Fathering in Faith

As Christmas approaches, I’m acutely aware of the fact that so many people are experiencing their own grief. For Christina and I, we had a common grief.

When Christina and I got married, we only waited 6 months to start trying for a baby. We both knew we wanted kids. Two, maybe three.

It started out casual. We have time. Just don’t do anything to prevent pregnancy haha. But then a year goes by. So we started being intentional about timing and frequency. Another year goes by. We try some fertility drugs and we are trying all the time.

Part of me sharing all of this is to give a glimpse into the layers of grief one might experience. So there might be a little tmi coming up.

Trying that often decreased actual intimacy. The activity meant to be an act of oneness became a means for getting a baby. You can imagine for both of us how that brought up a lot of confusion and frustration. We had a chemical pregnancy around year three. Basically her body thinks it’s pregnant because the chemical reaction of pregnancy triggers and causes her estrogen to go up and even get a positive pregnancy test. But then the numbers decreased and there was nothing.

Stopping here to say, we didn’t miscarry. But so many have and my heart breaks because the quick switch from joy to pain. You see your future unfold and then retract. You see others have no problems. You see unplanned pregnancies. It’s really difficult.

We fostered for a while in hopes to adopt, but it ended up being a very difficult season for us.

At the end of year three we had me tested and the result wasn’t good. Later we would find out that there were some factors that skewed the numbers. But then we felt helpless. Our insurance didn’t cover anything more.

Then we moved to Baytown. And we were able to have a good insurance plan and got us both tested again. We found out that my stuff was normal, but Christina could rarely produce eggs and when she did, they were not healthy to form an embryo.

Christina wanted to carry a child so we only had two options. Egg donor or embryo donor.

So we started looking for an embryo donor. And we ended up finding the sweetest family! We started an open adoption (which is still so wonderful for us) so that Ramsey will be able to know how many people loved him and wanted to give him life.

And then finally the transfer! And lots of fertility stuff haha. Those first 7 weeks were some of the toughest. At this point, we were about year 6 of trying. It’s not just something we could do again. A transfer cost a lot. But God provided! And Ramsey was eventually born. Truly our little miracle.

But I wanted to also share about anxiety. Christina had it bad during pregnancy. I remember so many crazy precautions we took, but she cared so much that everything go well. And even when Ramsey was born, when you wait that long and work so hard, you just think differently than others and many people had a hard time understanding that.

Christina was an advocate of those things. She loved to walk along ladies in their struggles and hopes as well.

I’ve shared all this to shed some light on what many people might be going through this time of year. Most recognize the visible pain like mine. But there is a lot of pain out there in the infertility world. Love those people well and pray for them.