A Big Announcement

            I don’t know if you have ever used the voice-to-text feature in your phone. I do rather frequently, and the funny thing is you get some strange results cause the phone has some strange hearing. Mikaela and I were having a discussion one evening and I was trying to convince her that I was not yet burnt out. She then asked if I would be burnt out in a year. In my naivete I confidently asserted that I wouldn’t be, and told my phone to set a reminder for a year later to remind me to tell her I wasn’t burnt out. Instead my phone set a reminder for Plums and Chicken. And so rather than change it, plums and chicken became our code for how we were doing.

            Of course, to understand why I might or might not have been burnt out, we have to back up. In March of 2016, we decided to switch our birth control method from the pill to natural family planning because we decided that loading Mikaela up with chemicals daily may not be our best choice. One result was that rather than having pseudo cycles caused by the pill, they stopped altogether. However, doctors say this is normal, so we waited the appropriate time to see if her cycles would start up again once her hormones stabilized from having been on the pill. Three months later, when that hadn’t happened, Mikaela went to her doctor to see what could be done. The doctor gave her a prescription that would hopefully jump start her system. It didn’t work. In the meantime, we decided that we would like to try and get pregnant. Of course that’s extremely difficult to do when

you aren’t having a cycle. So we upped the ante on trying to figure out what was wrong. Mikaela went to her doctor again, but this time we got the distinct impression that she was not getting the doctor’s full attention. And so we found a new doctor, one who specializes in natural infertility treatment and works a lot with people using natural family planning. Thing is, this seems like a quick process when I describe it in one paragraph, but so that you can get a timeline, we started NFP in March, we decided to try and get pregnant in September, and it was January 18th that we finally saw the new doctor. Five days later Mikaela asked be about being burnt out, and I started a year of having a weird reminder on my phone.

            Of course, I shouldn’t skip that doctor appointment, because that was the first time I heard of polycystic ovarian syndrome. Our new doctor guessed, based on her symptoms, and confirmed a month later with some tests, that this is what Mikaela had. PCOS is essentially when a woman has too many follicles producing estrogen on her ovaries. If you don’t know much about the hormones in a woman’s body, all those hormones that create her cycle and allow a woman to get pregnant work in tandem with each other. They have to rise and fall to trigger other hormones to rise and fall in order to make things happen. So rather than having a natural rhythm and rise and fall of estrogen and other hormones, her cycle gets frozen at an estrogen high point. This is what was happening with Mikaela. The good news was that we had a diagnosed problem that we could then try and fix, which is more than many couples struggling with infertility get. The bad news was this was only the beginning.

            It started with supplements. Taking a few pills here and there, timed specifically on the correct cycle days, and drinking a powder mixed into a drink twice a day. Then came tests. These were designed to get a more accurate read of where she was in her cycle so all the pills could be taken at the right time to give her body that rhythm, but they became uncomfortable, and in fact quite the hinderance since often times they would mean she would have to show up late, leave early, or sometimes even leave work in the middle of the day, no easy feat for a teacher. One blessing in all of this is that her principal was absolutely amazing. Whatever Mikaela needed, her principal recognized that it was more important than having to get someone to keep an eye on the kids for a few minutes in the morning. But that didn’t make the constant barrage of a variety of tests, scans, ultrasounds, and x-rays any less uncomfortable. And these extended for months, consistently disrupting our schedule, being especially difficult since most of this process was done while we were living in Washington, which was an hour drive from the hospital.

            None of the stuff we did, however, seemed to make any long term difference. All of the supplements, all of the diet changes, and all of the extra effort we put in to regulate her cycle never resulted in pregnancy. And, of course, there were two really frustrating and depressing things in the midst of this. The first was that every new thing promised good odds of working. We would look at whatever new medicine she was taking and people would be sharing their miracle stories about how they had been trying for years, then one month on whatever miracle product this was, and they were popping out kids like bunnies! And none of that worked for us. We were constantly having our hopes raised and then dashed. The other frustrating thing was watching everyone around us get pregnant. Whenever we’d see the sonogram on facebook, or see pictures of pink and blue, it was always devastating. And sometimes it was close personal friends, for whom we were extremely excited (instead of being people we don’t really know and would get irrationally frustrated about having kids when we couldn’t). Even when we were overjoyed to hear our friends announce their pregnancy, it always came with this stab of pain, this depression over being unable to have that ourselves, no matter what we did.

            And what we did continued to escalate. Supplements didn’t solve anything. Updating medicines didn’t solve anything. Not even at home shots (quite a stressful experience - thankfully we only had to do that once) did anything. And so finally we scheduled a surgery. Now the surgery has a higher success rate than the medications, but if you can avoid surgery you do that. But by the time we got to it surgery seemed like it was our last chance. It felt like a Hail Mary. Because with everything else that hadn’t worked, why would this be different? That was our mindset in early November. We had stopped thinking in terms of “when we have a child.” To some degree we had stopped thinking in terms of “if we have a child.” We started making plans for “when we give up on trying to have a child.” We were researching adoption agencies, we were discussing how long we would wait, what the cost would be. We were going through with the surgery more to make sure we had done all we could rather than in the expectation of it working.

            And so shortly before Thanksgiving, Mikaela underwent surgery. All in all, it was a rather simple procedure. Because she had too many follicles producing estrogen, they simply removed wedges out of her ovaries so that her count would be closer to normal. In addition, the doctor checked everything else out to make sure it looked healthy. We were happy to see no evidence of endometriosis or any other roadblocks to getting pregnant. The surgery went according to plan, and the doctor was pleased with the results, but then again he wasn’t laid up on the couch for a week recovering. Thanksgiving ended up being a very low-key affair, and would have been non-existent had not some of our friends invited us over. But two weeks later, Mikaela was fully recovered, and we were glad to have the surgery over with and taken care of. Then it was just a matter of waiting to see if with the change, her cycle regulated on its own. The doctor told us that it was likely that we would need to resume the medicines and supplements in order to get pregnant, but that they would be more effective after the surgery, and that we would wait a few months to see what happened. We scheduled an appointment for late February as a “what now?” in case nothing happened. Thankfully, we didn’t need that.

            In early December we got evidence that the surgery had at least regulated Mikaela’s cycle. Without medicine or supplement. Without any extra work. The surgery fixed at least one problem. And while that wasn’t a baby in the womb, we were excited. At the very least, the surgery meant that Mikaela wouldn’t have to spend her life making sure her cycle was properly regulated with extra medicine. At this point we were really looking at it as, what’s the best thing we can say about what’s happening. And that was a pretty exciting and fantastic thing.

            Just to review the timeline really quick, (since there’s a lot that’s gone on) this started in March of 2016, when we decided to switch off the pill and go to natural family planning. In September 2016, we agreed to start trying to conceive. But it wasn’t until January 2017 when we were able to see a fertility specialist, and February that we confirmed his diagnosis of PCOS, and started taking corrective measures. From February through October of 2017 we tried various medicines, supplements, and hormones in order to try and conceive, all to no avail. In November Mikaela had surgery, and in December we found out that the surgery had some small positive effect. And we were swiftly approaching my January reminder, “Plums and Chicken,” that year-later reminder I had made so I could tell Mikaela that I wasn’t burnt out, but I was willing to go the distance. As I said at the beginning though, I was naive. I realized that as we were getting closer to that deadline that I was wrong. I was burning out. Sure, it wasn’t as soon as Mikaela feared, but it was a lot sooner than I expected. All of the ups and downs, all of the hopes and expectations dashed, I was exhausted. I was ready to be done. And I was disappointed to have to tell her that.

            Except we never made it to that point. Sunday, January 21st, 2018 two days before “Plums and Chicken” showed up on my phone, at the end of her first full cycle following the surgery, Mikaela woke me up at 4:30 in the morning (granted, she was being patient and generous letting me sleep so late since she’d been up since 2:00) and asked if I was ready to hear the best news I’d ever gotten at 4:30 in the morning. Then she had to go grab the pregnancy test to have me confirm that it actually read positive. It was 4:30 in the morning, after all.

            We decided to share this story for two reasons. The first, and most obvious, reason is to say that we are overjoyed to share with everyone that we are pregnant! Baby Duerr is due on September 22nd, and we couldn’t be happier about that. But secondly, we are sharing this because we have earned a lot through this process. One of the things we learned is just how many people know someone who is, or are themselves struggling with infertility. People we have known for years, after telling them about our struggle, mentioned their own, or a close relative’s. It’s so extremely common, and such a big part of people’s lives, yet it is something that we don’t often talk about, and we don’t realize is a problem until we ourselves are affected by it. And so for anyone who is struggling, and

who is feeling the weight of infertility, we want you to know that we are here for you. We understand your pain. And we know that this is another painful reminder of what you don’t have. We don’t know why God chose now to bless us with a child, and why He hasn’t done that for you. But we are praying for you. We are praying that the God of all mercy would show you His abundant love to you. And we are praying that whatever His plans are for you, that you would trust in His unfailing promises.