Oct 28, 2020
I have wanted to write this post for while. But now that I’m sitting down to do it, I’m not sure where to start.
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After long deliberation, I have decided to start at the beginning, so you understand the full story—why speaking out about infertility is important to me and why I’m okay, hopeful, and looking forward to the future.
Warning: this is a long post.
I have been married for over six and a half years. For five and a half of those years, I have wanted so much to have a baby.
I got married a little later than most members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints living in Utah—age 28. I know. That’s not a big deal for most of the world. But for those outside Utah or who are unfamiliar with the culture of the church, 28 is a little older than many, not all, but many. As members of the church, we are encouraged to get married and start families because we believe families are a part of God’s plan for His children. I happened to find my amazing companion and best friend in my later 20s.
And that was okay with me. Well, I struggled with it. I was upset sometimes I was not getting married or dating as much as I would have liked at the time. But I was so happy when I found the one I wanted to be with for the rest of eternity. And I couldn’t wait to have kids with him—kids who would look like him and talk like him, kids who would have his sense of humor, kids who would be as crazy and wild as that kid I taught on my mission (he knows who he is, but I doubt he’s reading this). 🙂
We started trying a year after we got married.
But kids never came.
We tried for a year and nothing happened.
I took my basal body temperature and used tests.
That didn’t work.
So, I went to a OBG-YN who specialized in infertility. He took blood work and did some tests. Everything came back fine.
Scott was also tested, and he is totally great! 😉
I went in for a laparoscopy to make sure my tubes were not clogged and to check for endometriosis.
My tubes were fine.
But the doctor found endometriosis.
When I went back in to see the doctor after my surgery, he told me that because of my age—I was 30 at the time—I should try to get pregnant right away, now that the endometriosis is gone, at least the stuff that was big enough for him to see. (If I were younger, he would have treated me for a year and then had us start trying again.)
The doctor suggested we do artificial insemination, IUI.
So we did.
We tried three times.
Nothing.
The next option the doctor gave us was in-vitro. For those who don’t know, in-vitro can be expensive. We wanted to have a baby so much, so we looked into it. And I would have been ready to jump in, except we were about to go through a big life change.
When Chef Comte and I got married, he was in the Air Force Reserve, stationed in Washington state. When we decided to move back to Utah, Chef Comte switched from the reserve in Washington to the National Guard in Utah. He also switched his career in the military, so he had to go back to tech school. Tech school was six months in Mississippi. I had a job I felt I shouldn’t leave. And we had bought a house. So I stayed in Utah, and Chef Comte went off to Mississippi.
We didn’t feel it was a good choice at the moment to start the in-vitro process, not yet.
When Chef Comte came back from tech school, we weren’t quite ready to start the in-vitro process—we needed money—and I wasn’t quite sure that was the way I wanted to go. I kept thinking about options. Should we try in-vitro? Should we go with adoption?
We put everything on hold for a while with the excuse that we didn’t have enough money yet. (Though, that’s a pretty good excuse.)
Fast forward to three years later, after Chef Comte went through a few jobs, we got a cute little puppy, we sold our house, we bought a house…. 2017. All this time, I hoped that maybe it would happen naturally after all.
No, it did not.
Chef Comte had a great job that provided superb benefits, including helping with in-vitro—not all, but more than I would have expected from a company. So we started seriously contemplating it again.
But I still felt uneasy. Adoption was still tingling at the back of my head.
So, I prayed and prayed and prayed. Should we do adoption or in-vitro? What is the best route for us to grow our family? What would God have us do?
That year, I was camp director—my calling, my job at church in which I oversaw the camp needs for the young women (teen girls) in my church area. The theme for camp was Ask in Faith. The leaders over the entire camp encouraged everyone—girls and leaders—to think of a question and do work—read scriptures, pray, etc.—to receive an answer from God. I chose the above bolded question as my question.
And guess what?
I received an answer.
I can’t tell you how amazingly spiritual it was. I received the answer in the middle of a beautiful presentation at camp. It was overcoming and powerful. The point is, I knew. I know.
After talking with Chef Comte to make sure we were on the same page, we started working toward adoption.
It was a long, crazy process leading up to just working with the agency we had chosen. We didn’t want to start the process until we had put a few things in order in our home. One thing was the lack of shelving in our laundry room. With no shelving, all our cleaning supplies made a home on the floor in a corner. Of course, this is a no no for kids in the house and we knew it would not pass with a home study agent.
We finally started the paperwork in January 2018. It felt good and exciting! We were on our way to having kids!
We did the background checks, the questionnaires, the trainings, part of the home study. But there was one document I could never finalize: the financial statement.
We wanted so badly for me to be a stay-at-home mom, but with our current work situation I wasn’t sure how that would work. Chef Comte decided to start a company to make some more money that we both hoped would lead to me being able to stay home with our newly adopted child(ren).
Things didn’t work out as we had hoped. (More on the business in future post.)
Backtrack a bit to October 2017 and January 2018, when my anxiety started to became too overwhelming.
I’m not going to get into it too much here. It’s an interesting, crazy story that I’ll save for a different post. But because of my increasing anxiety, Chef Comte and I decided to re-evaluate our lives. Everything. The business. Our house. Upcoming events that would affect our lives. My job.
We sold our house. We are working to sell our business. I quit my job. We moved out of Utah.
We put adoption on hold.
And that is where we are now.
Why am I sharing all this with you—someone I may or may not know? Why am I blogging for anyone to see?
I think it is important to speak out about infertility and disappointments that come with trying to grow a family. The more I have spoken about it, the more I have found others who have been through or are going through a similar experience. We are not alone. And sometimes the road is a bit longer for some than others. I have been waiting for close to six years and the wait continues. Some wait 10 years or more before they grow their families. But, again, we are not alone.
The other reason I am writing this is because, even though I have felt disappointment after disappointment, even though I’m putting things on hold, again, I have hope. The changes that Chef Comte and I have recently made in our lives are exactly what we and our future family need. We are working toward a better future that will allow us to achieve our family goals.
Through my wait, I will not stop aching for children and babies. I will continue to look at families with a tinge of jealousy. But I will have hope and happiness for what is to come. I will have faith in the path Chef Comte and I are on. I will have faith that God hears and answers prayers, and He will answer my prayer for children.
I have hope. I have faith. I am excited for the future.