Ooh Darling, 'Cause You'll Always Be My Baby (Volume One)

Creative ways to get kids to eat their veggies?  Games to play to help children learn their colors?  Teaching little ones to hum the Happy Birthday song while brushing their teeth?

These were all skills I had perfected by the age of 11.  

With my mom and younger siblings. 

I was born to be a mom – and I had plenty of practice as the oldest girl in a house where both parents worked night shifts.  Before I was even close to being a teenager, I had changed hundreds of diapers, learned to properly heat a bottle, burped babies, settled arguments, wiped tears, and sang lullabies.  

I was a child bride

Even so, when Jay and I got married, we agreed that we were far too young to become parents (we were right!) and would put that off for the foreseeable future.  But a few months later, something happened… well, two things happened.  A couple we were close to had twin babies right about the same time that my birth control prescription ran out.

All of a sudden, we had baby fever and actively began “not preventing” having a baby.  When nothing happened right away, we weren’t too disappointed.  We were 19 and about to be off to school, so we were pretty patient, but by the time we were finished with school, we knew something must be wrong.  

We did all of the traditional things – taking my temperature, making charts, but finally, after nearly six years, we knew it was time to seek some medical help.

Since our insurance (and most for that matter) cover very little to help fix broken baby-makers, we entered an infertility study, hoping we might get lucky.  The study involved me having lots of tests and small procedures, taking a cocktail of different drugs, and getting twice-weekly blood tests.  Several women found success in the program, so even though I was seeing no changes, I continued on.  Since the study was about the medications and not about me, nothing was ever altered to meet my specific needs.  We just kept trudging through the same thing, month after month.

By this point, we were in our mid-twenties, and all of our friends had caught up in the marriage department, and it seemed like every month we were hearing of someone else’s good news.  I know my friends must have dreaded calling me to tell me they were expecting, but I would force myself to put my own situation aside and offer up genuine joy for them.  I would clap and smile, shop for presents, and even throw baby showers.   And I was happy for them, I really was.  At night though, I would allow myself just five minutes to completely fall apart.

Those were difficult days.  My disappointment was so heavy that it was weighing us down.  I couldn’t even say a prayer – about anything – without my heart and mind being focused on this one thing that I was starting to believe would never be mine.  Seriously, if you know someone going through this, hug them!  It is a lonely road to walk.

After nearly a year in this study, I was pretty burnt out and hopeless.  Finally, one day in early June, Jay and I were walking out of Baylor Hospital, and I turned to him and said, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

I cried.  He held me. He told me he loved me.  He told me not to worry and that God had a plan for us.  He said that somewhere there would be a baby who would need us as much as we needed him (or her), that God would give us the desires of our hearts, and that, perhaps in a way we couldn’t understand, He was already working it out.

Later, when looking at medical paperwork, we would see that this was the very day that Micah was conceived.

To be continued….

Don't worry... I promise there is a happy ending!