Mercy Rose

It’s now been over six years since we announced that we were expecting our twins. I had been waiting for that moment for years—most of my life, actually. I’d always wanted to be a mom. I loved little kids—in small groups, at least. (There’s a reason I became a secondary ed. teacher, not an elementary teacher. 😉) I grew up babysitting. I even continued to babysit for some of my college professors after I got married. 

Josh and I knew we wanted to have kids. Before we started trying, though, we wanted it to be just the two of us for several years. We wanted to simply enjoy being together, and I wanted to finish college. So we waited. I never thought that it might be difficult for me to get pregnant. Both Josh and I come from “Fertile Myrtle” families. There are five kids in my family and six kids in Josh’s. Both of my sisters and both of Josh’s sisters were all able to get pregnant easily. I didn’t have endometriosis or any other health concerns. I was young. (We got married when I was 20.) So I naively thought I’d get pregnant very quickly after we started trying.

In fact, at the beginning of our marriage I wanted to bask in the freedom of being childless so much that I was vigilant about birth control. I also tried to avoid holding babies because I didn’t want to get baby hungry. 😂 It turned out, though, that I was the “1” in the “1 in 8 women struggle with infertility” statistic. 

Josh and I started trying to get pregnant after we’d been married for five years. Since I was a teacher, we planned it so I would hopefully be due during the summer. (How funny that I thought we could plan…)

As time ticked by with no positive pregnancy tests, we started to get a bit worried. One of my sisters-in-law had struggled with infertility, so through her experience I knew that most fertility specialists wouldn’t take you until you’d been trying to conceive for at least a year. I took good notes and scheduled an appointment as soon as I could. Even though we’d been trying unsuccessfully for a year, I was fairly certain that, with a specialist’s help, it wouldn’t take us much longer. Once again, I was wrong.

It ended up taking us five years of TTC (trying to conceive—oh, the amount of medical-related acronyms my little brain holds…). We worked with two different specialists and had three unsuccessful IUIs (Intrauterine Inseminations) before we finally got a positive pregnancy test with our fourth and final IUI attempt. If that last attempt hadn’t worked, we would have moved on to IVF (In Vitro Fertilization). Luckily, we didn’t have to.

That positive pregnancy test is the only one I’ve ever held in my hands. Actually…that’s technically not true. Here’s a funny story for ya:

After each IUI, you have to wait two weeks before testing to see if it worked. If you’ve ever been in the infertility world, you know that this period is known as the “Two Week Wait” (TWW), and it can be AGONIZING. I consider myself a pretty patient person, but after our fourth IUI, I couldn’t wait the full two weeks. The first missed day of my period was on about day 11 or 12 post-IUI. I’m usually fairly regular, so my anticipation of thinking I might be pregnant got to me, and I took a home pregnancy test. 

To be honest, at that point I wasn’t expecting the test to say I was pregnant. I was pretty jaded by that point, and it was just easier to not get my hopes up anymore after having them dashed month after month, year after year. Sure enough, the test came back negative. I threw it in the trash, upset but not surprised. I was mad at my body and frustrated with God, and I was ready to take a break from fertility treatments to recover mentally before moving on to IVF. But here’s the thing…

I WAS pregnant! I’d just taken the test early enough that I couldn’t see the second, incredibly faint line. After moving through life slightly moodily for a few days and still not getting my period, I decided to take another pregnancy test. It showed what we all now know: I was pregnant for the first time ever, after five years of trying, at the age of 31. Curious, I dug through our trash to find the pregnancy test I’d taken earlier. Sure enough, this time I could see the faint second line. 😂🤦

I’m going to go off on a tangent here before going back to the main story. I KNOW 31 is not old at all. Let me give you a little lesson in Utah culture, though (in case you aren’t already aware). Most people know that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the dominant religion in Utah. Yes, I’m a member. I truly love my religion. I do not, however, love a lot of things about my religion’s/state’s culture.

The LDS church places a huge emphasis on family. We believe in life after death and the ability to live eternally with your family. It’s beautiful. And yet…sometimes it can make people on the outskirts of a “traditional” family feel isolated. 

People tend to marry young in Utah, and the cultural expectation has traditionally been that you “should” start having kids sooner rather than later. In fact, there can be an unspoken (or occasionally spoken) judgment placed on “older” couples who’ve “chosen” not to have kids yet. Luckily, some isolating cultural expectations like this one are starting to shift. I sometimes felt “othered” as we got older and still didn’t have kids, though. 

Those years battling unexplained infertility were rough. It was of course difficult for both Josh and me, but I think it’s safe to say that in most cases, it’s just different for the woman. So much of the future I’d always envisioned revolved around me being a mom. Add in the additional expectations of Utah Mormons’ cultural norms, and it was downright brutal at times. It was difficult to go to church and hear lessons about eternal families when I wondered if I’d ever have my own children. It was difficult to be among other women sharing their childbirth stories while wondering if I’d ever be able to share my own.

Even though I knew it wasn’t true, it often felt like everyone around us was able to get pregnant easily. It felt like we were getting passed by in life. I often questioned why I wasn’t gifted with the righteous desires of my heart when I’d checked all the boxes of being a “good girl” my whole life. I wanted to be happy for my friends and family as they announced their pregnancies, but it was far from easy.

I made friends and connected with other women who struggled with infertility along the way. It was always nice being able to talk to those who “got it”—I guess because misery loves company…?? I’ve always been pretty good at pasting on a happy face, but I also threw myself some pretty big pity parties internally. Being able to vent to women I knew wouldn’t judge me made things less lonely.

Needless to say, I was shocked and elated when my pregnancy test(s) finally came back positive. It was surreal. It was so outside what we’d come to expect, in fact, that Josh asked me, “Really?!” or “Are you sure?” at LEAST three or four times before he believed me. Then a blood test with our fertility specialist confirmed it, and we allowed ourselves to truly feel excited. When I had my first ultrasound a bit later, we found out we were expecting TWINS!! The rest, as they say, is history.

When I told the other women I was working with in the Young Women’s program of our ward that I was expecting, they let me in on a little secret. It turns out that sometime when I hadn’t been at church, they’d asked the young women to fast for Josh and me, telling them to ask for our Heavenly Father’s help in blessing us with children. The thought of these beautiful young women (all between the ages of 12 and 18) fasting for us to have children—and, in turn, me being able to get pregnant a short time later—still fills my heart with gratitude and my eyes with tears. 

They weren’t the only ones who’d been fasting and praying for us, either. We had a whole tribe of family and friends who’d been pleading with God on our behalf. I am overcome with joy whenever I think of the many, many people who have prayed for us throughout the years.

Going through tough trials stays with you, though. Anyone who’s walked the infertility road knows that your thoughts around pregnancy and having children is forever changed. It’s impossible to take your kids for granted when you’ve fought so hard to get them earthside. Does this mean it makes parenting easy? HELL NO!!! It does, however, make it easier for me to reel in my frustrations and remember this quote:

“I still remember the days I prayed for the things I have now.”

We also learned that we need to consciously make an effort to create positive memories even when our hearts are tender. Josh and I definitely hadn’t imagined or wished for it to take us five years to get pregnant, but we’ll always be grateful for those extra years we shared together, just the two of us. We got to travel! We got to binge-watch whatever we wanted to, whenever we wanted to! We got to read in SILENCE! We got to strengthen our relationship without the added responsibilities of taking care of kids.

My heart continues to ache for all of the women who have ever struggled or continue to struggle with infertility. I still have survivor’s guilt over the fact that I was able to get pregnant and have children while many of the women I bonded with over infertility are still fighting to have babies. I have survivor’s guilt over the fact that I never experienced the heartache of a miscarriage. (I have survivor’s guilt over a lot of things, actually. I’ll probably do a blog post on it at some point.) 

Life isn’t fair, but I know without a shadow of a doubt that how we respond to our trials can either make things easier or harder. I know that, for me, our years of trying to conceive would have been much darker if we hadn’t chosen to trust and have faith in our Lord. I’m so glad those years are behind us, but I can now say that I’m grateful for the things we learned. (I definitely was NOT grateful for the trial while I was still in the midst of it. 😉)