A few weeks ago I asked if anyone would be willing to discuss a topic that isn’t easy and share the story of their fertility journey. (You can read my story HERE.) I’m grateful to the women who chose to respond.
In this series women with different experiences will share the pain and blessings that the gift of fertility carries with it, in the hope of bringing out God’s grace and promise to those couples struggling to welcome this gift when it is not known how it will turn out in a sinful world.
This is Mary’s story.
I didn’t grow up in the church and I don’t remember my parents ever talking about “family life” (we never ate together or spent time together), so I am not really sure where my ideas came from except the Holy Ghost and faithful Christian friends. My neighbors, a barren couple, were the first people I ever saw love and respect each other and it was with them that I first went to church.
When I chose my college, I wanted a place where this new Christian faith would grow and the professors were a big part of my reason for attending the place I did. I honestly don’t think I thought much about the future–other than desiring to have sex! I didn’t think about contraception or having babies…so I don’t know exactly what I was thinking.
One professor in particular took me under his wing, brought me around his rich, lovely family life, and there I caught a vision for the beauty of family. It was in stark contrast to my family, who had also been broken by divorce that year. I don’t know what he was referring to exactly but one day, in his office, he threw a book or paper down and said, “I’m tired of this modern birth control culture.” “What do you mean?” I asked. I had no idea what he was referring to…I didn’t really know how people just had two kids–but that was all I ever knew growing up so I didn’t question it. He must have said something about marriage and babies going together, and that made sense to me. From that time on, when I spoke with men that could be future spouses, this was the first question I brought up. “Are you willing to have whatever babies God gives?” It broke up more than one courtship.
Through my own research, I’ve been convinced of the evils of contraception in society–abortifacients, but also its link to porn, infidelity, divorce, etc.
When my husband and I married, I was 28, so I knew there was no reason to wait to have kids, nor did I think that right to do anyway. We were as open as could be, and over the moon about getting pregnant on our honeymoon. People (my dad, family friends) did question the wisdom of getting pregnant so soon. Did we really know each other? How would we afford it?
And then our world was shattered when our baby was born with a major genetic defect and spent months in NICU before dying. Hadn’t we been faithful? Hadn’t we done the right thing–waiting to have sex before getting married, and then being perfectly welcoming to any children of our union?
We were eager for more, though my body had been very stressed from grief, and I wasn’t able to conceive right away. I had two healthy babies with a miscarriage in between, but never tried to prevent a baby and were always happy to find out we were expecting.
Our 5th pregnancy was just months after delivering our 4th. That baby ended up with major, life-threatening birth defects, including two surgeries. Due to the stress and need to get some things under control (he doesn’t sleep much/well) we are abstaining to give us some time to recover and him time to learn to sleep. And since I have a tendency to make sick babies I well know that I could have more hospital time ahead. That’s hard on my family who has no family around to help.
We are not abstaining permanently; just catching our breath for a few more months. We are open to more children and if God doesn’t bless us with more biologically we will probably adopt. Meanwhile, we recognize the connection between sex and babies and respect that. We have found lovely ways to connect as we wait and are always reevaluating whether the waiting is too difficult.
—Click HERE for more from this series.—
I would love to hear your story. If you would like to share that with us please see these posts:
