Growing
up as the oldest in our family of four kids, I developed a certain set
of shall we say....qualities? I fit the first born description
according to the birth order guidelines to an absolute T! If the
proverbial book (actually there are many real books on the topic) hadn't
been written before I was born, I could swear the description of the
first born was modeled after me personally.
I
always was the mothering one. I deeply feared (still fear...whatev)
getting in trouble or letting someone down. And if given the
opportunity I would have proudly worn a sash boasting "Overachiever"
across my chest all through school, although I'm sure it would have made me a serious target for jokes and that simply wouldn't have worked for
me.
Unfortunately,
this overachieving quality is rooted a little deeper than just in my
personality. On a chemical level all I seem to do is "overachieve."
Who ever would have guessed that going above and beyond would ever, one
day, work against me? Apparently, when it comes to the endocrine
system, you really are looking to be an 'average student.'
I have what
has been rather poorly named, PCOS, or polycystic ovary syndrome. While
its name is actually derived from a side effect and not the root cause
itself, it comes with a whole slew of unpleasant side effects,
unfeminine facial hair, difficulty with weight management, elevated
testosterone levels that had me suffering from panic attacks and anxiety
for 6 years. To think that for all that time, Paxil was just a band-aid to one
unfortunate aspect of an overachieving endocrine system.
At
the time of diagnosis, I was single, Danny and I wouldn't have started
dating until three years later, but at the time, I wondered and feared
if it would one day complicate plans to start a family. My husband
has had the heart of a father, long before we started dating. I knew
from the very beginning how desperately he wanted to be a dad. I
explained to him that with me, that might be a challenge or even an
impossibility, to which he assured me he would rather marry me and never
be a dad, that be with someone else who can give him all the children
his heart had ever desired. Talk about true love! So when Danny and I
decided in December of 2011 to start trying to grow our family we were
both nervous. We decided to make an appointment with the California
Infertility Clinic in Davis. At our first appointment we had explained
to us the "odds" of conceiving on our own without intervention, what
intervention options we had available to us, and equally concerning, the
cost for each of those options.
We
left that appointment on two very different sides of the spectrum. Danny
was so discouraged, he struggled to figure out how any couples EVER find
themselves pregnant, even if they didn't have to face the fertility
challenges we were. I, on the other hand, walked out encouraged knowing that there was help
for us if we decided that we would need to pursue it.
Ultimately
it came down to the simple faith that I had knowing that God had not
given us the hearts of parents to let that God-given, deeply-rooted
longing go unfulfilled for a lifetime. I was not sure just how Danny
and I would walk down the road to becoming parents. I have always
wanted to experience the joy of pregnancy, and I know Danny has wanted
nothing more than to look into the face of his child and see "his" eyes
looking back at him. But if conceiving wasn't going to happen for us, I
knew the doors would open for us to be parents to a child who needed us
as much as we wanted them. It was only time that was going to reveal God's divine parental plans.
