Hannah's Victory

My friend, Sherri S from the USA writes…

In 2003 I gave birth to my first baby (Catrione Eildh Darlene). Getting pregnant was easy. I was pregnant within two months of trying. In 2005 we decided to try again. I got pregnant again right away. Sadly I miscarried that baby at seven weeks. I was devastated and heart broken. Everyone including my doctor told me that it would fine. I could try again. There would be other babies they said. That didn’t take away my broken heart. But certainly I was willing to try again. Four months went by and I still was not pregnant. I had a feeling something wasn’t right. I went to my doctor and although I was ovulating she placed me on clomid thinking maybe we just needed a boost. Still nothing. By June of 2006 I had a feeling something was terribly wrong, so we made the appointment with the reproductive specialist. The reproductive doctor listened to what we had to say and took our medical history and almost all the blood we had. She told us that she felt that a course or two of IUI just might be all that we needed. I was scheduled for the procedure where they shoot die into your uterus and through your tubes and they look at is on x-ray while they do it (sorry I forgot what this was called). She told me that I had text book perfect anatomy. There appeared to be absolutely nothing wrong with me. So they scheduled us a time and began to prepare me for IUI. In the meantime they ran a sperm count test on my husband. When they received the results of that test they called me. I am sorry they said. They told me they were canceling my IUI appointment because my husband’s sperm count was so low that they would not even be able to get enough sperm to do the procedure. I ran to a friend’s house sat in her living room and cried my eyes out. After meeting with the doctor again we were told the only chance we had of conceiving was IVF and not only that they were sure that even if they placed my husband’s sperm in the dish with my egg that they would still not be able to fertilize them. We would need intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) were the sperm is manually injected into the egg. I was totally shocked by everything that I was hearing. How could this be? We had gotten pregnant so easily twice? Their answer to that was they felt I was extremely fertile and that we had gotten lucky. The cost of the IVF procedure was crazy and the ethical issues were even more daunting. They ask you questions like in the event that one of us should die did we want the remaining spouse to inherit the embryos? In the event of both of our deaths what did we want them to do with our embryos? Embryos?? They would be my babies. All this was just too much for me and I began to explore the idea of adoption.

In October of 2006 a little face came across a website I was visiting from time to time. I couldn’t get that face out of mind!! I found myself praying for him at night that he would find a good home. Finally one day my husband said. Why don’t you just call the agency about him. I won’t go into all the details of my adoption story but God opened door after door and in August 2007 I flew home with my little 14 month old son (Caeden Michael Alexander). Let me stop here to tell you a little bit about the depression I was in along the way. I cried and sobbed myself to sleep almost every night. I felt hopeless and dark and felt like there was no end to the pain I was feeling inside. I went to a church where it seemed like everyone was pregnant. I can’t tell you how many times I sat in the parking lot holding on the steering wheel, and I cried out to God “I just can’t go in there. . .help me do it one more time.” So needless to say when I came home with my son I was hoping beyond hope that those feelings and depression would go away. I was disappointed. They did not go away. I loved my son. I was thankful for him. But I still longed to be pregnant and carry another baby. Should I go back and do IVF? I even called and got the financial paperwork again and was ready to fill it out and approach my husband when he got a job offer. The job did not work out the way we anticipated and sent us into a financial spiral for several years. Now our credit was ruined. . . I had no money and IVF was not an option. I didn’t know where to turn.

On November 2, 2008 I was invited by a friend to visit the church where she and her husband were pastoring. I gladly accepted the invitation and I looked forward to lunch and the visit after church. Her husband preached a message that Sunday about who was the Lord of your life. Was it Jesus? He said you know who the lord of your life is by what you talk about. The lord of your life shapes you, hammers you, and you become like what ever is on the throne of your life. At the end of the message he gave an invitation to stand up and say JESUS is the lord of my life. I stood with everyone else. Of course JESUS was the Lord of my life right?? On the ride home I began to think about it. I mean really think about it. Was Jesus Lord of my life?? Is He what I talked about? No He wasn’t. I had place infertility as the lord of my life. I had dethroned the very God who had all the answers. I started to sob in the car and told my husband. I knew something had to change. I started to look on the internet for answers. I found Nerida Walker’s yahoo groups!! I began to listen to what she had to say when people asked questions. Then one day someone asked Nerida about what she thought about it when people said that they would be pregnant when God was ready in His timing. Nerida’s answer on God’s Timing to her question changed everything for me. I can’t write what she said or explain it the way she did. But her answer can be read on her website under God’s timing. All I had to do was receive God’s healing like I did with salvation. It was mine!! God wasn’t withholding from me. He had already provided for me a way out of infertility!! Something snapped on the inside of me. For the first time in years I had hope. I decided a few months later to go for prayer and havethe people at a healing room agree with me in prayer. In the meantime I spent my nights before falling asleep asking Jesus to let me know him better. I wanted to know who he was . I read the gospels. I wanted to know what Jesus did here on earth. I began to understand about speaking God’s word and having what I say line up with the Bible. My husband and I began to speak God’s word over our bodies. After going and praying with the ladies at my local healing room I was done with the tears and the sadness. I knew that God’s will was for me to have all the babies I wanted. That month when my cycle started it did not both me. I looked at my husband and said its ok my day is coming. And I didn’t have another cycle after that one. The next month I missed my period and my husband said you had better test and sure enough I was pregnant. On March 21, 2010 our little Caelyn Iona Grace was born. In all of this my husband was going through a time of no employment or under employment. You would have thought that I would be thinking of birth control right? Nope Let me warn you that when your bodies line up with scripture they work!! In just a year and one month I found myself pregnant again. In april of 2009 my husband and I quietly took communion every night and prayed and believe that by the end of that month we would have an answer to our financial issues. And we did. Two days after my husband had started a new job (best he has ever had) and his birthday too, I sent him a text of a picture of a positive pregnancy test!! We were pregnant with a bonus baby!!

On Jan 24 of this year (2012) at 11:30 or so at night I felt what I thought was braxton hicks. I was nine days over due. I thought the contractions were going away so I told my husband we should go to bed. So I did. At 2 am I was back up. This was labor. I hated to wake my husband up. I knew he would need to rest. So I dealt with it on my own for a couple of hours. At 4:30 am I woke him up and told him we should start preparing to go to the hospital. I arrived at the hospital at about 7 am. My contractions were consist and I was dealing with them well. The nurse checked me and I was 5-6 centimeters. She told me that bag holding the water was just bulging. Like it wanted to break but wouldn’t. That was interesting to me because my water always broke on its own. Strange I thought. But overall Great news!! I was on my way. Some where around 11 am the doctor came in and guess what. . .no change in my cervix. Bag of water still bulging. He decided he would break it but he would let me get an epidural first and get comfortable and he would come back. I got the epidural and was really relaxed and comfortable. I have no idea what time he came back but my guess is that it was some where around 3 pm. Again he checked me and there was no change and the bag of water was still bulging. So he proceed to break it and the water ran our clear. But at the moment my babies heart rate dropped dangerously low. My doctor didn’t take his eyes off the monitor. They tried an internal monitor to make sure what they were seeing was correct. Babies heart rate was not good. He said you have five minutes. If there is no improvement we will have to do a C-section. He told me they would be moving very quickly. In a matter of minutes I was being rushed with down the hallway to the operating room. The doctor said that he may have to put me to sleep. I started to pray. “Lord please let me be able to stay awake” As soon as I hit the operating table the baby’s heart rate come up to normal and they had time to convert my epidural for surgery. Carys Isla Faith was born around 4 pm. When they pulled my little girl out they found her cord wrapped around her neck not once but three times!!! Without the amniotic fluid she was hanging and her cord was strangling her. To think I had been in labor since 11 pm the night. The water could have broken at anytime and she would have died long before I could have driven 45 minutes to the hospital. Ladies I know that God had His hand on my baby that day. He held her. I know He was preventing he sac from breaking and the amniotic fluid from leaking!! Praise the Lord!! I am two babies past impossible. I thought the other day how what the reproductive doctor said seems so unreal now. It wasn’t the truth!! And my doctor completely contradicted her just a few weeks ago when he warned me that I could easily get pregnant again. What God’s Word said became truth in our lives. LOL Isn’t our God great!!

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