The Beginning of Our Family

January is a month that represents so much for our sweet family. Not only has it been a month of complete heartache and distress, as it was in January 2017 that I first found out about my troubles with infertility, but it ended up being the month that changed our lives forever. January 2019, three full years after we first started trying for a baby, exactly two years following my diagnosis of infertility and after nearly giving up on the idea of pregnancy following three failed rounds of fertility treatment and many months of disappointments, we found out we were pregnant.

My husband and I had visited a fertility clinic to see what our options for conceiving with medical assistance were, and we had signed up to try an insemination procedure which the doctors said would—at the best possible outcome—give us a thirty percent chance of conception. After undergoing tons of tests to get me ready to begin, we left not necessarily feeling hopeful, but in agreement that this was what we needed to do in order to move on from one of the most painful experiences of our lives, even if that meant we received another closed door.

A week later, a few days before I was supposed to go back to the doctor, I started feeling unbearably sick to my stomach and was tired and achy, and after passing it off as a cold for a few days, I finally got to the point where I could no longer ignore my mind telling me it was something more. We picked up a pregnancy test one evening and before we even got home I was already calling myself stupid for buying it—because of course I wasn’t pregnant—my main argument against it being that the clinic we’d been to had just done dozens of tests on me and pregnancy was their specialty. There was no way they wouldn’t have caught it. We had an unspoken agreement just to not talk about having bought test once we got home, and we both pretended it didn’t happen.

I tried to shake the idea of the test, but finally resolved to just go ahead and take it, because I was driving myself crazy anyway. The results of that test changed our lives forever. The most beautiful tiny blue plus sign I’ve ever seen. An answer to our 1,095-day-long prayer.

(Here is the moment I bombarded my husband with pregnancy tests!)

The following week, instead of returning to the clinic to begin the insemination process, we were seeing our sweet babe on the ultrasound for the very first time, only the size of a pea, yet her tiny heart was already beating so fast, a heart God had created just for us, a symbol of his profound grace right there for us to witness with our own eyes, a heart that we would get to cherish here on earth and watch grow and develop and pour out love to those around it. 

Not only had God chosen to make what many had believed was not possible happen within me, but He’d chosen to give our daughter to us before we’d begun the procedure. Not only that, but our calculated conception date was exactly three years out from the date we first agreed to start trying—our one year wedding anniversary.

Now, January 2020, our beautiful babe is four months old and sometimes I still can’t believe she’s real. My heartache is now just a fading memory, one that is hard to remember at all as I study her perfect, tiny face. I know that God could have given her to us in any way He wanted. He could have worked through the clinic we’d visited to place her inside of me. But God chose our daughter to go against all the odds that were stacked against us, to be that tiny slim-to-none percentage of a chance of happening without medical assistance. He allowed us the privilege of having her—our sweet miracle that logically should never have happened.  

January was once a month of dread, as it was a constant reminder of yet another year passing and still finding myself in that season of waiting. And someday, it may represent another season of waiting for me. But for now, I will rejoice in this January that reminds me that this cold, dark month can represent new beginnings, new perspectives, renewed senses of passion and ambition. I pray that I will always remember this January of quiet reflection, of gazing upon the precious face of my daughter and knowing that she was once our slim-to-none chance, living proof that we have defied odds and witnessed miracles. She is our 1,095-day-long prayer received. Our reminder that seasons of darkness do eventually end, and that the warmth that comes from the light of a new season can be sweet enough to extinguish the pain of our heartache.

Life is good, and it is full of God’s goodness and grace. Seek it out and embrace it.

“Therefore, my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure, because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful one see decay. You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.”

-Psalm 16:9-11