So, the story of my life seems to somehow find its way centered around a particular theme, waiting. As many of you know I had to wait for my husband and that experience alone and how I over came it is what started this blog in the first place. Although, we can’t see the value of our current tribulations while in them, I can say from my own experience that going through storms have certainly allowed life changing testimony’s to be birthed and what greater reward could there be when God is glorified even when we struggle. So I say all that to say this, waiting on a husband was an extremely hard journey, but God! He blessed me with an amazing husband and that brings me to my most recent struggle. The reason behind the blog I am writing today.
Let me tell you, I thought my “They That Wait” season was over y’all. I waited on my man and he finally came so everything was perfect, so I thought. I just knew everything was going to fall right into place. I moved to a wonderful new city, had an amazing job come my way, I was also teaching on a collegiate level, which was another passion slash dream of mine and I couldn’t complain at all! Not to mention my blog titled “My Testimony: God Sent my Husband” was gaining exposure with over 20,000 and was number one on google when searching for waiting for a husband testimony. I guess you could say I was content. I was good… Now, I would like to pause right here for a moment, if you noticed previously I said I was content and I’ve come to the realization that, although contentment is a very comfy, cozy place to be in, whenever I find my place on contenments luxurious, velvety settee a friend by the name of Shakeher (pronounced Shaker) comes to join me, who literally comes to Shake me up a bit. Maybe you’ve been visited by her too. This time around my Shaker came in the form of having a child.
Who doesn’t dream of having a beautiful family with the man they’ve been blessed with? We didn’t want to jump right in and have children right away, but we wanted to have a family within the first couple of years. I remember having it all planned out. The first year we would plan to have fun and let it be all about us then year two we would start and get pregnant and have the baby soon. Well, that didn’t exactly happen. After coming off birth control I was told I’d get pregnant really quickly especially since I was just taking pills. I really thought we’d be expecting just a couple months after being birth control free. When two months, then three months, then four months, then five months passed I started to get a little frustrated. No one told me it would take me 6 or more tries. After getting 5 negative test results when you so eagerly anticipate that amazing positive you begin to feel a little doubt creep in. It certainly didn’t help that I kept seeing friends announce their great news all over Facebook. It started to remind me of the days I longed for a husband. I saw everyone around me meeting their husbands and posting their wedding pictures or just pictures of their man and mine was no where in sight.
My husband and I decided we would really come together and pray for pregnancy. We knew the Lord was the only one that could get us to that point. We were still very optimistic so we kept trying. 6 months turned into 7, 7 turned into 8, and before we knew it we were at a year and still no baby! I grew so weary! By this time I felt pretty low. I had so many thoughts going through my head, like what is wrong with me? Maybe I’m not meant to be a mother? Not to mention everybody around me kept asking about us having a baby and what on earth were we waiting on. It was a constant reminder that we were not pregnant and everyone’s expectation was for us to be. I can’t tell you how supportive my husband was. He never once doubted that we would have a family one day. Even when we couldn’t see how it was going to happen he still held on to his faith and had to help pick mine up when it was running low. This is why you need a Godly husband ladies! You will need that support in your marriage. I promise!
When we hit the one year mark I started to look elsewhere for help. I contacted one of my doctors who had been monitoring my pituitary gland for several years. For those of you who are unsure of what that is, it is a gland found at the base of our brain that controls the hormones we produce in our body. My pituitary gland had a tiny benign tumor, also known as an adenoma, on it that had minimal impact on a certain hormone in my body that regulates breast milk production and our cycles. My adenoma fortunately only had a small impact on me and did not have to be surgically removed like some. So you probably can see where this is going. I thought immediately that I was having trouble getting pregnant because of my pituitary gland. I remembered my doctor telling me a long time ago when I was single that if I ever had trouble getting pregnant one day to let him know and he could prescribe a medication that would lower my prolactin (the hormone I mentioned earlier). This usually allows his patients to get pregnant immediately. I decided it was time to pay him a visit since it wasn’t happening on our own. My doc ended up testing my hormones again and determined I would be a good candidate for the medication. I knew things were finally about to happen for us! This was the missing link to the puzzle, I thought.
I can remember the day I filled my prescription with my wonder drug. I was excited! I had a new burst of hopefulness. I got the drug home and decided to read the label do I’d know exactly what I was taking and surprisingly my overwhelming joy turned into immediate worry. This drug that I was supposed take was a neuro drug, meaning it worked on the brain. I am very particular about the medications I take and I’ve never taken a drug that caused my brain to work differently. The side effects were down right scary. I should have known I would have apprehension about this medication when my doctor ends the conversation with please let me know as soon as possible if you notice any sudden changes in your mood or if you feel depressed. As I read more into it, I saw that there were some reports, although rare, of people having psychotic break downs, others had a desire to gamble. Needless to say, after reading about this drug I didn’t want anything to do with it! So now I was faced with what to do? I was lost. I prayed about it and decided I would hold off on taking it and if I felt better about it I would.
Now I’m going to fast forward this story to month 18, which was October of 2019. I was prescribed the medication around month 12 and I reluctantly ended up taking the medication. After 6 months of taking it I was done. I wasn’t going to put any medication in my body I didn’t feel 100% comfortable with. I couldn’t keep taking my self through the mental stress I had everytime I ingested one of those pills. That’s just me though, others might feel totally fine, and that’s ok. I just didn’t want any drug altering my brains chemicals. So here I am a year and a half later, no baby. However, the medication did get my body regulated, but I still was not pregnant. The only other option we had was to see a fertility specialist! I never in a million years thought I’d have to visit this option, but the truth of the matter is millions of women are faced with this decision everyday and there’s nothing to be ashamed of. It doesn’t mean that we are less than a woman. It took me awhile to accept this new direction for my life, but I was willing to do what I needed to do to have a baby!
The fertility specialist was very insightful and had a list of options for us to try and all of them just about made me want to jump out of my seat! I can remember the doctor explaining to me how he wanted to thoroughly examine my uterus and ovaries first, and how this involved him inserting a catheter through my cervix and filling my uterus with saline solution to see what he needed to see! His description of this procedure scared the mess out of me! The ultrasound of my ovaries was uncomfortable enough since the doc had nothing close to a gentle touch. He also prescribed a medication to make me ovulate, but I’ll admit I never took the drug because my cycles were more than regular at this point. I simply didn’t see a need for yet another drug in my body. During this time my husband also had some tests done that didn’t necessarily say he was the culprit, but I still felt we needed to explore his side and not just me only. So my husband decided to try some vitamins that were advertised as a fertile booster and from there we fasted and prayed and waited on God. We said if we were not pregnant by the new year, January 2020 then we’d revisit the fertility specialist and I would take the ovulation medication prescribed. Now this itswhere it gets good. You know God had to show out right. Would you believe after 2 months we were pregnant! I literally remember the day like it was yesterday. We got the news just 5 days before the new year! My God!
It was Christmas day 2019 when I began to feel slightly ill. I had a low grade fever and cold like symptoms, which included nonstop sneezing. I decided to take a spare pregnancy test I had on reserve to make sure I wasn’t pregnant before taking come cold medication. I knew my cycle was on schedule to arrive the following week and I had gotten in the habit of not taking any medication from ovulation to the start of my cycle in case I just so happened to be pregnant. Since I was feeling ill, I wanted to break this habit and take some medication, but I did not want to do so if I was pregnant. Let me tell you I was really looking for the negative response, like I always get. I just wanted to be in the all clear to take my meds, but this time when I took the test an extremely faint, very faint, double blue line was present. I literally had to squint my eyes to see it. I decided to be absolutely sure I better take the test again in the morning with fresh am wee. I sent my husband on a store run to grab some more tests so I could be ready to rock and roll in the morning. So, it’s about 5am the next morning and I wake up having to use the bathroom. Why not now, I thought. I grabbed the stick and peed. I usually wait until I’m completely done before taking a peek at the stick, but this time I looked sooner and to my ultimate surprise I saw two dark pink lines staring back at me! I was pregnant y’all!!! What! I couldn’t believe it. I ran into the bedroom with the stick in hand and waved in front of my sleeping husbands face! I literally climbed on top of him with the pregnancy test two inches from his face. What a beautiful surprise to start our day and the rest of our lives!
I thank God for blessing us with our little angel! Gianna has been an absolute blessing to us. I pray that our story will bless many who read this and may you too finally get that thing you’ve been praying and waiting for. All it took was faith, prayer, and submission. After seeking other avenues to get pregnant we realized we really wanted to try God first. Letting go of the medications the doctor’s recommended to help me get pregnant when I wanted nothing more than for that to happen took a huge leap of faith. That leap of faith got us where we are today. Keep the faith and try God now!
Love,
If He Did It For Me, He Will Do It For You