Inconceivable Read online

  The money wasn’t the only aspect of IVF that made us think carefully before proceeding. After we left the doctor’s office, we had to seriously consider what our Church said about our options. Before we entered the world of infertility, I hadn’t thought much about the Catholic Church’s stand on this issue; I understood the Church’s condemnation of anything that takes procreation out of the intimate relationship between a man and a woman, but I had hoped that IVF was an issue I would never have to grapple with. After all, we were a strong Catholic family, and our choices about how to spend our time and raise our children had always been consistent with our religious beliefs. In addition, I had worked my entire career in Catholic schools, and Sean was raised in a devout Catholic family. Our boys attended a Catholic school, and nearly all of our friends were people we knew from church or school. Considering how we lived our lives, we couldn’t lightly dismiss church doctrine on the subject.

  Yet after examining the Church’s opposition to assisted reproductive technology, we found that stance discriminatory. The Church is definitely pro-family. IVF helps committed couples build the families they so desire. What could be immoral about that? If we followed its underlying logic, the church doctrine was in essence saying that God wanted to deny us a larger family simply because I had a disease (endometriosis). That seemed ridiculous to us. My eggs fertilized fine; they just couldn’t navigate their way through the fallopian tubes to implant in my womb. IVF allows embryos to go directly to the uterus. Miraculous technology. God-given technology, we believed.

  To us, it seemed like the Church might eventually accept this technology and all the love and joy it brings to couples who want so desperately to bring more Catholic children into the world. Also, it was clear to us that other families in our parish had wrestled with this issue and decided that they did not agree with the Church’s opinion about assisted reproductive technology either. Our boys’ Catholic grade school was full of fraternal twins and triplets!

  After going back and forth on the issue many times, we finally decided to try IVF. We had no intention of ever challenging the Church regarding its stance on it. We just decided to move quietly onward. If God wanted to take it up with us later, we decided, then so be it.

  Our doctor was so gracious and understanding as we struggled with this issue, as well as with the questions that remained after we made our decision. Of all the professionals we encountered on our long quest to have more children, our first fertility doctor was among the kindest and most patient, and we are grateful to him for his generosity. He sat for hours with us answering every question we had in painstaking detail. I never left an appointment with him feeling that he thought our questions were ignorant or that he’d become impatient with our inability to decide. Instead, with his gentle, kindly face and honest blue eyes, he gave us the feeling that everything we asked was reasonable and that he would respect our wishes.

  Once we decided to consider IVF, we asked for an appointment to discuss how to ensure that the procedure would be conducted in a way that fit our values. “How many embryos could we create in an in vitro cycle?” Sean asked our doctor.

  “Successful cycles yield around twelve to fifteen embryos.”

  We looked at each other. That seemed like a lot!

  “Are all of those embryos potential lives?” Sean asked.

  “No. Not every embryo develops. Some fail to thrive naturally. We would hope that you would have a nice batch of healthy embryos to choose from at the time of transfer.”

  “What happens to the embryos that are alive but we don’t transfer?”

  “They can be cryopreserved, donated, or discarded,” the doctor said.

  “Well, we certainly can’t discard them. And I can’t imagine donating them to another family. They are our potential children,” Sean said, and I nodded vigorously.

  “We’ll just transfer every last one of them, until there aren’t any more left,” I suggested.

  So it was settled. We’d go forward with IVF, and if I did become pregnant with that first fresh transfer, we would bank the frozen embryos, hoping they might result in more children at a later date. One way or another, we’d make sure that all our embryos had a chance at life.

  When, in August 2006, we found out I was pregnant after our first IVF transfer, we told no one. My new ob-gyn, Dr. Elizabeth Read, suspected I had blood-clotting problems that had probably contributed to our troubles conceiving and the two miscarriages I’d had. We wanted to make sure the pregnancy was viable before we broke the news. She ordered tests to confirm her suspicions. We were so hopeful. With the pregnancy and Dr. Read’s new theory, we felt as though at last we’d figured it out.

  At Thanksgiving that year we wrapped up an ultrasound picture and gave it to my parents just before dinner. It took them a minute, but when they finally realized what it was, my mom burst into tears of joy. Our boys, then ages twelve and nine, were ecstatic to have another child in the family.

  At my twelve-week doctor’s appointment to get my blood test results, Dr. Read ordered an ultrasound. I watched the screen eagerly. I saw our baby’s arms, legs, and head, and I searched for the familiar flutter of the heartbeat. I saw no movement of any kind. I thought maybe I was looking at a still image, until the technician hastily switched off the monitor and yelled for Dr. Read.

  My doctor came to my side when the image went back up. She gripped my left arm, as if trying to stop me from falling off the table. No one spoke. We all just stared at my baby. Finally I said aloud what I needed to say: “My baby is dead.”

  Bad news has a sound. For me, it pierces the air like a fire alarm, flooding my senses. I called Sean, and he was there within minutes. Dr. Read tracked down the results of my blood tests, and her suspicions were confirmed. I did have two clotting disorders, and she said they probably contributed to my miscarriage. With our next pregnancy, she recommended that I take blood thinners.

  Our next pregnancy? I thought that it was absurd to assume I’d ever get pregnant again. We had a new plan of attack, and a few embryos in storage, but first I’d have to achieve a pregnancy, and that was no small task.

  After the miscarriage, I entered a world of darkness. I wanted my baby back. I was trying to put Christmas together for my family, but I cried almost every day. With every tear, the wound in my heart felt bigger. I called my fertility doctor to report the miscarriage, and we decided to try again in February with the two frozen embryos left from the previous IVF cycle. When that transfer was unsuccessful, we decided to schedule another IVF cycle in the spring.

  The day after our egg retrieval in April, the phone rang earlier than I had expected. The embryologist’s voice had that unmistakable tone of doom. None of our eggs had fertilized, which almost never happens. I couldn’t believe that the cycle was dead in the water and our $8,000 check for the procedure hadn’t even cleared our bank.

  We felt forsaken. We had worked so hard, done everything right, spent a small fortune, and were left holding empty hearts. Our doctor couldn’t explain the failures. I couldn’t imagine walking away after we had invested so much time and money. What if the next cycle yielded the golden egg? We still had time, didn’t we? It couldn’t end with this.

  I was wrestling with this when I attended a women’s retreat that was structured to deepen the participants’ relationship with God. Each of us was assigned an area of faith to speak about on the final day. My topic was discipleship, which meant learning how to discern and follow God’s will. I had no idea how I would speak about this issue. I am anything but a follower. I am more of a “do it myself-er come hell or highwater-er.” Yet I recognized that I was at a time in my life when my perspective on things was changing. I asked Sean to attend my witness so we could discuss it afterward. He couldn’t enter the room with me and the other women, but he was allowed to listen in from the hallway.

  On the first day of the retreat, we were told to meditate on our lives as we sat in the chapel and to consider handing our troubles over to God. Let go
and let God. I scowled at those words. I thought “let go and let God” was a load of crap. I was much more in the camp of “pray to God, but row to shore.” Or have a plan and ask God for help along the way. But something hit me as I sat in the pew. I suddenly thought discipleship might be a good direction for me and for our family. Perhaps it was God’s will that I not have another child and that I stop draining myself and my family with the costs of a hopeless quest. I made a commitment to myself to be happy and quit chasing my dream of more children. I wrote down my promise to “let go and let God,” tucked it in a box, and laid it at the altar as a promise.

  Later that afternoon I went to the front of the meeting room to address the other women on the retreat.

  “A good disciple listens to the word of God and spreads the good news to all those who listen. But I am not a preacher. A good disciple lives a life that would make Jesus proud, but I am a sinner. A good disciple trusts in the Lord and uses the gift of life to make the world a better place. But I am a dream chaser, running in circles, trying to get what I want from my life. What if my body can’t do what I want it to do? Does that make me a failure? Not if I’m a disciple. Not if I listen, surrender, and move on to a better, more peaceful life.

  “This morning I folded my dream for a baby in a paper. I folded the dream and gave it to God. If God means for me to have more children, it will happen. If God means for me to have only two children, then that will happen. I am a disciple. I will follow, learn, and move on to a more peaceful life. To do anything else would be shameful. So today, right here in front of all of you, I give up. I’ll let go and let God because I am a disciple.”

  And give up is exactly what I did. For the first time, I believed I had the strength to walk away from my infertility struggle, although doing so made me uneasy. Sometimes the decision to walk away from struggle feels like a release, as if a weight has been lifted off one’s shoulders. Giving up on our quest for a larger family felt sad, as if I’d failed. One burden had been lifted, but it had been replaced by another: a heavy feeling of defeat.

  SEAN

  I was not allowed in the room where Carolyn was speaking, so I stood in a dark hallway outside listening through a six-inch crack in the door. Carolyn spoke about our experience with infertility, the failures, month after month, year after year, that beat the hell out of us. I teared up as I listened to her close the door on our childbearing years. To have your partner give up on a dream is a failure for both of you. I didn’t really want to give up. As I walked down the hallway and out to the car after she was done, hope seemed to be leaving with me.

  I was partially to blame for this failure. I’d been the one who’d kept saying our family was fine the way it was. I had not wanted to keep spending hard-earned money when we weren’t getting results. I wanted to know when enough was enough. So one would have thought I’d be relieved by Carolyn’s words. Instead, I felt sad and guilty.

  I remembered our last conversation on the subject a few weeks before as we lay in bed after the boys had gone to sleep. This was our sacred time, when we always talked about what mattered most.

  “Drew and Ryan are beautiful and healthy,” I said. “Why can’t this be our family?”

  “Sean, you don’t understand. Our family is supposed to be bigger than this. The doctors have never said we can’t have more children. Never.”

  “I am grateful for what we have instead of being sad about what we don’t have. We spend more money every month on fertility than we do on our mortgage. We have nothing to show for it but agony and tears. Look at what this is doing to us.”

  “We are great parents, and great parents should have more children if they want them,” Carolyn said.

  “I am not opposed to more children. But at what cost?”

  Was it frustrating spending so much money and emotional energy with no results? Hell, yes! Was it hurting our relationship? Yes, it was. For me it was a roller coaster. At times I was really supportive, and at times, needing a break, I would block Carolyn’s efforts.

  After her witness ceremony, I felt guilty for putting up barriers and partially responsible for this sad defeat. Perhaps there had been one or two golden opportunities that we missed because I was dragging my feet.

  Then I found myself wondering if we still had a chance. If so, I thought, we should give it another shot. I didn’t feel it was my place to urge Carolyn to try again. She’d been through so much already. And of course, it was her body and her health at risk. I had to acknowledge that part of the reason I hesitated to keep trying for another child was this very risk.

  My mind drifted back to the night Ryan was born, when I’d made a silent pledge to myself to never put her through a birth like that again. The doctors worked twelve hours to stabilize Carolyn and then rushed her in for an emergency C-section. As I paced back and forth outside the delivery room, I prayed that she and the baby would be okay. Then suddenly the doors swung open, and the emergency neonatal crew wheeled out our little boy in an incubator. I had thirty seconds to introduce myself, and then they whisked him away. Mother and baby survived, but the doctor said that had it been thirty years earlier, I would have walked out of the hospital by myself.

  When I finally was allowed to see Carolyn, she was weak and so groggy that she had yet to learn the sex of our baby. I whispered that we had a boy, and she smiled. The sad thing was that neither of us was present for the delivery. I was in a hallway, and she was knocked out. As I walked out of her room, Carolyn’s dad pulled me aside and said, “No more babies.” Point taken.

  Since then, Carolyn and I had convinced ourselves many times that we were done; then hope would return and we would try again. Now it looked like we were finally done. But I couldn’t help thinking that, with a new fertility doctor, we might fulfill our quest.

  When Carolyn returned from the retreat, I shared with her how her speech had affected me. We laughed about how amazing it was that I was now the one pushing the idea of trying again. After a long talk, we agreed to give it another shot with a new clinic. It looked like hope really did spring eternal.

  Carolyn researched the top doctors in our area, and we made an appointment with one at a practice in Cleveland who had an excellent reputation. As we drove there, we felt optimistic. The receptionist ushered us to a patient room, and when the doctor finally arrived, she seemed rushed and behind schedule. She paged through our file, as if for the first time, while Carolyn sprinted through an abbreviated version of her fertility history. The doctor seemed flabbergasted by our story.

  “You’ve certainly tried a lot of stim cycles without success,” she observed. “Why is there such a big gap here in your treatment history?”

  This didn’t seem relevant. The tone of her voice implied that she didn’t understand why we were here. What in the world is going on? I thought. I didn’t expect that we’d have to explain our longing for another child at a fertility clinic.

  “I think you should consider giving up,” the doctor said. “Do you really need to have a third child?”

  Suddenly she slammed our file shut.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t help you. Feel blessed with the children you have,” she said as she stood up and walked out the door.

  The elevator doors hadn’t even shut before we looked at each other in disbelief.

  “What the hell was that?” I said.

  Clearly we’d just had an appointment with the “anti-fertility” doctor. That kind of advice had to hurt the practice’s revenue!

  Carolyn’s dad always says that his surefire way to get his girl to do something is to tell her he doesn’t think she can do it. “Carolyn, I bet you can’t dock our boat by yourself.” So she did it (at the age of eight). “Carolyn, I bet you can’t install that snow blade on that tractor.” She did (at the age of thirty-nine). “Carolyn, I bet you can’t swim five miles in the lake.” She did (at the age of ten, behind a rowboat). Proving people wrong has long been a favorite pastime of hers. There are some things she won’t do. “Car
olyn, I bet you can’t rock-climb!” “Uh…you’re right. No interest.” But if her baby were at the top of that rock, she’d scale it in record time.

  For Carolyn and me, the Cleveland doctor’s rejection was like a rallying cry. There is nothing that can bring two people together like a common enemy. Carolyn began a new search for a doctor who would take our case. I could not wait to send that doctor in Cleveland a Christmas card showing her our three children.

  In the first five minutes of the meeting with the next doctor, he said that he knew how he could get us pregnant. He showed us charts illustrating his impressive success rates. As we walked out of his office on our way to the billing manager, I leaned over and said to Carolyn, “We have arrived in the major leagues.”

  Once the billing manager showed us the fee schedule, I swallowed hard and thought, He better be really good.

  He was.

  Under his care, we had stellar results on the first try. Of the fifteen eggs retrieved, fourteen fertilized, and because of the large size of the batch, the lab froze five the day after fertilization. That left nine to watch. As the embryos grew, three stopped developing, so we were left with six to choose from on the day of our transfer. Our doctor was thrilled with the quality of our embryos and recommended transferring only two since, at that point, the pregnancy success rate had soared to 80 percent. We agreed, and five days after the egg retrieval the doctor transferred two embryos into Carolyn. We assumed that the remaining embryos would be frozen as we had instructed. We were very pleased.

  Two weeks later, we found out that Carolyn was pregnant. When she called me at the office with the news, I held in my enthusiasm. A positive pregnancy test was certainly no guarantee of a baby for us. When I arrived home that night, we simply embraced each other and kept the news to ourselves.

  I think of the pregnancy that brought us Mary Kate as an eight-month-long prayer. Carolyn and I prayed before every ultrasound and doctor’s appointment. Every night I prayed silently before I went to sleep and sometimes spontaneously during the day asking God to keep Carolyn and the baby safe and healthy.