Lent Day 5: A new season of motherhood (part II)

I came from a large family so I always sort of thought that I’d have kids at some point but when or how many was never that clear to me.

 I’ve always had my eyes on trying to understand my call.

What am I supposed to do and be in this world?
 What can I offer?

 My heart ached for the poor and marginalized and I constantly tried taking inventory of my strengths to understand where and how I could make a difference.

I poured myself into preparing.

 Getting married was a leap of faith. Opening my life to walk with someone else involved closing many doors. He was an engineer working on cutting edge biomedical research. I had prepared myself for a life of work in the poorest and most remote places of our planet. What call could God possibly have for the two of us together? 

And as I struggled with this, Eddie came into my life.

My first born. Motherhood carved into my soul. Teaching me new levels of sacrifice and love. Patience and acceptance. And call continued to nag at me. Raising Eddie was now certainly part of my call. Giving him wings to find his place in this world. But who was I now, as a mother?

We moved.
Bought a house.
 Had another baby.
 Started a company.

 In each turn, I followed life. I leaned into a path presented to me and gave every ounce of myself to it.  Motherhood was amazing and there were moments that I could see myself with 13 kids in a big noisy house that was full of love and learning and passion for all we could do together in the world. There were also times that were so hard, and I was stretched so thin, I wondered if really this was the path that I was supposed to be on. I felt lost and tossed by the waves of life.

 And then came Philip… I was terrified. Andrew was a hard baby. The startup was young and demanding. I was working all the time… how could I possibly have space for one more?

Grace.

God met me that Easter and reminded me that I am not alone on this journey and that I was in fact exactly where I was supposed to be. It wasn’t as romantic or exciting as running around the world, but there were deeper lessons of faith in store for me. Humility, acceptance, grace, forgiveness, and sacrifice. I was being called deeper. And deeper I went.

Along came Miles… as I welcomed him into our family, I realized how much I had grown. How comfortable I was in motherhood, and how it was almost easy to fall on my face and pick myself up again. I had learned a lot about getting over myself and leaning into love.

 After Miles was born, people often said “Wow, four boys, you gonna try for a girl?”

 Truth was I struggled with that. There was a piece of me that was happy where I was. Happy with my four boys and the new world of engineering and science that they were beckoning me into. I was 35 when I had Miles. It was a good age to be done. But I had overcome so much, laid down so much of myself, there was totally room in my life for another little person if one came along. And if I’m going to be perfectly honest, there was some tiny piece that did want a daughter. I’m so close to my mom and there are so many things that you can’t share the same way with sons – wedding dresses, births, planning family holidays…

So, we decided to do what we had done. Prevent pregnancy, but not close the door to it completely.

 In 2017, I was diagnosed with an auto-immune disorder. Doctors recommended a medication that suppresses the immune system as a way to sort of “re-boot” things. Miles was young and still full of germs, so I decided to delay treatment until he was a bit older.

Last year, I had quite a few flares and spent a lot of the year sick or in pain leading me to decide it was time to consider taking the medicine. I went in for the appointment with the rheumatologist who discussed options and plans and we put together a plan to start treatment following the flu season since there was no immediate needs to start sooner.

First item on the checklist she handed me was to determine a method for permanent birth control. The medications recommended cause birth defects and infertility and it is highly recommended that you complete your family before starting. It hit me a little hard to read that.

I realized that the piece of me that wanted another baby was a little bigger than I admitted to myself. Ulrich and I talked it over. He felt the same way. It was hard to actually say we were done. But honestly, we were both turning 40, life was finally getting easier. It felt like the right thing to do. So, we made our peace with it.

 Holidays came and went. We started potty training Miles and celebrated the end of diapers in our life. We started thinking about all the things that were coming our way – backpacking trips, science fairs and all the other things you do with “big kids.” I bought jeans and started thinking again about call.

What does God have in store for the 6 of us?

And with life finally settling down, I scheduled a series of appointments to start tackling my health. 

Then..

A month ago…

I woke up in the middle of the night. Overcome by the strongest sensation.

I knew I was pregnant. I can’t tell you how I knew. Maybe I’ve just been pregnant enough times. But I knew I was. My rational brain laughed as I thought through the actual probability of this – maybe 0.001% but didn’t matter what the chances were, my heart knew otherwise.

The next day I bought a pregnancy test. You are supposed to wait until morning, but I wanted to dispel the feeling and prove to myself that this couldn’t possibly be true so I took the test right away, in the middle of the afternoon.

PREGNANT

 A feeling of shame washed over me.
 I could hear a 1,000 voices yelling – how could you let this happen?
Don’t you know how to prevent this?

I wanted to justify how careful we’d been. I wanted to publish a brochure with all the information about effectiveness rates of various forms of birth control. I wanted to wear a sign that vindicated me.
I couldn’t bring myself to tell Ulrich.
I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone.
I couldn’t even bring myself to think that much about it.

In modern life, we assume control of things like life and death are in our hands. Medicine is amazing and we know so much about so much. So we grow arrogant. In some ways, we think we can take God's place.

We think we can control life and death.

Most people won’t get pregnant if they do something to try to prevent it and most people will get pregnant if they “try” to. So it’s easy to think that people who don’t follow this pattern have done something “wrong.” I’ve walked alongside so many people who struggled so long with infertility. They did everything right and odds were on their side that a baby would come --- but it didn’t.

There is not much you can say as they work through the heartbreak. Only hold space for the place they are in and all the feels that come with it. Shame is a common feeling. So is isolation. Feeling like their bodies are broken. It’s so hard.

On the other side, I’ve heard of vasectomies reversing and surprise triplets. Conceptions that have occurred on just about every type of birth control. When you run a website about sperm, you hear strange conception story out there. And trust me, there are things that happen that really defy science. There’s a lot of confusion and anger, judgement and acceptance that happens in those journeys too.

 Nothing in medicine is 100%. Life is a force to be reckoned with. Sickness, health, life, death, outcomes – these are all measured with odds. We want so hard to resolve uncertainty in our lives, especially when it comes to the big things. But miracles and tragedies happen and we struggle with that.

Medicine actually can’t control the process.
We are participants.

We can do things to shift odds in our favor…
 But life is a gift. It is a miracle. 

And to live and breath every day is a small miracle.
So are babies.

 And as I started to brush aside shame, fear and frustration set in.

I had just made peace with our family just how it is.

I am ready to move on, how could I start over?
Dammit, I just bought jeans.
What about all the big kid adventures?

What if this baby isn’t healthy? Odds of genetic defects rise by orders of magnitude as you get older. What about my health? This baby will be born just after my 40th birthday – which officially makes this a high risk pregnancy.

I gave myself a few weeks to let it all sink in.
 And peace came to me. 
I went in for a dating ultrasound.
I told Ulrich.
Then… I told Andrew.

 Andrew loves babies.

 He was over the moon. His eyes lit up and he was overcome with joy. He reminded me how joyful and amazing this whole thing is.

 And so, heading into lent, I had a new journey handed to me.

 And, as all my journeys to date, God walks with me and I couldn’t be more excited to see what is in store for us this time.