I haven’t written on here in over a year. On one hand I’m glad. It has been a very dark season of our life that has ended, if just for that year. Joy has come back to our life. I thought this week being Infertility Awareness Week, would be a good time to share with people how we went from having a 1% chance of getting pregnant to having a 100% miracle baby!
To begin where we left off. We had gone through a second round of IVF in the Fall of 2015. When that failed I couldn’t emotionally think about possible doing another. When I left the Doctor’s office at or 2 week follow up he looked at me and my mom and said there is nothing to be done. Nothing would make the quality of my eggs any better and nothing would raise Cory’s numbers. We were truly left with no hope of having kids of our own. After being, physically, mentally, and emotionally worn down, I was ready to just take a break. My mom was stopping at nothing less than finding a way for us to get what our hearts so desired. Isn’t that what mom’s do? They would go to the greatest of lengths to make sure their kids don’t suffer or hurt. So after several natural remedies of our own, she got referred by my aunt and cousin to a naturopath. They focus on how to get the body to work and stable itself and allow it to do what it is supposed to do. We both started seeing him around the beginning of December.
I left in January and traveled for pretty much a month straight. When I came back, I was just fed up with Dr. appts. I was struggling big time and a lot of it was doubt. There was no way this guy was going to fix, what the doctors told us was impossible. Cory encouraged me to stick with it for at least a couple more months. At this point I’m taking my temperature every morning. We were both on dozens of supplements taking anywhere from 20-25 pills a day! If I never swallow another pill in my life, I’ll be the happiest person alive. So February and most of March went by. I mourned the day that signified the day we found out our first IVF failed.
At the end of March I left again on another trip. My first flight I was flying CLE to JFK. Cory was supposed to be having an appt to have his levels checked again, to see if the supplements were doing what they were supposed to be doing. While on my flight to JFK I wrote a note on my phone that I still have saved. It says “Cory’s test are today, I have an overwhelming amount of peace that his counts have improved. I feel God’s hand in mine saying it won’t be much longer.” That was on March 28th 2016. When I landed in JFK my heart raced as I called him to find out what the doctor had said. His counts came back, they not only improved, they improved exponentially! He went from less than a million to over 9 million in 3 months! How’s that for not being able to increase numbers! I got on my flight and could not contain my excitement!
The doctor put Cory on another supplement that was really supposed to boost Testosterone. (These are all natural, whole food supplements by the way. No steroids). I returned home and little did we know it we were pregnant about 2 weeks later! April went by and I was seriously considering adoption. Even though his numbers were up, I still had my doubts that this was all going to actually work. For one thing my eggs were supposed to be too old, so there’s that factor that I didn’t know if it had improved or not. At the beginning of May, my dad and I had traveled to Amsterdam. We were running through the Detroit airport and I remember not being able to keep up with him, and I thought to myself, “Am I pregnant?” After that I didn’t think anything of it.
Then came May 4th. The darkest day I think it has ever gotten over the past 3 years. We got a call that Cory’s brother in sister in law had gotten the call that another baby needed a home. This would be their fourth and the brother to two they already had. While I wanted to be excited for them I absolutely fell apart. It was the lowest of the low. I had some very very dark thoughts and I honestly wanted life to be over. I remember telling Cory through sobs that I just wanted to die. It was the only way I saw this pain going away. I couldn’t go on another day yearning for a child. Guess what? God knew. I fought to the absolute last day I could handle the storm He had taken us through and He knew I couldn’t keep going.
May 5th. My awesome husband stops in to check in on me to see how I’m doing. I was doing everything to keep busy. I knew I couldn’t be home alone in my grief. One of the “treatments” with our new doctor was for me to take my temperature every morning to track my cycle and hormones. It’s crazy that you can see if your hormones are where they are supposed to be, just by where your temperature is at on a chart through your cycle. So at the end of your cycle if you temperature goes down, you are going to start again. If your temperature goes up, you are pregnant! Crazy right? The science behind the human body is fascinating. So when I took my temperature that morning it had gone up. I knew I was supposed to be starting soon based on the chart and it was mother’s day weekend. I had already prepped my husband that I was hiding from the world the whole weekend. I thought nothing of my temperature rising, I once again doubted that this would ever work. I was afraid of getting my hopes up once again. For some reason I felt I needed to just check. I stopped, got a pregnancy test and took it. I was actually on the phone with my sister in law as I waited for the results because I was positive that it would read negative just like all the ones before it had.
Slowly but surely those two pink lines showed up and my heart about fell out of my chest. I blurted out to my sister in law that I thought I was pregnant, sent her a picture and she confirmed she saw the lines too! I called Cory right away, I couldn’t contain the excitement. He hurried to Target from work so we could get more tests. We had to make sure this was definite. After taking several that showed up positive each time we knew it had to be! But in the joys that infertility brings, we couldn’t let ourselves get excited before it was proven. We went to our Fertility Dr. on Saturday and had the blood work drawn. On Sunday, Mother’s day of all days, they confirmed it with words we will never forget, “You are definitely pregnant.” God knew. He knew this whole time that he would give me the greatest gifts on what had become one of the hardest days. The hardest day, became the most joyful, and we got to share that happiness the rest of the day with all of our family. That is the story of our miracle baby.
We continue to see our naturopath still. I actually attribute how easy my pregnancy was due to the supplements he had me on. I wanted to share for the people who are going through the storm of infertility. It is an unforgiving journey, filled with hurt, loss and the longing desire for a child. Don’t give up hope. Don’t let someone tell you there is no other option just because they have a degree in medicine. I do not say any of this against the medical field or against our fertility doctors. They were amazing and they were sharing with us what they know. However, they study medicine. They do not study health. If your body is not healthy, how do you expect it to function correctly. Instead of treating a symptom, why not find the problem and treat it. There is a whole different approach to fertility treatments and I’d love to sit down and talk with anyone that wants to discover the natural medicine side to conceiving.
We are so grateful for the prayers and support from our family and friends over the past 3 years. We know this journey may not be completely over for us as we continue to build our family, but we know what God is capable of and we don’t lose hope. This is our story of how he turned ashes in to beauty. How he led us through a very painful dark storm and saw us through.
From this storm, came one of the happiest kids I have ever seen. I still tear up just looking at him thinking, “You beat the odds kid, you did it!” 4 months later and we are still meeting people that come up to us and say, “We prayed for you over the last 3 years, and we prayed for this little boy’s life.” His life was covered in prayer before he was even created and you have no idea what that does to a mother’s heart. I’m an emotional mess even thinking about it all. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about our infertility journey or how to get in contact with the naturopathic doctor we saw. He does long distance appts. 😉
Thanks again!
Ender Matthew Miller. His name means Very Rare Gift from God, and it suits him perfectly!
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