Our Miracle Baby
It took many years for God to guide our hearts to a place that we wanted children. When He did change our hearts, we were unable to conceive. Through the process of infertility, our desire to be parents grew, but so did our questions. Why is this so hard? Why can’t we conceive? Why does it seem so easy for everyone else? What is God trying to teach us through the process?
Now that we are holding our 1 month old daughter, hindsight allows us to see God’s timing and perfect plan more clearly. We prayed for answers to our questions, for a baby, and we were covered in prayer literally around the world. After three years of ‘trying’ to get pregnant, we were reunited with one of Pete’s childhood friends who is a Nurse Practitioner at a fertility center in San Diego, California (about 1 hour from where we live). She took the time to explain various options and really encouraged us to come in and meet with a doctor at her center. We had been considering in-vitro fertilization (IVF) as an option for about one year, and had already met with two other doctors in our area. Neither felt right. We connected with this new doctor immediately and were comfortable moving forward with IVF.
We saw God’s hand at work in many ways throughout the past year. Two signs of God’s provision and faithfulness stood out in the process.
The first sign happened the day we were going to find out how many healthy embryos we had after two different procedures. We started with a smaller number than we had hoped for, which made it difficult to maintain hope as our number decreased each day when we received the call from the doctor. During this time of waiting, Katie was reminded of the story of Gideon through several blogs and two books she was reading. The story of Gideon demonstrates that God’s strength and power is not limited by numbers. God commanded Gideon to decrease the size of his army to a point that the proceeding military victory could only be seen as God’s hand at work, not the power of man. This provided Gideon the opportunity to believe in God’s promise even though the numbers seemed against him. Ultimately, we learned that we had four healthy embryos four years, to the exact day, from the time that we stood at Gideon’s Spring in Israel (in 2014). We trusted God that this number was sufficient to enable us to start a family. God knew our hearts and our hopes and we were reminded that our small number was God’s number. Our God is faithful and he lavishes us with reminders that we are loved.
The second sign occurred after we transferred our first embryo. Pete felt called to read and pray Ezekiel 37 over and over again. In Ezekiel 37:5-6 it says, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’ This became our prayer – that God would cause breath to enter our baby and that he/she (we didn’t know our baby’s gender at the time) would live! When Katie took her first pregnancy test two weeks after the embryo transfer, it was the first time in our lives that we have seen a positive pregnancy test. The test we took is very specific – it measures the exact number of the pregnancy hormone hCG. This is important to note, because we took a second pregnancy test 2 days later to see that the level of this hormone was continuing to rise. It rose significantly, from 1,250 to 3737. Some may call this a coincidence, but the fact that God put Ezekiel 37 on our hearts, and later confirmed our pregnancy by this exact number was a sign of God’s faithfulness and attention to every detail. This gave us great confidence moving forward in our pregnancy.
Our journey to start a family is different than most, but infertility and thus infertility treatment is becoming more and more common. We thank God for the opportunity that we had to successfully complete IVF.
Regarding some of the questions that God stirred up in our hearts during this process. Every challenge presents an opportunity to doubt God or to trust Him and hold on tighter. It is natural to doubt, and we definitely did our share of doubting over the 3 years of trial. But as God shows himself through signs and wonders, we can’t help but believe and hold on tight. We also pray and believe that this experience, as with all trials, will help us to be better partners, better parents, and better friends. And we specifically want to be a source of hope and light to those who are struggling with infertility.