A great coach will always call a time out if they have one prior to the last big play of a game.
That’s where we are, the last play of the game and we are ready to inbound the ball and throw it to our best shooter for our hail Mary pass. But before we do we are taking a little time for our family and focusing on our priorities, priorities that have been out of whack over the last few years while dealing with infertility.
If you have experienced infertility treatment, you know its easy to let your biological calendar run your life. When you add in the fact that my job requires travel and extensive planning, making time for family can feel impossible.
Since the day Spork was born, we have yet to make time to go on a real family vacation. All our travel has been for treatment, work, reunions or funerals.
My daughter has more frequent flier miles than most adults, but sadly not a single one of those trips has been for us to spend time away from work and home to really connect as a family. If you have followed our journey, you know that we make the most of our fertility trips. We have seen Broadway shows, toured museums, and visited numerous zoos between monitoring appointments. We have shopped till we dropped in New York City. Bill and I even thrashed some gnarly pow pow out in Vail and Breckinridge when we were seeing the famous doctor at that Denver clinic.
But its not the same as taking a trip that is just for us.
That’s what we are finally doing in two weeks. Sure its only four days, but it will be four days at none other than Disney World!!! This will be the very first time either my husband or daughter has been to the Magic Kingdom. I know it will be amazing and well worth putting treatment on hold.
Added bonus? I won’t have to inject anything. I won’t have to be up at 5 AM to drive to a clinic for daily ultrasound and blood work. We will not be worrying about whether surgery will fall on the day that we selected to buy tickets.
In short, we can’t wait. All three of us are excited beyond belief.
And it gets even better.
When we return from Disney, Bill and I will be going to a couples retreat for a long weekend as well. Originally I shot this idea down because I wanted to be able to dive right back into treatment after returning from Disney, but Bill and I agreed that it was time to put God at the center of our lives and put infertility on the back burner. The Lord is doing such amazing work in our marriage and we feel this time will be well invested, especially since we hope to be dealing with raising a child while pregnant soon.
When we return from the retreat we will start our very last fresh IVF cycle. I know I haven’t reported the results on the second cycle yet. I simply haven’t had the time. It went well at first, but of 10 of the embryos we created only one lived long enough to be genetically tested. Miraculously though it was chromosomaly NORMAL!!! Praise God!!! So we now have two normal male embryos.
When we decided to try embryo banking we signed up for three cycles. When we start again at the end of this month we know that whatever happens this will be the last one. This will be the last time I take the hormone injections and the last surgery. Its hard to believe it will be the eighth full cycle. Its almost impossible to imagine what life without treatment will be like.
I am almost ready to hang it up, though. In the beginning I was fighting so hard to have another baby, and fighting to control something that was beyond control. Now I have peace that these last steps are what God wants for our family. I don’t know if there will be another baby at the end of it, but I feel a sense of serentiy and purpose in it all.
I will spend more time writing about faith and fertility soon and will likely change the focus and design of the blog to be more centered on the intersection of those two things. As you can imagine, there are many conflicting emotions among infertile Christians about how to tackle infertility as people of faith, and many churches have opinions as well. It should make for some lively discussion which I will pray will help others as they navigate difficult questions about God’s will for our lives, medical intervention, and even deep concepts regarding life at conception. These are all areas that have challenged us in the last few months as we returned to our faith and began to question our treatment decisions.
But that is for another time. Right now its time for the Winslow’s to huddle up with our arms around each other before we break and wait to see what comes of our breathtaking last shot.
Until then, prayers for God’s will to be done in us are appreciated. We will be praying for all of our brothers and sisters in infertility as well.
Laughter Through Tears 