Plus or Minus: Keeping Your Life, Faith, and Love Together Through Infertility

Publishers

introduction

I’M LATE."

… What did you just say?

"I said I’m late."

In that moment, the world seemed to go into slow motion. My mind locked, and all I could do was stare at her. We had been married less than a year, and had no plans to start a family right away.

Well, when I say no plans, what I actually mean is that we did have a plan. We planned to have no children.

I had just started my Masters studies. Cheri had settled into her career as a veterinarian. We had a comfy but cramped upstairs apartment. And on that particular warm summer weekend, we had decided to get away on a camping trip. Yes, our wedding registry had camping equipment on it because we had sensible priorities as newlyweds. Why would we want kitchen appliances and real silverware when we could have a camp stove and plastic forks that folded up like Swiss Army knives?

I tried to speak even though it felt like trying to speak underwater.

Matt: Are you sure?

Cheri: Yes.

Matt: How late are you?

Cheri: Um …

Matt: "How late are you?"

Cheri: Four days.

Well that did it. There would be no more enjoying the great majesty of nature with the possibility of a baby hanging over our heads. We scrambled to break down our campsite, threw the tent and the cooler in the back of the car, and rushed home—stopping at the pharmacy on the way. An hour later, I sat on the bed, waiting for Cheri to emerge from the bathroom.

Negative.

We both breathed a sigh of relief and unpacked our soiled clothing and camping gear. Our hearts were still pounding. Our heads were still swimming a little bit as we eased out of our panic. We could not have been more relieved to see that minus sign appear on the pregnancy test.

It was a beautiful, glorious, magnificent minus.

We felt so good, we almost wanted to announce the minus to our families.

When we think about it nine years later, it almost seems funny how much effort, how much money, how much worry we spent on not having a baby.

FIRST COMES LOVE, THEN COMES MARRIAGE …

First comes love. Then comes marriage. Then comes …

Well, you know the rest of the song.

The trouble was that five years after seeing that first glorious minus sign, we saw another.

And another.

And still another.

On and on they went.

Minus.

Minus.

Minus.

Month after month of minuses. The song we had learned on the playground, used to taunt other children, was supposed to eventually come true. But our song was stalled out on the third line.

We got nothing but a minus sign.

The truth is that a surprisingly high number of couples have trouble with that last part of the song. One in seven American couples have been or will be affected by a season of infertility.¹

Millions of couples …

Millions of couples who sit in quiet homes, night after night, who grieve for lives lost. Millions of couples who avoid church on Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. Millions of couples who feel mocked by those minus signs every month. Millions of couples who mourn empty nests, not because their baby birds have flown away, but because their nests were never filled at all.

If you are anything like us, you have exhausted yourself with reaching out to doctors, poring over resources, hearing endless advice and opinions from experts (and ostensibly nonexpert friends who already have babies). You have tried the weird diets. You have read all the books. You have prayed every which way you can. You have tried doing it all the super-specific ways you read about that are supposed to make a baby. (Wait, what phase is the moon in?)

We did all of these things, like you, because everyone can sell a cure, a secret, a promise to get us pregnant.

But if you are like us, you have discovered one thing: There are no promises when it comes to infertility.

As the reality of infertility set in for us, as we discovered many of our friends were secretly dealing with their own seasons of infertility, we realized that solving the problem (i.e., having a baby) as quickly as possible was never going to be entirely in our control. We were never going to find our cure-all, our silver bullet, our guarantee.

And in the meantime, our marriage had been invaded by an unwanted guest. Our faith was being barraged by a tangle of questions with no easy answers. Our finances were being drained and our friendships were being strained. Everything we had valued seemed to be under attack.

In short, infertility brought with it a myriad of collateral damage. Infertility is not just an illness. It is not just something that can be compartmentalized while the rest of our lives go on normally. It is a whole-life experience that encompasses our marriages, our relationships, and our faith.

And so Cheri and I did not approach this book with the goal of recommending a diet or a treatment or another silver bullet that will get everyone pregnant. Everyone’s infertility is different, and there are experts who are vastly more qualified than we are to make medical recommendations.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

Instead of offering another cure, we gathered some of our closest friends and asked some questions that our doctors were not able to answer. We asked questions like:

What does it mean to survive infertility?

What does it mean to keep your marriage happy and healthy under the strain of infertility?

What does it mean to keep your faith intact when it is being assaulted by infertility?

What does it mean for a couple to preserve their friendships, their family, and their sanity during infertility?

"What if we never have a baby? How do we survive a lifetime of infertility?"

We asked these questions because there are no guarantees in life. No doctor, no expert, no book can guarantee a solution to infertility. With children, everything is fleeting. They grow up fast, really fast. Infertility, on the other hand, is slow, and there is no assurance, no promise that it will ever end.

For those reasons, we wrote our story while in the midst of our struggle. Some of us got children, some of us remain childless. But we did not want to filter our words through rose-colored memories of a distant past.

In that spirit, these are a few things you can expect from this book.

This book is about secrets. If you have ever kept a journal, you know how precious and sacred secret things are. Sometimes, secrets are terrifying or shameful, but sometimes, they are joyful things too.

If you are anything like us, you are probably carrying a lot of secrets. Maybe your entire struggle is still a secret. You sit in silence as a coworker announces she is pregnant. You put on a smile as you attend a friend’s baby shower. You deflect questions from friends or family members. You may not even want anyone to know you are reading this book! We completely understand.

From the start, our hearts have been with the men and women who we imagined would read these words in secret—on the train commute to work, during lunch breaks, at night at the kitchen table. By reading these words, you have our secrets.

This book is about faith. We believe spirituality is the cornerstone of a healthy life and marriage, and when it comes to discussing spirituality in this book, we are coming from a Christian perspective. The couples who contributed their stories come from Christian faith traditions. If you are not a person of faith, we hope that you still can find encouragement from this book and allow yourself to honestly explore questions of spirituality along with us.

If you are a person of faith, we hope that your faith will be uplifted in these pages. You just need to be prepared to not have your faith uplifted in the ways you may be expecting. What you will not find are easy platitudes and simple answers about trusting God and other such things you have probably already heard many times. You will not find Bible verses taken out of context, promising that you will soon have a baby. Our goal in this book is to give you true encouragement and freedom from spiritual bondage because we believe that easy answers often do more harm than good. In fact, you may find your faith being challenged more (we prefer to say dismantled), before we rebuild it. This may be painful, but in the end we hope it is very fruitful.

This book is for couples. From our perspective, it appears the popular idea is that men do not really play an important role in a couple’s pursuit of pregnancy. Infertility is a woman’s issue. She is in the driver’s seat, and the husband is along for the ride.

It is true that men and women experience infertility differently. Especially in cases where the wife is the primary medical patient (which accounts for two-thirds of all infertile couples), it can be easy for the husband to withdraw in frustration or to acquiesce to his wife and say, Whatever you want, honey. For women, it is easy to become so emotionally invested in the goal that they let their marriages go into life-support mode. Neither situation is healthy.

Husbands, if your wives are the primary medical patients, it does not mean that you are bit players in this. You are not just sperm donors. You are equal partners, and your wives need you to step up and be an equal partner. You will not find a token chapter for men that you can skip to and then be done with this book. All of the men in this book were equal partners in sharing their stories, and we encourage you to do likewise.

This book is also for friends, pastors, counselors, and wannabe grandparents. Just by reading this book, you will gain some important insight into something that your friends, children, or church members are probably suffering silently. Most people do not know how to help loved ones who are trying to have children. Although the heart of this book is for infertile couples, we hope you will find this book helpful.

This book has no heroes. The friends we gathered have been touched differently by infertility and loss. Their wisdom, insight, and courage have been hard-won. But please understand that we do not present ourselves as exceptional. We are extraordinarily average people.

It is just that our very average lives have collided with something life-changing.

We have lost and somehow regained our faith in the midst of searing pain. Our marriages have been dismantled and rebuilt, piece by piece. Our ethical beliefs have been tested by difficult choices. Since we are not heroes but fallible human beings, it would be a mistake to believe that everything portrayed in these stories should be taken as prescriptive for the reader. We have made many choices, many of which may invite judgment and all of which will have lifelong consequences. We would not be surprised if by the end of the book you question our faith or our morality. If that is the case then do not worry, for we have also questioned all of this ourselves.

For some of you, reading our stories will give you confirmation of what you do not want to do. And if that is the case, then the stories have served their purpose.

Other readers will find themselves in our stories, having experienced terrible situations and dilemmas. To you, we hope you find redemption and hope in the knowledge that you are not alone.

Rather than presenting our decisions, our marriages, and our faith as infallible, we simply hope that you will receive these humble words with hope, love, and encouragement from each of the voices in the following pages.

Your story is different from ours, but we know that you are hurting.

Your choices are different from ours, but we know that they seem terrifying.

Your marriage is different from ours, but we know that it is suffering.

Your faith is different from ours, but we know that it is weakening.

Your season of infertility is different from each of ours. We cannot tell you where your journey will take you.

But we tell you this:

We are with you.

Three Couples Tumble into the World of Infertility

In another moment down went Alice after [the white rabbit], never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.

—LEWIS CARROLL, ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND

PATIENCE

IN THE GRAY LIGHT of a dreary Tuesday morning, the city started to awaken.

Mothers stood in darkened kitchens, placing plastic-wrapped sandwiches into brown paper bags while children dressed themselves for school. Dads ensured backpacks were packed and umbrellas were ready by the door. Infants yelped for sleep-deprived parents. Dads changed diapers while moms warmed bottles. Teenagers hit the snooze button for a third time while preschoolers watched cartoons and ate buttered toast on TV trays. Toddlers pulled all their toys out of their toy boxes, moms avoided two-day-old stacks of dirty dishes in the sink while dads narrowly avoided stepping on pointy plastic trains on the living room floor for the seventeenth time. Morning prayers were said. Hugs and kisses were exchanged. Temperatures were taken. Buses were caught. Ties were straightened.

Everywhere across the city, families greeted the new day with a frenzy of activity.

Everywhere, that is, except for one place.

In the quiet darkness of the hospital room, the monotonous beeping of the heart monitor kept time. The silent dripping of the fluid bags delivered medication. The constant puffing of the leg cuffs kept leg veins circulating. Outside was the dull tapping of the cold November rain on the window and the quiet roar of the traffic: parents driving to work or dropping kids off at day care, buses taking students to school.

A thin gray wash of sterile-looking light barely illuminated the room on that early November morning. I sat in the plastic chair beside the bed and sipped from my little foam cup of hospital coffee. I had managed to sneak in without waking Cheri, but I would not be able to stay for long before I would have to slip off to work.

The previous morning, we had made the frantic drive to the hospital after a long night spent on the bathroom floor. Every few minutes, another wave of nausea would overcome Cheri, but there was nothing in her stomach to purge. Her insides were just grinding themselves raw.

At the hospital, nurses and doctors swarmed her. One after another tried to measure her blood pressure without success. Her arms were pricked and bruised up and down as nurses tried to wring a few syrupy drops of blood from her veins. Her abdomen was swollen, her skin pallid and blue. She lay helpless in the bed, unable to move.

PERSEVERANCE

Somewhere far away from the little gray hospital room, another couple’s quiet desperation started to boil over.

Six years had passed with no results. Karol had endured two surgeries with few improvements, but she bore the burden stoically. It is her husband who is more outwardly emotional.

The phone rang. Karol answered to hear the voice of their friend Brendan on the other end. They were planning on Brendan and his wife joining them for dinner in a few hours.

Brendan: Hi Karol, I’m sorry to do this, but we aren’t going to be able to make it tonight.

Karol: Oh, that’s too bad. Is anything wrong?

Brendan: Not much, except Caitlin isn’t feeling well. She must have eaten some bad Indian food yesterday. She just doesn’t feel like she’s going to recover by tonight.

Karol had a sense that their friend was hiding something. There was a note of hesitation in his voice.

Karol: Are you sure? I was kind of hoping you were going to say she’s pregnant.

Brendan: No … she isn’t pregnant … just Indian food.

Karol: Well I’m sorry to hear that. You tell her we hope she’s feeling better soon.

Karol’s husband, John, sat in the living room.

John: What did Brendan want?

Karol: Brendan and Caitlin can’t come over tonight because Caitlin is pregnant. Brendan was trying to cover with some lame excuse involving Indian food.

John looked annoyed and started to grumble. A minute or two later, Karol answered the ringing phone again. This time it was Caitlin.

Caitlin: Hi Karol, it’s Caitlin. Listen, I thought I needed to talk to you myself …

John, suddenly interested in the conversation his wife was trying to carry on, started asking questions while Karol tried to listen to Caitlin.

John: Is she pregnant?

Karol covered the receiver and mouthed to her husband to be quiet.

Caitlin: … because of what you said to Brendan.

John: She’s pregnant, isn’t she? he asked louder.

Karol: What’s going on Caitlin?

Caitlin: I’m pregnant.

Karol: Oh, I had a feeling!

John: "Of course she’s pregnant! He had started pacing aimlessly around the room, Of course she’s pregnant! Why would she not be pregnant? They already have one child already, but why should that matter."

Karol covered the receiver again and whisper-shouted through clenched teeth, John, be quiet. I’m trying to pretend to be happy for her.

John: "How long were they trying? A whole month?" He was pacing erratically, shouting. Karol tried to keep the