In this current era, we are taught that we are responsible for the life we live. That we can choose to work hard, and study hard and be good people in order to control the outcome of our lives. If we study hard, we will get good grades. If we work hard we will move up in our careers and feel accomplished and recognised. Similarly, when we embrace the ‘job’ of trying to conceive, we believe that we must do all the research and find the best doctors and all the techniques that might possibly help us to conceive. So we research not just traditional medicine but also holistic alternative medicine. We explore acupuncture and chiropractors and massage therapy and herbal therapy and we search out the best IVF clinics and do research on all the best IVF techniques – assisted hatching, ICSI, co-culture. We bombard our doctors with our research, being assertive and demanding to know why the latest cutting-edge technologies are not being use to help us conceive that precious baby.

We feel we must be as proactive as possible because if we do not we will fail and we will not conceive at all. Just like we must be proactive in the rest of our lives - seeking to take charge of our lives and ensure the best possible outcomes. And while it is important to be assertive and do our best in life, it is possible that we have confused this with the idea that if we do not do our very best then we will fail. But the truth is that there is a higher power.

And as tough as it is, I must learn to accept that God has a plan for our lives. And that He loves me more than I could possibly imagine and wants for me the absolute and complete best things which will bring me closer to him. He could not possibly love me less than I love my as-yet unborn children. Thus He will do what is best for me. Thus, His plan is better than mines. As hard as that is to accept, I am learning to slowly leave it up to Him. To slowly accept that even though it does not feel like it, right now the best thing for me and my dear husband is not to be pregnant. It pains me even to write that, which tells me just how far I am from accepting God’s Will for us.

But my reason tells me that I am exactly where I am meant to be if salvation is to be mines – for that is God’s ultimate desire and gift for me. And somehow I must relinquish my deep desire to control everything and my deep need to take charge and allow God to be in charge of my life. To begin to understand that I am exactly where God wants me to be for my own good. And that I will not be pregnant one second before it becomes the best moment for me to be pregnant.

So I will keep doing my best to get pregnant and doing my research and I will do my IVF but I will try more and more to accept that God is the one who will determine when and how and He will make that decision based on what is best for me, my dear husband and our precious baby.

sometimes it seems so unfair that in order to adopt we have to be scrutinised and have complete strangers determine if we are worthy to be parents. But any 12 year old drug addicted child is allowed to get pregnant and become a parent – no homestudy required! sigh. I am just so frustrated some days.

Some days I feel a sense of peace at the idea of giving up the pursuit of this desire to be a mommy. And some days I firmly believe that God has some really great plan for us and we will turn up the parents of triplets or something amazing like that. I want to believe that the IVF will be wildly successful and we will end up with enough grade A embryos to freeze for our next pregnancy. And that we will end up with twins this go around. That somehow God will validate our suffering and make it all worthwhile in some obvious display of fecundity and patronage. What makes me believe this when so far it has not happened is beyond me. Where does this unending well-spring of hope come from? I don’t know. I guess I just believe that God is good and that He would not let us suffer like this for no reason and without some papable reward. I have to believe this if I am to go on.

 This is not the life I had planned either.

 Somehow I really believed it would have happened by now. 39 and no baby. Great job. Great husband. Great home. Financially we are struggling a bit  but only because we are trying to get a business off the ground and I know that will get easier. But I try to adjust my identity to that of a woman who never has children, who remains childless and I find that I can’t. As much as I try to accept God’s will and believe that He must know what is best and do what is best for us all, I can’t see my husband and I as a couple without children.

 I want them so badly. I have so much love to give. I dont have any children in my life – I am not close to my nephews who are both teens. And I drifted away from each of my friends as they had their babies. They moved into some elite new social group that childless me cannot penetrate. Most women my age have teenaged children. And here I am begging to just have one little teeny tiny baby.

We are moving onto IVF in April or May. It will be our one and only shot because the cost is so prohibitive. And we have agreed that after that IVF we will be done trying to conceive regardless of the outcome. It saddens me to give this up but I spent my entire 30’s focussed on this. It has consumed my life. My dear husband says that we need to focus on something else and I agree but for the life of me I cant imagine what else there is in life besides having a family.

My mind and my heart still believe that this is going to happen and this is the year that we are going to finally become pregnant and by next year we will have our baby. And I hold fast to that belief. And try to trust in Jesus.

As most women trying to conceive a baby know, estrogen and progesterone are critical factors in uterine lining and implantation. Adequate estrogen is required early in the cycle to ensure that the lining grows to the right thickness and quality. This is because estrogen triggers endometrial cells in the lining of the uterine to divide and prolierate. Progesterone stops this proliferation (after ovulation) and helps the lining to become a stable place for the egg to implant.

During Assisted Reproduction Techniques (ART), like IVF, and sometimes even IUI women are often put on estrogen and/or progesterone at different times during their cycle. It turns out that the doses and method of administration of these drugs can make a huge difference to the quality of the lining.

Vaginal administration promotes an uterine lining that has a more normal structure, and is thus more conducive to successful implantation than intramuscular administration. So be sure to ask your doc about this and if possible request the vaginal administration.

However, I have discovered that in Assisted Reproductoin (ART) about 90% of fertilised eggs do NOT implant successfully! That is terrible odds. It also suggests that implantation dysfunction might be a challenge for many women.

Implantation has to do with the quality of the uterine lining as every woman who has had IUI or IVF knows from the ultrasound to look at the thickness and striation of the lining. Most docs look for a lining of over 9, in whatever units they use to measure these things.  There is also such a thing as a lining that is too thick.  So there is some perfect range for the thickness of the lining. But even if you fall within this range, that is no guarantee of success, as I fully well know from my perfect IUI in which the doc said my lining was one of the most beautiful she had ever seen in thickness and striation and whatever else.

The other critical factor that might affect implantation issues is the level of endometrial receptivity. The endometrium is the uterine lining, and it needs to be receptive to allowing the fertilised egg to implant. The endometrium secretes several different substances that assist in implantation. One of these is a substance known as MAG. The uterine lining secretes higher levels of MAG from days 5 through 18 and ceases secretion on day 19 in woman with normal fertility.

Studies have shown that women with unexplained infertility have abnormal levels of MAG secretion and may continue to secrete it after day 19. Some women secrete no MAG at all and these women never get pregnant even with donor eggs! Women with abnormal MAG levels get pregnant with donor eggs at a much reduced level than women with normal MAG levels.

So maybe that might be my issue – a problem with the uterine lining in which it does not secrete the right levels of MAG. Is there anything that can be done to fix this problem so that we can have our baby? I will be investigating that.