About me, the quintessential infertile turtle

First let me tell you about me. My name is Renee, and I am a 29 year old teacher (out of work currently), who is infertile. Infertile like, my husband and I have been trying for 4 years and not one child yet. We have been to several doctors and have had several tests run. I have been through surgery, charting, so many blood draws that I look like a heroin addict, IUI, shots, HSG (twice), and heartache of course. The diagnosis: unexplained infertility. How frustrating! Because getting pregnant naturally is not likely to ever happen, my husband and I have decided to save up for IVF. The tentative date for this IVF is January 2012.


So why am I writing a blog about it you might ask? I decided in the meantime, I could be more positive. Infertility literally takes a woman to her lowest point. It will test your faith, beliefs, and womanhood. I have prayed for one thing for four years! Anyways, my sulking, crying and why me attitude hasn't gotten me anywhere, so I decided to do something that could make me happy until the day we can actually afford IVF. This blog serves to distract me and purge me of all the negative thoughts I've been feeling for four years.


These past four years have been an emotional roller coaster. Each month for an infertile woman consists of two weeks of hope, a week of anticipation and a week of complete and utter despair. So to lift my spirits until that glorious day when a doctor can insert a couple of embryos into my uterus, I am going to be thankful. That's right, you heard me. I am not going to focus on my infertility. Instead I am going to focus on the things I have to be thankful for. Each day I will pick another thing that I am thankful for and relate it to my journey of infertility in a positive light. It can be anything: a person, place, feeling, belief or an actual object that I love. I truly believe in the power of perspective, acceptance and attitude.


"When life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show life that you have a thousand reasons to smile." ~Author Unknown

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

#8 My Faith

Today is a little bit of a bummer.  I started AF and for an infertile woman, it feels like your heart is literally breaking.  I get this really sick feeling in my stomach that doesn't leave me for at least three days.  Since starting this blog however, I have vowed to cast off those negative feelings and replace them with positive thoughts and an optimistic attitude.  So to really stick it to infertility, I am dedicating my thanks today to my faith.

I am not going to lie and say that my faith has not been shaken in this journey.  I am a Christian, so when I first had the feeling that something wasn't quite right because we weren't conceiving, I started praying to God.  I prayed all day and attended mass every Sunday and prayed for the same thing over and over.  My husband and I would pray together before dinner every night and after we blessed our food, we begged God for a baby.  One time, as weird and maybe creepy as this sounds, we prayed after sex.  We were willing to do ANYTHING.

After two years of praying, we found that our prayers were not being answered.  I started to grow angry with God and questioned everything wrong in the world.  If God loved all his children so much, why are there such horrible and atrocious acts in this world?  Where is the justice?  Why can every crackhead in the United States have a baby and not take of care of it, but my husband and I, who I know will be amazing parents, can't even have one baby?  It got even worse.  I would get angry when I watched a reality TV show about teens getting pregnant and not taking care of their children.  Then I started to see my own students have children before me!  Some of them I know were not ready.  People who would get married two years after us were working on baby #2.  I felt crushed, alone, neglected, and just pissed off.  I stopped going to church and rarely prayed.  I started to believe that nothing in this world was the deliberate act of God.  It merely was science taking its course.  My relationship with God was no longer a close one and I didn't care.

Then recently I had a serious epiphany:  I was relying on hope, not faith-BIG difference.  Hope was destroying me every month.  To me hope is desperation.  It is filled with doubt.  Example: "I really hope I get pregnant this month."  This statement is filled with anticipation and fear.  In hope, there is no definite result.  However, if you have faith, you believe it will happen, even if it takes a while.  It's taken me about four years to know the difference between the two.  I've come to realize that miracles happen all the time.  In my most recent blog, I wrote about one of my heroes, Louis Zamperini and his experiences during World War II.  How did he survive what he went through?  A lot of men didn't.  Clearly, the only answer was that he believed he could survive and that eventually his suffering would end.  He is a living miracle.

I now believe this for myself.  I have suffered, but the end of it is coming, I know it.  I have faith that a miracle can happen for me too.  Regardless if you aren't a Christian, everyone can have faith.  Whether it be in a God, love, people or an energy that powers us all, everyone should have faith that miracles are real and can happen to anyone, even you.

Infertility is no longer going to weaken me.  My will is strong.  I will not further allow it to shake my faith.

"Impossible situations can become possible miracles." ~Robert H. Shuller

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2 comments:

  1. ElizabethSeptember 14, 2011 at 7:38 PM

    Thanks for sharing. I too am learning that there is a big difference between hope and faith. I recently saw a quote that said, "Faith is believing what you can't see, but is still true." What encouragement for us infertiles!

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  2. ReneeSeptember 14, 2011 at 8:41 PM

    Great quote! Realizing the difference had changed my entire perspective on infertility. It's the difference between questioning and believing. Thanks for your post.

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