God has a sense of humor. I’ve learned this more than once in my life, but the most memorable times have involved pregnancy.
Allow me to explain by giving a little background. Fair warning, I’m fixin’ to get real personal with this, but it’s necessary to paint the complete picture.
When I was in my late twenties, I found out that I had polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). As shocking as the news was, it finally explained all the problems I’d had growing up…problems that always made me wonder what was wrong with me, but doctors never diagnosed it or tried to treat it with anything but the BC pill because “just take this for a few months; it’ll straighten out your cycle”. *HARD EYE ROLL*. Yeah, thanks for pumping a teenager with artificial hormones that did ABSOLUTELY nothing.
Anyway. Fast forward to 2014. I’d passed the CPA exam and my husband and I decided we wanted to start a family. Much to my surprise, and despite my PCOS, I got pregnant fairly quickly. To say we were excited would be an understatement. We even told our families way before the first trimester mark. Well, sadly, that pregnancy ended in miscarriage. I was devastated. And foolishly, I believed it was a minor blip in our journey to start a family…because I had read so much about women who had miscarriages that got pregnant again the very next cycle. Well, that didn’t happen to me. And because I wasn’t realistic about the problems that I had, I didn’t properly mourn the baby I lost when I should have. When it sank in that getting pregnant again would not be easy, I truly felt the loss of the baby we never got to hold…and it hit me in such a way where sometimes I wonder if I ended up with some form of post-partum depression. I stopped working out and doing the other things that always brought me joy. It took a long time for me to even mention the miscarriage without dissolving into a sobbing mess.
About a year after the miscarriage, I found a new doctor that was incredibly proactive about treating my PCOS; I wished I had found him sooner. In the process of everything this doctor did to help me, we also learned than besides PCOS, I also had endometriosis. Double whammy. Not only did he help to heal my body (WITHOUT using the Pill, btw), but I was also taking steps to heal emotionally and spiritually.
In time, my body was actually functioning properly and getting pregnant would only take a matter of time. Months passed (which then became years of me being unable to conceive), but each negative pregnancy test was like a slap to the face. We were doing everything right. Why wasn’t I getting pregnant?
Finally, I decided maybe I needed to come to terms with the fact that I could never get pregnant again. I made an appointment to see a therapist and start the process of learning how to move on. I’ll never forget the first appointment where I cried almost the entire time, talking through my frustrations at my body betraying me, how my body had been functioning properly but “last week I was spotting so there was another sign, yet AGAIN, that I wasn’t pregnant”, how I needed to prepare myself for the likelihood that I would never have biological children, etc.
It felt good to cry all that out, and knowing I had no more tears to cry that day, I went home and took a pregnancy test because of that spotting I mentioned. I knew it meant I wasn’t pregnant, but I just needed to mark this off the list to discuss yet a new problem with my doctor the next time I saw him.
So I went home and took the test and set it on the counter. I would always push it under my jewelry box so that I wouldn’t stare at it, sure that it would prevent the second line from developing. Three minutes later, feeling defeated, I pulled it out from under the jewelry box and couldn’t believe my eyes.
It was positive. I was pregnant.
God has a sense of humor. And I learned that as hard as it can be to relinquish control, sometimes it’s not our timing…
Check out part 2 of this post to read the rest of the story.
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