month I took Clomid, my doctor did some monitoring, and a few days ago I took an HCG trigger shot to help me ovulate. It's a lot more than we've ever been able to try before. And although it still doesn't give us good odds, I have been more hopeful than I've been any month in a year. I am so excited at just the possibility that this might happen for us and we might have a baby. And getting to be pregnant - that would be a bonus!

But as I've prayed for a baby this month, I find myself asking not "Please let this work and let me get pregnant" but rather "Please help us start our family soon, in whatever way you have planned for us." We have talked about adoption and are going to an information meeting with Bethany Christian Services next week, just to start to educate ourselves and explore possibilities. I have started to get really excited about adopting, and I truly mean it when I say that at this point, any way God sees fit to expand our family is fine with me! Jonathan and I have already decided that no matter what happens in the short term, we really do want to adopt some day. Only God knows what He has in store for us, but I am excited for whatever it is and my prayer is that it will happen soon.

I do appreciate the thoughts and prayers of all my family and friends. If you read this, please pray for us that God would expand our family, that His plan for us would be greater than our plans for ourselves, that we would have some direction and idea of how we will grow our family soon, and of course, that we would be able to be patient in the meantime.

A Plan?

Well, we kind of have a plan. For now we will be trying Clomid. It isn't overly expensive, and it might work, so really there is no good reason not to try the medication route. It does involve a little more than I originally thought it would, but if this ends up being it for us, it will be so very worth it.

You would think that it would feel good to have a game plan, but honestly my heart isn't in it. I still want a baby so much, but I am so tired of trying. It is just so discouraging every single month. Even when I work really hard at not being hopeful, I can't help but get my hopes up a little bit, and it always leads to disappointment. After over 18 months of disappointment after disappointment, I am really feeling done. I just don't want to try any more. I realize that this sounds like I'm depressed - I'm really not. I just don't feel like putting the emotional effort into trying this new Clomid plan. Because statistically speaking, it will probably fail, and I will just have to survive through more months of disappointment.

But on the positive side, I really believe that we will have a baby soon one way or another. We have talked a lot about what we are going to do if this doesn't work, and we have decided for sure that we will not do IVF. This means that there really isn't a lot left to try - since IUI is not going to be productive and IVF is off the table, this medication route is really the last option. Once we have tried this we are going to move on to considering adoption. And really, I am very, very excited about that idea!

Answers and Options

On Wednesday I had a phone call consultation with our doctor to go over our test results. I have been very busy, and Jonathan and I have been talking and trying to think through everything, so I haven't gotten around to updating until now. But we really did get a lot of our answers, and I think we're in possession of enough information to reasonably know what to expect and to begin to plan for the future.

At this point the test results show a combination of factors that give us a pretty low chance of conceiving on our own. (Maybe something around 5% or less each month. It's hard to know numbers like that exactly, but that's a rough estimate.) I will go ahead and outline what our options are.

Medication

One option is for me to take Clomid or another medication. This might bump our percentage up a bit. If we say for the sake of argument that we're at 5%, this would move us up to 7-8% chance of conceiving each month. It is not safe to take Clomid for more than six months at a time, though, and as I pointed out to the doctor, 7% each month for six months gets you to about a 42% chance of conceiving. Not great odds, but considering how affordable Clomid is, this could be worth trying. 

IUI

IUI is not going to be an option for us. Due to the test results, the doctor said that IUI would not increase our chances for pregnancy by any significant amount. It just wouldn't make sense financially. 

IVF

The doctor indicated that IVF would be the most direct way to address the situation, and by far has the best chance for success. IVF has a 60% success rate for couples in their early 20s. As much as we may be tempted to take this route as it is clearly the easiest emotionally, we are very, very cautious about the idea. I feel that my pro-life beliefs conflict somewhat with this option, and we are certainly not going to run into this right away. 

I do not believe in freezing embryos, and I do not believe in doctors choosing which embryos they think have the best chance of survival. I did talk about my concerns in our phone conversation, and our doctor was extremely open and respectful of my beliefs. We talked about some options for lower stimulation IVF and ways that we could do IVF so as to eliminate these concerns. While that's great, it would dramatically decrease the chances of success each month. Depending on how exactly we decided to go about things, our chances of pregnancy could be more like 40% or even just 20% each cycle. It is very hard to calculate these percentages, however, because not enough couples do IVF with these considerations in mind to have a significant pool of data. 

I would be happy to share more about IVF and the specifics of why I have these concerns and feelings in a future post, but for now I will just say that this is not something that either of us are thinking of jumping into right now. 

Adoption

With only these options, we have started talking and thinking a lot about adoption. But that's something that the two of us need to talk about and think about a lot more before I say any more.

So those are the options we see at this point. In a nut shell, these are our choices:

1. Do nothing. Keep on going as we have been and probably not get pregnant any time soon. But who knows? God can do anything. At this point I would consider getting pregnant naturally to be nothing short of a miracle.
2. Medication. I can start taking Clomid or another fertility drug and we can try that for six months. This would slightly increase our chances and we could pray for a miracle. I would still consider getting pregnant under this option to be a miraculous and wonderful work of God.
3. IVF. This might be an option for us, but we are still thinking, praying, and studying about whether or not this is something we feel ethically and morally comfortable with.
4. Adoption. This is something that we cannot do right away because of the cost factor, but it is a route that we could consider and start researching for the future. 

So that's it. The answers we've been waiting for. We would love your prayers and support as we consider our options and try to discover what God's will is for us at this point in our journey to start a family. 

Keep checking back. We will hopefully come up with some kind of game plan soon!