Infertile No More

If any one moment will be forever etched into my brain, it will be the moment I found out I was pregnant with Magoo.

All day long I had thought I should test because I had been tracking my temperatures, and things were definitely… off.  TJ tried to convince me not to.  After all, we had already spent a not so small fortune on pregnancy tests.  But still, I felt that I should test.

We drove out to the college I used to work at to pick up my belongings because I had recently quit, and we stopped at Walgreens on the way home to pick up some tests.  I knew I was being silly.  I had spent four years taking tests and the answer was always the same.  Why would this one be any different?  Wasn’t I setting myself up for yet another night of disappointment?

We got home, and I tried the test but got an error message, so we went to church and grabbed dinner to go.  We were sitting in the living room watching the Cubs lose their final play off game when I remembered the test.  Oh well, I figured, I might as well test now.

I went upstairs and three minutes later, I looked down at the test.  “Pregnant,” it said.  I didn’t even have to try to figure out if it was a plus or a minus, the digital test had done it all for me.

For years in my mind, I would dream up creative and clever ways to tell TJ.  But when it really happened, I couldn’t even speak.  I grabbed the test and ran to the stairs.  In my excitement, I tripped over my feet on the way down, and almost tumbled to the ground.

I finally got to the landing and he saw me.  I just waived the test at him, not able to say actual words.  My hands were shaking so much he couldn’t even see the words on the test.

Finally, he saw the words “pregnant,” and I saw the tears in his eyes.

I kept telling him there must be some mistake.  As crazy as it sounds now, I was certain the test was in Spanish and that in Spanish “pregnant” really meant “not pregnant.”  I kept telling him that over and over, and he just kept laughing with the tears filling up his eyes ever more deeply.

I’m not exactly sure when I stopped shaking.  Finally, I got in the shower.  Because what else do you do during a time like that?  No, it makes no sense looking back on it, but at the time, it was all that made sense.  This was a new day.  A new world, and I needed to cleanse the old off of me.

Shortly after, we got in the car and headed out to my parents’ house to tell them the good news.  As we got in the car, the radio came on, and the first words to come out of the speakers were “Dreams come true… Love your baby girl.”

I couldn’t believe it had happened to me.  I knew that this early on anything could happen, but at that moment, it didn’t matter.  I was pregnant.  I knew what it was like to carry a baby inside of me.

Looking back, I still don’t believe it.  I guess I still feel like that scared girl waiting month after month for the test to finally say positive.  It has.  Three times.  And yet, it’s still almost impossible to believe.

I guess some blessings are just so great that we can never fully wrap our head around them.

I look back on those four long years now, and it’s still hard for me to make sense of them.  On the one hand, I now know that God’s timing was better than ours.  I wasn’t ready to have a baby even though I desperately wanted one.  And how can I lament any time period that ended with me having my girls?

But going through something like that changes a person.  When we come that close to having our dreams unfulfilled, we realize how tentative and yet precious they are.  It teaches us to cling to what we have and appreciate it.  And it also teaches us greater empathy for those who are struggling with their own dreams whatever they may be.

In the end, the four years of waiting made me more prepared for what it was that I was waiting for.

I’m glad those years are behind me.  The thought of living with that emptiness again is almost unbearable.  But there are many still out there waiting for their own dreams to come true.  And because of them, it’s important for those of us who have gone through and come out the other side share their story.

Yesterday ended National Infertility Awareness Week.  And telling my story was my very small way of breaking the silence.

(And you might have noticed all the dates on the pictures say 2002.  My camera liked playing tricks on me.  Magoo is definitely not eleven years old!)