Maybe Baby #6: Our unconventional (Christmas) miracle
This is the final blog in a series of posts reflecting on our [in]fertility journey and how it intersects with the assumed scripts of life and faith.
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In my last post I discussed what it was like to begin imagining a different future. To face the realisation that as we entered our final round of IVF treatment and had the experience of another miscarriage, perhaps IVF was not going to be our solution after all. Maybe we needed to re-evaluate what the next season of our life was going to look like.
In May 2018 we had another embryo transfer and then 10 days later discovered that we now had our third pregnancy. Compared with the previous pregnancy however, the attitude of the team at the clinic was much more positive. Hormone levels were significantly higher and they felt like the indicators were encouraging. We felt good about this of course, but cautiously so. Once again, we were mindful of the loss and grief of the past years, and the fragility with which this little fledgling life was held.
At a 7 week scan we were able to see a little beating heart, and the clinic team was kind enough to provide an extra scan at 8 weeks to give us some additional reassurance. By this point we had come to know many of the staff at the fertility clinic, and it began to feel like they were riding every wave with us. We walked down the corridor after the scan and heads were popping out of offices and labs showing the hopeful and excited faces of various staff as they heard the good news. There was something kind of beautiful about this. On the one hand, it was unfortunate to have been in the system so long that everyone now knew us and our story. But on the other hand, it felt like we were being held by a team of people who were with us on the journey in a unique kind of way.
At each scan Hannah would close her eyes, unable to look but waiting to hear whether the embryo was still growing; was their heart still beating, was their progress still as it should be? And so the first trimester continued with some hope but a lot of anxiety. We found ourselves waiting for the inevitable bad news to arrive and so each positive test or scan resulted primarily in relief rather than excitement. But as we shared with a few friends and family, the excitement of others was a reasonable stand-in for our own. And there was something so meaningful about this, especially for those who knew our journey well and were able to be excited for us while at the same time understanding of our own struggle to relax and accept the possibility of good news.
The 12 week scan at the end of the first trimester was a pivotal moment. This was the scan that had so shockingly interrupted the joy of our first pregnancy, and so the tension and anxiety in the lead up was pretty high for both of us. In we went, Hannah closed her eyes once more, and this time everything looked good. The possibility began to open up to us that this might actually be it, this might be the time, this could genuinely happen.
It’s a strange thing to shift from self-protection and resignation to excitement and anticipation, and it didn’t happen instantly. Perhaps this is also due to Hannah’s work in high-risk medical wards with pregnant mums and babies; she is burdened with too much knowledge about all the things that can and might go wrong at any stage along the way. Yet over time, the weight of things did shift. The anxiety and doubt slowly diminished, especially as we passed the next big milestone of the 20 week anatomy scan which showed us that the baby was still growing well. And then we passed the 24 week mark at which point babies can now survive in the neo-natal intensive care unit if they are born prematurely. Each marker and milestone became another drop in the intensity of anxiety and a nudge upward in excitement and joy.
And so here we find ourselves, 33 weeks pregnant. A baby due in February 2019, and all is looking good.
So there are feelings of joy, excitement and anticipation; but it also feels a bit surreal at the same time. It feels like we’ve been stuck in a loop for years and years, and now we’ve suddenly been catapulted out of the loop forward into that which we’ve been desiring for so long. We are overjoyed, but also a little stunned. Has this really happened? And even as I’ve been writing about our story on this blog, I find myself looking at the past thinking, is this really our story?
And there are so many reasons people offer for why things happen or don’t happen. Christians, in particular perhaps, are often looking for the meaning, the reason, and the eventual solution. For those who thought we just needed to keep believing and praying, perhaps this is now their validation. “See – we knew it would happen if you just kept going, just kept praying, just kept persisting!”
But I know that this is not the way the story unfolds for everyone. At this stage we find ourselves in the incredibly fortunate position of a positive turn in the script of this story. Yet many others I know with much more faith and many more prayers than us, have had no such turn.
And so I want to call this a miracle, but not in the way I might have meant that when I was younger. I don’t mean that God was suddenly convinced by everybody’s prayers to relent and give us a baby, and so dropped one down upon us from the sky. I don’t mean that it’s some kind of supernatural out-of-this-world intervention.
Our much-anticipated (and soon-to-be upon us!) baby is a credit to the most remarkable developments in science, the dedicated work of medical staff in a fertility clinic, the emotional support of family and friends, Hannah’s continued strength and ability to cope with an unfair volume of invasive and disruptive procedures, and my occasional and very awkward visits to the “donors room”.
And yet if God is to be found in and through all things, then God is somehow involved in this process too. God is with us when we grieve, and when we celebrate. God is with us when we suffer and when we triumph. God may be found in those mysterious and mystical moments that we cannot explain, but those are few and far between compared to the day-to-day experiences of the ordinary life. The work of the divine is often the work of human hands.
And so for those of you whose stories have not taken that positive turn, who have not seen their hopes fulfilled or their suffering fade, I can’t tell you to “hang in there” until your miracle arrives. Nor can I promise you that things will turn out okay in the end, although of course I genuinely hope that they do. An ancient wisdom writer in the Jewish tradition said that the “rain falls on the just and the unjust”. We can’t control this life; there’s no magic formula, no witty one-liner, no special words of prayer, and no secret knowledge that will help us to figure it all out and make it all better.
But there is presence, and there is solidarity. Perhaps this can be found in the love of those close to us. Perhaps it can be found in the words of another, who is able to articulate those things that feel unable to be said, yet close and familiar. Or perhaps it can be found in the idea of that which might transcend us; the idea of the divine God who is with us regardless of where we find ourselves. And our spiritual practices, however raw and unpolished, can cultivate this sense of connectedness, both to God and to each other. And in all of this, the possibility of something being found in the midst of the messy, mixed-up and ambiguous experience of life; hope, beauty and love in the very depth of the human experience.
This is the last post of the Maybe Baby series. I appreciate you reading along and I hope that it has been of some help to those of you on a similar journey, or who have experienced loss, grief, disruption or unexpected challenges. And a big thanks to my partner for allowing me to share our story so honesty and publicly.