Faith for Fertility – Part 1

A little over a year ago, I shared with you my testimony about how God gave me victory over infertility. At the time, I was not pregnant nor did I have the slightest clue that a year later I would be blessed with twin!

God is indeed a Good Good Father.

I have decided to just continue the testimony from were I stopped in the last post (if you have not read the last post, please read it before you continue reading. It can be found here.) The testimony is quite long so it has been divided into a few posts. If you have any questions you would like answered about anything you read or just question about IVF or dealing with infertility, please send an email to foodie@mogeeathome.com. Once the testimony posts have been completed, I would have a separate post were I answer all questions received.

I pray you receive revelation and that the Holy Spirit himself would teach you and show you how to deal with whatever situation you may be going through currently.

The story continues……

After a year of actively trying to conceive, we decided to see a doctor.  Various tests and blood draws later, the doctor advised us to do IVF. He explained that we were young and our chance of success was very high. I decided to do some reading and found that most people under the age of 35 who were first time IVFers were usually successful so I didn’t really think much of it.

Yes, I prayed about it, but to be honest, my prayer was very casual.  Based on what I had read, it was already a done deal…take some injections, extract eggs, inject with sperm, place back in the body and BAM, you are pregnant!

The injections were tough… even for someone like me who actually enjoyed taking injections as a kid. Yes, yes, when I was much younger, I preferred taking injections to taking drugs. This was not by choice though…oh no!, it was more by force. Why? Because for the life of me, I just could not swallow tablets. I don’t know why but the tablets just would not go down my throat. My mum would make eba or amala (if you have never heard of these, think thick mashed potatoes) and hide the tablet in it for me to swallow. The food would slip right through but the tablet would remain in my mouth (I have always loved food). I just could not understand why, but I think it baffled everyone else in my house even more. I can definitely swallow now but I still don’t mind injections so I thought the injection taking would be a walk in the park. It was 30 days of taking injections on my thigh…..it was painful, very painful but I was focused on the end result.

I remember one day when I went for my injection, the nurse prayed for me and said by God’s Grace this would not be in vain, it would all work out. And I sat there thinking, “how would it not work…this is 1 + 1 = 2. I just smiled and said “Amen” in a very nonchalant way. Oh, how I thank God for the lessons I have learnt since then.

I suppose I don’t need to tell you that the IVF did not work and I was broken. Why didn’t it work? Was it something I did? Could I have done anything to improve the outcome? I cried to God but even at that point, my mind wasn’t fully focused on Him so even if He was trying to teach me something or help me out, I sure wasn’t listening.

The doctor was optimistic about us having another round and even though I was broken, I was ready because I believed this was the only way we could conceive. I just wanted to get it over and done with. We decided to take a 3 month break before starting the injections again.

During this break, I decided to start praying more. Notice that I said praying not building a relationship with God. There is a big difference. I would talk to God and tell Him my problems and how He was the only one that could solve them and how I needed Him. Never asking what He wanted me to do, not trying to listen to what He had to say. I always did all the talking.

Sometime during this break, my sister gave me a book by Mrs. Yewande Zaccheus titled God’s Waiting Room. I read this book in a day and after reading it, I cried my eyes out. It was more discouraging than encouraging for me. Why? I missed the point of the testimonies. All I took from the book was that the shortest testimony in the book took about 8 or 12 years (I can’t remember the exact number of years and I don’t have a copy with me to check) to come into fruition. At this point, we had been waiting just 2 years and I was like, err, so do I have another 6 to 8 years before my testimony would come? I just couldn’t understand why there was no testimony in the book in which the couple had waited only a year or two.

I have no doubt there are many testimonies like that. It just depends on what God decides is best for you and/or how closely you are walking with Him or listening to Him. A good example is the story of John the Baptist whose parents experienced a delay in conception. I asked God how come even though his parents were righteous, they still had to go throw the pain of a delay. Surely they could have had a child before John came, even though he was the one supposed to introduce Christ. And God said, if John had a senior brother or sister, it may have been a distraction to his ministry. He came at the right and appointed time.

This isn’t always the case though. I have come to learn that we can actually delay our own blessings too. It isn’t always God causing the delay. Sometimes, God has things to teach us and because He loves us so much, He would wait till we are ready. He wants us to have fully grasped some lessons that He knows would help us better appreciate and handle the blessings ahead.

Let me give you a practical example:

There is a father who owns a successful company.  His son has always known that when he turns 21, he would take over his father’s company. Well at 21, the father notices that the son was not quite mature to take over the business. It could be that he needed some more managerial training or just needed more time working directly with his father and being mentored by his father. The son refuses and believes it is his right to take over the business because he has acquired a master’s degree from an Ivy League school. The father’s love is so strong that he decides that as much as it hurts him not to give the son the business, he would rather withhold it so that the son is better for it in the future. The son finally comes to his senses, knowing the business is already his. He listens to his father and starts taking the actions his father recommended. They start working closely together and in no time, the son owns the business, is doing exceptionally well and his father is proud of him. Someday, that son would be able to share his own story and experience with others as well.

This is my story. God wanted to teach me but I was resisting. I just kept reminding Him of all the promises in His Word. However, because He loves me so much, He needed me to learn from Him things I could only learn if I was walking closely with Him. I had to start paying attention and listening to what He had to say. What His plans were for me.

Well we did the second IVF and this time, the outcome was even worse than the first time. We did not have any embryos to transfer. What were we doing wrong? In situations like this, we always try to find someone to blame and naturally, I put the blame on the hospital. There was probably something they were not doing right. After all, they were the ones that said we had a very high chance of success and now they have no explanation for why the IVF wasn’t working.

We took a break from all the medication and just ‘enjoyed’ our time together. Unfortunately, the reality is unless you have the peace that only God can give, you won’t really be able to let go or ‘enjoy’ anything. And I couldn’t let go. My husband was never really worried (most men aren’t) but then again, they don’t experience pressure like women do. After about 9 months of ‘not actively trying’, we decided to see another IVF specialist. The new doctor was again very confident that our case was a very simple one. He couldn’t understand why we hadn’t been pregnant with the first 2 IVFs. . Ahhh, my confidence was restored. The doctor had mentioned that the injections would be taken for a maximum of 2 weeks. I was even more excited, the last two IVFs, for each cycle, I had been on injections for a whole month. One thing I hadn’t considered through these cycles was the God factor.

The long and short of the story is that we went through 2 full IVF cycles with the new doctor, had perfect eggs and sperm, had perfect grade embryos, had perfect transfers and still no pregnancy. The doctors didn’t understand what was happening. Shattered, is an understatement for what I felt after each of the cycles. At this point I just felt like I had no hope. If the best doctors had tried their best and we still weren’t pregnant but worse off! There was no clear diagnosis, ‘why’?, what was the point? It was probably never going to happen!

Don’t get me wrong, I was praying all through these cycles. And I believed for a miracle, at least I thought I believed. I would quote the regular scriptures for those believing for the gift of children but looking back, I question whether I really believed all the things I was praying or whether I was just going through the motions for what I wanted. I honestly don’t know the true answer.

Someone had mentioned another hospital in Maryland, Ikeja for us to try but at this point, I was tired. Tired of the injections, tired of the emotional trauma and definitely tired of all the negative pregnancy results! I just wasn’t in the frame of mind for any treatment. I just wanted to BE! I wanted to stay in bed all day and ask Jesus ’why’?  During one of my ‘grieving days’, I remember going to church and I was having a conversation with someone and the person said ‘Thank God you don’t have children’. Hmmm, that statement pierced through my heart in a way only my husband could understand. He quickly ended the conversation and took me home. He kept apologizing while we were in the car, that the lady didn’t understand what we were going through and that the statement was very innocent. I knew this, but me being me, and obviously not being in the right frame of mind, I built that statement into a mansion. I made it BIG. How could she be so insensitive? We had been married 4 yrs and she was aware of this. If she was saying it to a newly married couple, it would have been different. I magnified that statement and do you know what happened? Bitterness began to grow in me. And it started to bear fruit in other areas of my life too. I stopped attending baby showers because ‘it was too painful’. That wasn’t the honest reason, the bitterness had begun to breed envy and jealousy and I didn’t even know it. The bible says we should rejoice with those that are rejoicing but I wanted no part of it. How then did I expect my own miracle to come? Unfortunately, I was blinded, and I didn’t even know it. This went on for over a year till God delivered me – I will tell you how later.

Watch out for the next part on Friday.

Faith for Fertility – Part 2

Faith for Fertility – Part 3

Faith for Fertility – Part 4