We expected to be expecting about three years ago. And, like most couples, whether fertile or infertile, we learned pretty quickly that this was not about us having control over our reproduction. Though this was difficult, it was also affirming of how much our God was in control of all things, and, as Psalm 127:3 says, “children are a reward from him.” Every month was still a hopeful one, and the disappointment of each negative result quickly faded into hope for the next.What we understand now is that after twelve months of trying unsuccessfully to conceive, at our age, we automatically fell into the clinical definition of infertile. At the time, though, this was pretty hard to accept.
On the one hand, the word sounds so final and harsh, like it means there is no chance we’d ever have children. (Abby, who helped name this blog, incidentally preferred the “childproof” label) It doesn’t, in fact, mean that at all. It just means that from a statistical point of view, we were far enough to one side of the bell curve to indicate there is a high probability there there may some other factor at play. And so we, like 12% of all couples in their childbearing years are who were unable to conceive in a year, were labeled as “infertile.”
And from an insurance point of view – in most states, including our own – it is painful from a financial perspective as well. I remember well in the early days we would try to get doctors to code the visits differently — we believed at the time we weren’t necessarily infertile but just trying to find out if we were or not — to no avail. No coverage for any diagnosis or treatment very quickly became just a way of life. God has blessed us with two good sources of income. This could have been way more difficult with less resources, but as it was, it was a tough pill to swallow.
But over the course of the months and years that followed, the feeling that our health insurance had turned their back on our problem was overshadowed by the larger pain that maybe God had as well.