...then comes baby in a baby carriage.

I have been ready to be a Mama since I was seven. Maybe six, maybe younger. It's always been what I knew I wanted to do in life...to grow up to be a wife and a mom.

When we got married, we said we wanted to start having children when I was going into my fifth year of teaching. After much prayer and consideration, we felt that this was God's will for our family.
We were planners and we saw no reason why that plan would not work.

Fast forward a few years, and I'm finished with college and masters work. I'm in my third year of teaching. I recently switched doctors because my doctor did not seemed concerned about the issues I was sharing with him. The intense pain in my abdomen upon eating has increased, my digestive system is all out of whack, I am gaining weight for no apparent reason, and I'm exhausted all the time.  Add to that that I've been experiencing "that time of the month" for the past four weeks straight - I had enough and went to see my new doctor.

To say that he was concerned would be an understatement. If it's possible to run a test, I think it was run on me that day. A week later, I was back to discuss the results and where we would move from here.

The blood tests confirmed - celiac disease. Celiac disease was slowly destroying my digestive system from the inside out. A gluten free diet would need to be implemented starting today and for the rest of my life. But, one of the rarely discussed side effects of being so sick from celiac - is infertility. Something my recently whack-job menstrual cycles had me worried about.

That same day, my doctor also proposed a diagnosis of Poly-Cystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). To diagnose PCOS officially, you need to do an ultrasound of the ovaries, but I had all of the classic externally visible signs - irregular cycles, male pattern hair growth (on the chin and belly button....that makes you feel sexy!), and terrible acne. PCOS is one of the leading causes of infertility in women.

Great! Two potential causes of infertility in one day - that dream of starting a family in a few short months felt like it was shattering all around me.

My doctor and I discussed a plan to try to heal my body:
1) Gluten Free Diet - doing this would drastically improve the health of my body. And, doing this could reverse the infertility effect of celiac. (I wrote extensively about my celiac healing here.)

2) Chart my cycles for at least the next year to see what is happening with my reproductive system. From there we could get a better idea of what my body does naturally, if PCOS might be the cause of my problems, and what we would need to do to allow Cole and I to start a family.

So, armed with nothing by my super-ability of researching things to death, I left the doctors office with a mixed feeling of relief (we might have an answer!) and trepidation (there's a whole lot going wrong!).

I poured myself into research - first about celiac disease and eating gluten free - because it had the most immediate need to be dealt with. I began implementing a gluten free diet and my digestive system began to heal.

Thanks to a great friend and much more research I learned to chart my cycles and secondary fertility signs. It was official - my body was a wreck! My cycles were coming more regularly than before beginning to heal from celiac (now it was only 20-40 days between cycles instead of 7 days-4 months). But nothing was happening in my ovaries; I was not ovulating. That's kinda necessary to make a baby.

In the winter of my fourth year of teaching, I gathered all of my charts and went back to the doctor. He confirmed that yes, there was a serious problem here. And we started talking about options. First, we talked about diet for women with PCOS. PCOS effects insulin and so food is a big deal in helping the body to operate at it's highest potential ability and to stave of secondary conditions which are very common. Because dealing with infertility wasn't enough - I found out in my research that I am at a much higher risk for diabetes and cancer as a result of PCOS (yay!). I had already researched this quite a bit and begun to make even more drastic changes in my diet. We also started trying a medication that helps some women with PCOS to begin ovulating by affecting insulin levels.

Being on that medication was NOT FUN! Because of my already healthy diet, I did not need a medication to help control my blood sugar and my blood sugar levels began dropping so low that I was tired, physically slow, and got quite dizzy on a very regular basis. It was determined that all of my work on my diet was helping to control my blood sugar quite well (one point for my research skills!) and at my next doctor's appointment, I was taken off those drugs. At that same appointment I was discharged with the official diagnosis of infertility and a referral to see the infertility specialist at the hospital.

A few weeks later, on what was a very dark and rainy Kansas morning (funny how the weather sometimes matches your current feelings), I pulled into the hospital parking lot, with shaking hands wandered my way to the fourth floor, and into the infertility clinic. I met with a nurse practitioner. She was a very very kind person and gently explained PCOS in further detail; we discussed in further detail diet and lifestyle recommendations and also diabetes and cancer. We also discussed options for how Cole and I could begin the process of starting our family. We would be able to begin by using the drug Clomid to convince my body that it was time to develop an egg and release it. I was told that when we were ready to start, to call the clinic (on a certain day in my cycle) and they would send in the prescription. As I walked out of the clinic, I felt on one hand overwhelmed by all the information I had just been given, but more than that, I felt relieved. These people specialized in people like me - in that clinic, I was "normal". They had a plan and we had options!

Several weeks later, I called the office and started medication. I had heard from some friends that being on Clomid made them very emotional. I was ready to ride the roller coaster of emotions (seeing as how I am an incredibly emotional person, anyways!). But surprisingly, I was less emotional than normal. It was kind of a nice change. Part way through the month, I went into the office for a sonogram to see how well the Clomid worked (and, in case I had developed like 8 eggs - to know we shouldn't try for a baby this month!). The first thing the nurse practitioner said while looking at my ovaries was "Wow! Many, many cysts! You definitely have the official diagnosis of PCOS." That was quickly followed by a finger point and a "Do you see that? That's a fully developed egg ready to be released!" I was given a shot of hCG (to trigger my body to ovulate) and told "good luck!"

The day that I ovulated, I was very aware that something was happening that I had never experienced before. All of a sudden I knew what other women were talking about when they said they get very grumpy around that time of the month. Holy cow! I had never felt so grumpy in my life! Just another confirmation that this was not something my body typically did on it's own.

Two weeks later....I woke up early on the morning I had been told to take my pregnancy test. My eyes were filled with tears; I was so nervous and did not want to do this. I have several friends who had been through this process before and I knew that it had taken them many months, sometimes years, to get a positive pregnancy test and I wasn't sure that I was ready to handle having this experience month after month for the next however long. I prayed long and hard (praying for courage through this journey had become a very constant prayer of mine over the last several months). Then, I took the test.

I sat in the next room, where I could not see what was happening, and waited the full time. When I went in, I was fairly certain what I was seeing was a positive. I was sure it was just wishful thinking and checked it, looked at the wall, checked it, looked at the wall....several times. Then I went, at 5:45, and shook Cole awake. "I just took a pregnancy test. I think it's positive but I can't be sure. You HAVE to come check this. I have to know I'm not just crazy." Poor boy - I think I pulled him out of REM sleep. But, he confirmed what I saw - it looked like a positive.

I was so happy, but had to keep that feeling in check. For one, Cole's dad was staying at our house and we weren't going to tell him yet. And two, I needed to have a blood test done to confirm the pregnancy; it could just be a false positive. I called the clinic and had my blood taken at 8:00 am. Then waited all day - until about 3:30 to hear back that, indeed, we were pregnant!!

We told Cole's dad, we called his mom, and my parents.

And I cried....a lot! Some very, very happy tears!

I felt a bit like we had cheated. We conceived in one month of treatment - I don't know anybody who has seen that happen. It was a miracle to say the very least.

God had worked his plan that he had set in our hearts years before out in our lives. It was not AT ALL the way I expected. But, wow, did it stretch me. And teach me to depend on him. And to release any small amount of control that I thought (keyword: thought) I had over my life and surrender myself and my desires fully to him.

--------

The first trimester was a difficult one - I was very sick from five weeks to twelve weeks. But, every time I threw up - through the tears (because that's what I do when I'm sick - I cry - surprise!), I was smiling. Lots of vomiting means lots of pregnancy hormones. And lots of pregnancy hormones means healthy baby. And healthy baby was a constant reminder of the AMAZING MIRACLE God had just worked in my body to create a new life.

--------

As I was going through this journey, I was very careful to only reveal parts of the story of what was going on in my body to friends and family. Very, very few people knew the whole story of what was happening in our lives over the last several years. It felt so private, so hard, and I didn't know that I wanted to share how defective I was. Because that was how I felt - defective, broken. Like everything about this body was wrong.

But, from where I am now - seeing the miracle God worked through that time - I feel like I can't help but share my story! It's a miracle how God can take a desperately broken body and form within it a new life.

But that's what he did in us through Christ, isn't it?

I've always been the type of person who imagined God seeing all the sin in my life and being constantly disgusted with me; and I have to constantly preach the gospel to myself - that God sees Christ when he looks at me. That he worked a miracle in my desperately broken and defective soul when he created new life in me through Christ. That I am a new creation!

So this baby, while it may never know what a profound effect its existence has in its Mama's heart, will forever be in our lives a testimony to the redeeming work that Christ did on the cross. This baby will forever be a tangible reminder of the gospel - that God can take something so broken, like a sinful human soul, and create a beautiful new life.