When a Dream Dies

When your dreams die, you mourn.  My best friend has two beautiful boys, but because of some serious complications with her second baby, she knows they shouldn't get pregnant again.  She wanted more babies.  She wanted to experience pregnancy again.  She wanted to try for a baby girl. But that dream has died.  It doesn't make her any less grateful for the gifts God has given her in her two sons.  It doesn't make the possibility of adopting a little girl to add to her family any less beautiful.  But she's mourning.  There's a part of her heart that is broken.

I've been mourning, too.  We talked with my doctor a couple of weeks ago, and some realities for us became clear.

• The likelihood of us ever getting pregnant on our own is slim to none.

• If we are blessed with a pregnancy from our two embryos, we wouldn't be able to do another retrieval until I'm 35.  I'm already on the IVF protocol for a woman over 40.  In two or three years, we could do another retrieval and potentially end up with no embryos at all.  

• We could move forward now with another retrieval instead of the transfer, but we're broke. We can't go any farther into debt than we already are.

The cold, hard reality is that when we transfer these embryos, it will likely be the only time I am able to experience pregnancy, the only time I will be able to feel a baby inside my belly.  

My dreams of having a big family -- how I always imagined it -- are dying.  And I'm sad.  I'm mourning.

I know and fully believe that God can still bless us with a big family.  And if we are blessed with one or two babies from this transfer, I will be over the moon!  They will be everything to me.  My sadness now can't and won't take away from the blessing those babies would be to our lives.

But I've been mourning the loss of my dream.  The dream of birthing all of my babies.  The dream of feeling them kick and hiccup and do somersaults inside me.  The dreams I had before infertility. Before IVF. Before FSH levels and embryo gradings and the never ending pile of syringes and needles.

Some may doubt my faith in Him.  After all, if He wants to bless us with pregnancies and babies, He will.  And it's true.  He can bless us.  He has blessed us.  And He will continue to bless us.  But I don't believe my faith has to be void of my real, human feelings.  I have to allow myself to feel this pain.  I have to allow myself to mourn this.  And then I have keep moving forward, down the path He had planned for me before He knit me in my mother's womb.  And while we trust and we hope and we keep moving forward in His strength, there will be days that the grief overcomes me.  There will be days when I weep.  But I will continue trust in His Word.

...Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.  Psalm 30:5