Try and then Try Again...

I played sports in high school and didn't realize how much I liked to win until I started running for the girls’ track team. I was a sprinter and hurdler and once I knew I could beat most of my opponents I LOVED the feeling of competition and winning. I had a need for speed and I didn't know I really had it in me until I started to win. My heart was pounding out of my chest when I was on the starting line waiting for the gun to go off. Take Your Mark, Set, Bam!!! My goal was first off the line and first through the finish line. It was exhilarating.

It’s strange how emotions and the fire within translate to other races or obstacles in your life.

I hate the word “infertility.” I don’t like to say it and most times I never do – not even to myself. I am not accepting what it means and I am not going to let it beat me. I feel that same fire to win and beat “this” as I did when I was 16 and running the 300 meter hurdles.

I just started reading “The TAO of Fertility” By Doashing Ni and Dana Herko. (Tao means The Way). I’ve only gotten through the prologue and I felt jittery in my chair reading Dana’s words:

“I was willing to believe in anything that would result in a real, live baby. The African Fertility god sculpture sent by a well-meaning friend, the St. Anthony medal from my church in New York…I was armed and ready for a miracle. But Chinese medicine? I wasn’t sure I was ready to make that journey because, to put it bluntly, I was worn down and flat-out exhausted from trying to get pregnant.”

Just reading that I could feel the exhaustion in my heart and mind. I too have the St. Anthony medal and a St. Gerard one as well. I have something that touched a Padre Pio relic, prayers to say from other saints, a fertility candle, a lingam stone from the Narmada River in India, a fertility bracelet, the list goes on and on.

I almost stopped reading. But I didn’t.

Dana writes about how, at the end of her line of failed IVF and adoption attempts, she tried Chinese medicine. Her three months turned into nine years and for her, two children.

“I have first-hand proof that Chinese medicine can really work when other paths to fertility seem too hard to travel. I know how fortunate I am. I also know how I felt when, at my most despairing; I read yet another book about a fertility-challenged woman having a baby. Even though I came away with hope a small part of me always thought, easy for her to say – she has children.”

I am going with the hope I always carry with me– something I cannot let go of because in the end I want the exhilaration of having a child and knowing I didn’t give up.

“Every time I thought of giving up, I tried to imagine how I would feel years later. If it turned out I was unable to have children, could I honestly tell myself that I had done all that I could?”

Well said Dana.

Here's to all the ladies reading this...stick with it and don't give up hope!