Katy Vs. Her Ovaries - "I'm always pregnant!"

The first pregnancy test I ever took was completely unwarranted. I was convinced I was pregnant with Cody's child (conceived through immaculate conception, of course). I stressed myself into my period being late, and then proceeded to advertise my anxiety and irrational fear of pregnancy to all of my closest friends, until one of them bought a pregnancy test to end the madness. I obviously was not pregnant. However, what's most interesting about this story is that I did not worry about being pregnant just that one silly time. This happened to me more than once. I used to take pregnancy tests like candy. I've even dabbled in the world of emergency contraceptives (just once, I swear). I. AM. CRAZY.

Anyway, I had a period for the first time since Lupron last month. I imagined there would be more anticipation of life post-surgery and post-Lupron. Last July when I had the procedure to remove the endometriosis and then started Lupron injections, I told myself that all of that hassle would be worth it. Dr. Bell, as well as the internet (my much more informative second opinion), ensured me that a person's best chances of conception are the months immediately following a laparoscopy and Lupron. Last month was the month. Or as it turns out, it wasn't much of anything. I had two ultrasounds both of which revealed small follicles and no ovulation. The surgery, the Lupron did not combine for a magically fertile month. The ultrasounds entailed the same subdued, ambiguous responses from the lady examining my reproductive organs. Same pathetic looks. Same half-hearted promises about next month. Same sinking feeling. Same sad elevator ride back to the real world where people don't know that your ovaries don't work and your insides aren't like everyone else's. Same experiences I had before Lupron except less traumatic.

I did not once imagine that my fertility issues were solved. I knew that a minimally invasive surgery and hormone therapy was not enough to fix this mess. The internet had given me enough statistics to understand that severe endometriosis is not generally a quick fix. I no longer think I'm pregnant. Ever. Even with all the sex in the world, I still don't think I'm pregnant. I am on the opposite end of the spectrum than the crazy kid bumming pregnancy tests off her friends all those years ago.

Alright, alright...I have a confession. I am not completely cured of my "I'm always pregnant!" attitude. Despite the small follicles and proof of no ovulation, there was an excruciatingly long wait for my next period. I honestly didn't pay much attention until it had been 34 days and still no period. I kept telling myself that I was still messed up from Lupron and the extra long cycle was just a side effect. I knew I wasn't pregnant. I wasn't, right? I managed to hold off until day 36. I knew there was a test leftover from months ago and on a whim I gave in. There was a few seconds in my bathroom alone staring at the faint line forming when I thought that maybe, just maybe the ultrasounds were wrong. Maybe the lady measured wrong. Maybe the follicles were bigger than she thought. Maybe I ovulate on day 25, rather than 14 or 21. Maybe some force stronger than ultrasounds and ovulation had come into play and this was the moment that I would start writing a completely different story about an unlikely pregnancy, despite all of the naysayers.

But it wasn't the moment. There is no different story. The naysayers were simply reality-staters and I am not pregnant. The month that I have been waiting for since July has come and gone and the severity of the situation only continues to grow.

Next month we will try Clomid and a trigger shot. Next month we will continue ultrasounds in dark, sad rooms. Next month we will ride the same elevator and see the same faces. We will sit in the same waiting room and lie on the same table. We will measure follicles and endometrial linings. We will stare at our feet and make our husbands ask all the questions. We will scour the internet to try to guess the next step, to imagine what the next month holds. We will tell ourselves that this wasn't the right month. We will convince ourselves that we don't really want a baby right now anyway. And then in 28 days or 37 days, we will start all over again in hopes that someday there will be two lines on one of those stupid tests.

Katy Vs. Her Ovaries - Babies and God

I used to think that having a baby must be the closest manifestation of God that a human can experience on earth. The idea that I could (theoretically) create a person, carry them in my womb, and then deliver them into this world used to assure me that there was something bigger at work in this universe than I could conceptualize. I used to think having children was a miracle that God controlled. I assume by now you've noted the past tense of the first three sentences. I used to.

My thoughts about God and babies are very different now. The past two years have allowed (forced?) me to view having kids from a much more scientific, much less miraculous filter. It’s not just my struggle to get pregnant that has jaded me. In the midst of not being pregnant month after month after month, I have paid a lot more attention to who is getting pregnant.

Case in point, Michelle Duggar’s reality TV show is currently exploring her attempt to have her twentieth child. I know. I know. The Duggar’s are not the folks to use as evidence against God’s role in pregnancy, but we must all admit that it is pretty looney tunes that she is considering having twenty children all to herself. My next reality TV pregnancy debacle is pretty much every person on MTV’s Teen Mom or 16 and Pregnant. I just recently watched Jenelle Evans abort a child and then get pregnant ON PURPOSE mere months later with a man that she’s been dating for eight weeks. She then proceeded to explain to her first biological child that she is pregnant with his brother or sister (it’s a boy by the way that she named Kaiser, logically) and then leave that first child with her own mother to continue to raise. Mind blowing. Outside of reality TV, I have spent the past two months teaching a girl in my fourth period English class who is with child. She is sixteen and has hot pink hair. She can’t pass freshman English, yet she managed to get pregnant. I don’t have the opportunity to see her on a regular basis anymore because she was recently put in jail for truancy as part of her probation program. She is now sixteen, pregnant, and in jail. I’m twenty-seven, barren, and ridiculously normal. 

It just doesn’t add up. It’s hard for me to understand God’s willy-nilly system for handing out embryos. If pregnancy is a gift from God, if it is divinely inspired, what am I doing wrong that Jenelle is doing right? How is my fourth period English student a better candidate for a baby than I am? I’ll stop there. I know better than to compare myself to Michelle Duggar. She seems like the sweetest lady that ever existed. I don’t mind if she gets the big 2-0 if she’s willing to put up with Jim Bob. A saint I tell ya.

It’s not just reality television and teenage pregnancy that have shifted my ideas about children. When someone starts considering removing eggs from your body and injecting them with your husband’s sperm in some lab somewhere, the glossiness of conception sort of wears off. There’s nothing miraculous about latex gloves and microscopes. There’s nothing Godly about $10,000 to outsmart natural selection. This isn’t about God. I can’t have children because the cells in my uterus attack the rest of my body each month. God didn’t give me endometriosis just like he doesn’t control whether I get pregnant. Jenelle Evans doesn’t pray for babies in between joints. Fourth period pregnant kid doesn’t conceive because of God’s plan. She gets pregnant because she’s sixteen and irresponsible and apparently fertile.

I guess what I’m getting at is that if you attribute getting pregnant to God then you also have to attribute not getting pregnant to Him as well. And then you’re left wondering how in the world any of this makes any sense at all. People have children when they’re bodies allow it. Not when God does.

When I was flying home from Mexico a few days ago, there was a Baptist preacher seated in the row directly in front of me. I know this because he was having a conversation with a man beside him about God. He was sharing his testimony as Baptist folks would say. Later in the flight, the preacher proceeded to type on his laptop about his recent experiences in Mexico doing mission work. In between the seat backs, I read his screen as he went on to explain that people often get hung up on why life is not fair. The preacher noted that people question the existence of God when they have terrible things happen to them. Things that they deem not fair. I'll be the first to tell you I don’t think it’s fair that I am struggling with infertility. I do think I would make a good mother and Cody would be a good father. I am not on heroin. I am not sixteen. I have a job. I pay my taxes. I don’t smoke cigarettes. I have really exceptional hand-eye coordination. This is not fair.

I started paying more attention to the blinking cursor on the laptop in front of me. I started to wonder if maybe this man’s response about fair and unfair life experiences would be the explanation I needed to quit questioning God’s role in pregnancy and honestly God’s role in everything.

The preacher’s response eventually boiled down to this: humans don’t actually want a fair God because that would mean we would all be going to hell because we are all sinners. Moreover, humans don’t actually know what they need or want so our thoughts of fair and unfair are pedestrian (my word, not his) desires that aren't actually what God deems fit for our lives. There were a lot of biblical references in there, but I stopped reading after that. My hope for a message sent from above was lost on me. . Some people get pregnant. Some people don’t. It depends on anatomy, not religion. You don't have to believe in God to get pregnant. You don't have to deserve a baby (whatever that means). God does not release eggs and swim alongside sperm. He doesn't attach an embryo to a uterus. Human bodies do that just like dogs and horses and squirrels. 

I say all that to say that sometimes you just draw the short stick, regardless of whose hand you think you’re choosing from.