$%(&@$!

Despite all of the extremely compelling clinical signs that pointed in the other direction, today is CD1. All I feel is numbness over here. Please pray for me. I'm just so lost and I can't find my way out of this.

This Cross I Embrace

Many months ago, when I started to realize that carrying this cross of infertility was not something I could do silently or on my own anymore, I joined a circle of women online who shared similar struggles. It took several months more before I got up the gumption to start this blog. I sat silently in that online group of women for a while, until I started to see that the women expressing pain were no different than me. They were telling my story. Some had struggled longer, of course. The circumstance that seemed to matter most was that we all yearned for a child in our arms and it was unrequited. We were mostly practicing Catholics women in that group - which made for a very specific (and prayerful) tone to the conversation. And that mattered to me a lot as well.

It's hard to really describe the kind of support this group of women have offered me. They have lifted me up when I needed it, cried with me when I suffered, and cheered me on when I rejoiced in something. In every sense of the word - they have been my sisters these past 6 months. The camaraderie has been the only thing that took the sting off infertility, if anything could.

So many of them have prayed for me. And there are so many people in that group that I have offered prayers up for - trying with all my might to help pray their intentions into life. Trying to dialogue with God on their behalf...and offering up my own struggles and pain and even my own intentions for myself as a sacrifice for theirs to be answered.

There is one particular person whose struggles I have prayed for out loud every night that I am writing about today. My DH and I have prayed several novenas for their intentions, some of which we've shared, others of which have been done privately. We've offered up daily prayer to God along with our own struggles, that he might answer their prayers of deep longing. I have even prayed these intentions with a relic of Saint Therese and I have asked God to answer their prayers before my own through Therese's intercession. And we are but a small drop in the bucket of people who have fervently prayed for them! But these were my words:

"God - answer her deepest longing and fill her with such a sense of unfamiliar hope as you knit together a child in her womb. God, if it's Your will, surprise her with the joy of life in her womb. God let her conceive and let this prayer be answered before any of my own."

These words were prayed over and over and over. For months.

I write today, knowing that God answered this fervent prayer. And I wept tears of joy when I heard the wonderful news. This woman encouraged me to blog, so I thought it only fitting to make a post dedicated to the joy she celebrates today: to hope conceived after years of IF! For all the anguish that infertility brings with it, we must rejoice when new life finds one of us through God's grace.

At least twice in the past year, God has generously allowed me to see hope conceived in the prayers I have prayed for other people's fertility and adoption struggles. I think there's something to this praying-for-each-other thing...and I think we ought to do a lot more of it together.

Also - happy CD1 y'all.

Beyond Ugly

Yesterday I had a complete meltdown. Complete with big, fat, ugly tears and a temper tantrum lived out on the internet in a secret facebook group...typed furiously with wet, salty fingers. It came with that wind-sucking feeling in your lungs and that sense that nothing would ever be ok...no matter how long or how hard I try...

I lost my flipping mind yesterday for what seemed like a very specific and acute reason. I've been waiting for my doctor to weigh in on my salivary adrenal cortisol results for over three weeks.

Anyway, that's what prompted my big, fat, ugly meltdown yesterday. Or so I thought.

A few hours into my own personal melodramatic, tear-stained, wind-sucking misery that came out of nowhere, I magically got my period. Happy CD1! Love, My Body. So that made me look at things in a different light. First, it's clear that things are moving in the wrong direction. The kind of uncontrollable panic and flip-outs that used to be a big (and regular) part of PMDD and PMS haven't been on the scene for a while now. I guess that run is over? As I sit here with hypothyroidism and impaired adrenal functioning (read: I'm low in the morning, lower at noon, lower in the evening, and high at night right before bed)...... I now know they are a big part of what causes these symptoms. There have been months where we got my hormones to sub-optimal (a big improvement over my usual) and my thyroid was fine and I didn't lose my mind. Conversely, there have been months where my hormones were atrocious and my thyroid was fine and I really struggled. I get that it's a big loop and it runs downhill when things are bad in one area.

I'm downhill.

Thankfully, just the knowledge that CD1 was the scape goat for my meltdown helped. It shouldn't, of course, but it did. I'm tired of my monthly cycle feeling like being strapped into solitary confinement. And yet, knowing that hormones were to blame made it easier to process. Maybe I'm not actually losing my mind...maybe it's just my hormones. Again. Wait, when is it NOT my hormones??

I think I might have welcomed the logic stopping there. You know, before I got a giant, itchy rash all over. Sigh. Little else makes me panic as much as a giant, itchy rash. My brain instantaneously moves into complete freak-out mode when I get unexplained rashes. Because fevers are next (which it was). And hospitals are next (which it thankfully wasn't). And abscesses are next (which it thankfully wasn't). And lots of bad medical care is next (which it thankfully wasn't).


My brain knows that bicycle ride better than it knows how to find its way home. How is it possible that I have spent so much time, so much effort, so much money, so much time in prayer, and assigned so much hope and faith to the conquering of this problem and I still sit here, festering in it? How is it possible that my best effort isn't even close to good enough to conquer this? Have you ever felt the anguish of something like that? Because that's what this IF or SF or whatever you want to call this sad journey of mine felt like yesterday.

So in my meltdown, there were a few angels that jumped in front of the panic bus and stopped it like Superman crumpling the asphalt behind his magnificently rooted feet. People online instantly rallied in prayer. One person looked up naturopaths. One person sat with me in private messaging and talked me through the tears and suffered with me. I was reminded of the double novena I had just signed on to do. I prayed my two novena prayers for the day. And I sat there in awe afterward as I felt filled with a little bit of peace from praying with such a broken heart. The words didn't wash over me - they washed through me. Like a waterfall.

 'O Sacred Heart of Jesus, for whom it is impossible not to have compassion on the afflicted, have pity on us miserable sinners and grant us the grace which we ask of you, through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, your tender Mother and ours.'

'We trust to your gentle care and intercession, those whom we love and who are sick or lonely or hurting. Help all of us, Holy Mother, to bear our burdens in this life until we may share eternal life and peace with God forever.'

For now at least, I need to accept that I am the sick, lonely, hurting sinner that is in need of prayers. And as much as I want to not be...and as much as this uncomfortable exercise of living my deepest hurts out loud is grueling...I know that I am slowly finding healing from making the effort a priority.

I suffered in silence for a long time. It didn't help anything. So I sit here this morning feeling hopeful. Hopeful because God is allowing me to experience healing to my pain-riddled and weary heart through prayers. Hopeful because my pain, lived out in the the ugliest way I can imagine - publicly - is being met with love and charity and grace and hugs from people who know what it's like to be breathlessly infertile. Hopeful because I am definitely going to hire a naturopath to give these hormones and this thyroid and these adrenals another look. Hopeful because I know Christ lives in this hurt with me. And hopeful because I'm not willing to waste any time lost in God-less agony. I spent years stuck there and if it's anything I've learned from those years of illness and pain - it's that God is easier to find in those moments than at any other times in my life. So I have to remember to look for Him and say hello and weep at His feet. I'm pretty sure he's waiting for me to do that anyway.