Wedding Bells

Thanksgiving Day, DH and I went for a long walk around my parents' neighborhood. Long in duration, not in distance as I am still not up to walking more than a tenth of a mile at a stretch. I caught a glimpse of our shadows; I was clinging to him, walking slowly and unsteadily. The band I wear to protect my incisions made my torso look substantially thicker than it is. In shadow, we looked like a couple in our seventies.

It struck me that DH and I have only been married a year and a half, but I feel like we've been married twenty.

We never had a formal church wedding. DH has been married before to a woman who left him after fourteen months with no explanation or even a good-bye. We were engaged and waiting for his annulment when my adenomyoma was diagnosed and the recommendation from the doctor was to postpone surgery until after I was done with childbearing.

We got married immediately, in a court-house.

We are still waiting on DH's annulment. Apparently, in the diocese where he filed, the wait is three years. (The priest at DH's parents' church told us it was eight to ten months.) We haven't even seen a "thank you for your application" form letter. DH is done with Catholicism. Reliving the worst thing that ever happened to him only to be met with silence and indifference broke his relationship with the Church, and I'm not sure it will ever be fixed.

Meanwhile, I was learning that I could not go through the worst thing that's ever happened to me without the Sacraments. I could not go without the Eucharist. I could not have my surgery without the anointing of the sick. I started going to an Episcopalian church. That church has been my rock these many months.

DH and I will be married in that church this winter. In front of God, our extended families and our friends, we will promise each other that "for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health," we will be husband and wife.

I'd say we've already had more "worse, poorer and sickness" in one and a half years than many couples have had in twenty. I know that when I hear DH say those words, I will be thinking that through infertility, through pain, through surgery, through depression and through despair, DH has stood by me.

Fear and Trembling

Today, I received the sacrament of the anointing of the sick in preparation for my surgery next week. Father J anointed my head with oil, he laid his hands on me and prayed that Jesus would keep me in the hollow of his hand during the surgery and my recovery. He prayed that God would guide the hands of the surgeon and everyone who will touch me.

I know that I am loved by God all the time. But it made me feel so special to receive God's love through human hands and through the (extra)ordinary substance of (holy) oil.

Father J assured me that he would put my name on the list of the sick so that all in the parish at all the Masses would be praying for a successful surgery and my quick recovery. This made me feel loved too, by God and by God's people.

The sacrament gave me a moment of peace in what has been a very anxious week. I have irrational fears of needles (I get dizzy before a flu shot), knives, germs (I am afraid of contracting an incurable flesh-eating bacterium in the hospital), drugs (a big reason IVF was never a temptation for me), and pain. I know that most of these fears are irrational, but they are very, very real to me. In addition, I am swamped with work that needs to be done before I go, work that I cannot finish efficiently because I am so distracted by my anxiety.

I ask you, my dear readers, however many or few of you there are to pray for me, as I go into the week of my surgery. Pray that I may have courage. Pray for Dr. S my surgeon. Pray for my DH and my parents as they watch over me.

Infertility is NOT God's will

Several months ago, another infertility blogger was lamenting the loss of the children she will not be able to bear. A commenter rushed to assure her that infertility is a part of God's plan for her. (I'm heavily paraphrasing here.) I've heard this kind of explanation for infertility, and although it is always well-intentioned, I find it to be unsatisfying and problematic.

In the Catholic tradition that has shaped me, the purpose of the reproductive organs is to procreate (and of course, to enable sexual pleasure). My uterus and ovaries do not function the way they are supposed to because of illnesses--adenomyosis and diminished ovarian reserve. Disease, cancer, pain--these things are not caused by God. In the Catholic tradition, they are called natural evils. Evil, by definition, cannot be the will of a good God.

Sure, sometimes these things prompt cultivation of virtues of patience and trust. But just as often, such trials turn us into bitter and jealous people. I do not think I am a better person for being infertile. The burdens on me this past year have been in many ways more than I can bear. (I don't talk about my job here, but it has been its own cross.) I have thought about leaving DH; I've had fleeting thoughts of suicide. I've spent days wrapped in resentment of my seemingly-happier sister who's just starting a life with her new fiancé. I've fantasized about being fired from my job. I know that I have a choice about what kind of person I am, but I promise you, it wouldn't even have been possible for me to sin in these particular ways without the unrelenting stress of infertility, my job, and DH's unemployment.

Of course, this raises the classic question of theodicy: If God is good and all-powerful, then why does he permit natural evil at all? Why Hurricane Katrina? Why were the Haitian people who've already suffered so much struck by such a devastating earthquake? Why did my cousin die of breast cancer, two months after her 30th birthday?

Rabbi Kushner argues that God has set up the best of possible worlds, even though it doesn't look that way to us. Augustine says that the fault is not with the world or with illness, but our tendency to rebel against God's will. Though each of these answers is better than "God is trying to teach me something" or, even worse, "God is punishing me for something," I find each of them unsatisfying.

I don't have a satisfying answer to this question. I have come to believe that there is no satisfying answer to this question. Instead, I believe in God's power to draw good out of evil and to make grace possible even in the midst of evil. And I believe in my responsibility to make something good out of my infertility, whether that be making room in my heart and in our home for a child who needs parents, or devoting my child-free time and energy into leaving the world a better place than I found it.

It might be unsatisfying, but it's the best answer I'll ever get.

Dark Night of the Soul

The day the nurse called to tell me that my FSH was high was among the darkest days of my life. I cried for weeks. But through that time, I had the most remarkable feeling of being loved through my grief. I felt the love of God, and the love of my dear husband, who unequivocally stated over and over again that even if we could never have biological children, he wouldn't want to be married to any other woman. I remember sitting in my favorite place at work, grading papers on a Saturday afternoon and just feeling flooded with love.

Masters of spirituality such as John of the Cross and Theresa of Avila call that experience of God's closeness and love consolation. The feeling of God's absence or silence is called desolation, or the dark night of the soul. Consolation and desolation happen independently of your emotional state, or of what is happening in your life. My period of consolation coincided with one of the saddest periods of my life. 

At the moment, I am in a period of desolation. Unfortunately, this desolation is coinciding with DH losing his job, my waning faith that I will ever get pregnant and, at the moment, horrible PMS and the knowledge that I am not pregnant.

I am finally ready to try Natural Cycle IVF but we do not have the money. We are not paying down debts; we are not saving money for adoption. DH has been looking for jobs, but every lead has come up empty. 

In truth, he lost his job months ago, but I was sick of thinking and writing about infertility. I just couldn't write about having to come up with a new plan all over again. And every plan requires thousands of dollars that we don't have. 

Above all, I am tired. I am tired of being positive, of swimming against the temptation to despair and depression. I am tired of the never-ending roller coaster of hope and disappointment. 

Every month, I think, "Perhaps things will change this month. Maybe we'll finally conceive. Maybe DH will get a job this month." And each month, nothing changes. We do not conceive. DH does not find a job. 

Nothing ever changes.

Infertility before infertility

"How long did it take you to conceive N?" Asking my dad about my little sister's conception was pretty awkward. But I had a reason for asking.  Diminished ovarian reserve tends to run in families.  I was always sure that my ovaries were fine; I was conceived five months into my parents' marriage, when my mother was 36. She had my one and only younger sister when she was 41. I thought this boded well for me, until I thought about the four years between me and my sister.  What 38 year old postpones a second child?

Awkward pause. "You and your sister are four years apart," answered my dad.

"I know, but did you try for all that time or...." Did I really want to pursue this line of questioning?

"You and your sister are four years apart," my dad repeated.

"So, um, you tried that whole time?"

Yes, they did. They tried for two years before they were successful. "Your mother went to the Marian shrine in [country of origin] and prayed for a baby. And then she got pregnant again shortly after that."

When my parents were struggling with infertility, or as my dad would say, taking a long time to have a baby, there were no FSH tests and ultrasounds. Because they knew they had been pregnant before, they just kept trying until they were successful, when my mom was 40.

"So sometimes, it just takes a long time," my dad continued. "Remember Auntie R and Uncle N? They took five years to have a baby. They spent thousands of dollars traveling to Marian shrines all over the world. They even went to Lourdes. And after five years, it worked!"

There you go. In the age before IUIs and IVFs, the only thing to do about infertility was to pray. Rather than spending thousands of dollars on medical interventions, you could spend thousands of dollars on a pilgrimage.

Sometimes, I think about the couples who spend their savings on a chance at having child, only to walk away with their arms empty. I think about the couples who have had multiple rounds of IVF, all failures, only to conceive naturally months or years after they've given up. Sometimes I wonder if after all this medical intervention we are any better at controlling the vagaries of conception than we were when the only treatment for infertility was prayer.

Alternative Therapies: Centering Prayer

My name is Sarah, and I am anxious. I've been anxious as long as I can remember. I get anxious before I teach, every single day. I get anxious before I write. I get anxious in social situations. I get anxious before choir practice. I remember telling a couple of friends that I was getting dizzy at work meetings. "Um, Sarah?" they said.  "Those are panic attacks."

I can't take drugs for it, because all SSRIs make me sleep twelve hours a day, or more.

Every alternative-type infertility book I have read waxes expansive about the dreadful effects of stress on the reproductive system. This makes me feel terrible. I can't seem to control my anxiety, and the thought that anxiety is preventing pregnancy makes me even more anxious.

By the time Lent rolled around this year, my anxiety was out of control. TTC + bad test results will do that to you.

I decided I didn't really have any food stuffs to give up for Lent.  As soon as I got my test results I kicked alcohol, sugar, caffeine and most dairy. And I have to eat meat for my kidney yang. I decided instead to recommit to the Centering Prayer. The Centering Prayer is a kind of Christian meditation. Most of the time, when I pray, I talk to God. I talk and talk and talk. The Centering Prayer is a way of praying by intentionally listening to God's voice, rather than talking. I choose a sacred word (mine is Yahweh--and I apologize to Jews who may be reading this, but that's what it is), I invite God to speak to me ("Speak, Lord, your servant is listening). I relax and let my thoughts go. When an interesting thought comes along that commands my attention, I gently repeat my sacred word and let the thought go.

"What if I never get pregnant?" I let it go.
"What if adoption doesn't work out for us?" I let it go.
"What if I ovulate early/late/not at all this month?" I let it go.

God doesn't talk to me in English. In fact, God's voice doesn't usually sound like a voice at all. Sometimes I feel loved and at peace.  Sometimes, I battle my thoughts for my entire prayer time and I don't feel a thing, except a sense of disappointment for failing to meditate properly. I let it go.

I know God is speaking to me because my life becomes easier. I become easier to live with, more patient, less likely to pick fights with DH, more forgiving, less judgmental. I become less anxious (though I suspect that I will have a lifelong battle with anxiety).

Halfway through Lent, my DH said to me, "You haven't told me what you're doing for Lent, but I know that you're working on something, because I've noticed the difference in you and I want to thank you."

It's amazing how twenty minutes a day can change your life.

But I did everything right!

In When Bad Things Happen to Good People (a book you'll be hearing about a lot on this blog), Rabbi Harold Kushner tells the story of a couple who lost a child in a tragic accident.  When he goes to visit them, the couple looks at him and says, "Rabbi, we didn't fast on Yom Kippur this year." It takes Kushner a second to realize what they are saying: they think that God took their child as a punishment for not fasting on the day of atonement.

The idea that God punishes wrongdoing by killing children, giving people cancer, and causing various fatal accidents is called the theory of just retribution. With the exception of a few fundamentalist Christians (Michele Bachman, I'm looking at you), most people reject this idea.  We know that God didn't give our aunt breast cancer as punishment for her sins. We know that the tornado that struck the high school prom wasn't punishment for the kids sleeping together on prom night.

I reject the just retribution explanation for my fertility struggles. It's not because I slept with my husband before we were married.  Or because I used contraception. If you think it is, look at all those teenagers who get knocked-up without any problem at all!

But despite the fact I reject the theory of just retribution, I do have my own version of it.  It goes like this:  But I've lived a very healthy life!  I don't drink or eat to excess.  I barely eat sugar.  I have never smoked. I don't eat processed food. I eat ridiculous amounts of vegetables. I exercise regularly, but moderately. I don't even drink coffee, for God's sake!

I did everything right.  This shouldn't be happening to me.

The theory of just retribution is so hard-wired into all of us that we can't quite reject it.  Instead, we have merely substituted health for morality. Healthy food (whether it's vegan or Paleo or gluten-free) is the new kosher. Unhealthy people are punished with infertility.

This attitude is common among the fertile as well.  In this egregious example, a blogger thinks that she got pregnant so quickly because she worked so hard, "reading books, changing eating habits, exercising, not smoking, not drinking, doing tests, taking care of health problems, doing dental work, taking prenatals etc," in short, "doing more" than other people who are trying to conceive.

Um, no. She got pregnant quickly because she was lucky. Some people are just more fertile than others. While some things do adversely impact fertility (smoking, sugar, caffeine, alcohol, etc.) many people who live healthy lives are infertile, while many sugar-gobbling, coffee-guzzling lushes get pregnant with no trouble at all.

Why do we hang on to the theory of just retribution, despite all the evidence that this is not how the world works?

My theory is that it's comforting to this that if we work hard and do everything right, we will be protected from infertility. Conversely, it's frightening to think that infertility (or for that matter cancer)  could strike any of us, for no reason, despite all our efforts and healthy habits.

I've been on enough fertility forums to know that some people get pregnant after making a bunch of lifestyle modifications: diet, exercise, Chinese medicine, herbs, vitamins and supplements. Still others go the Western medicine route to get pregnant. But some people, despite all of their efforts, despite tens of thousands of dollars in fertility treatments, never do get pregnant.

The frightening truth is that we have limited control on whether we ever get pregnant.

The frightening truth is that a lot of really big things in our lives are ultimately beyond our control.

The frightening truth is that this is the human condition.