The sacrifice of growing a life

I sat on the lid of the toilet, opposite my husband who sat on the edge of the shower. My heart was beating abnormally fast. I was trying to keep my emotions at bay. I had taken many tests before only to see one line. The bars flashed one at a time. Though I knew it would take a few moments to get a reading, I didn’t look away. The bars stopped flashing. One word appeared.

Pregnant.

I fell on my knees into my husband’s arms and sobbed from a place deep within my soul that I had never accessed before. I was going to be a mom. My soul could breathe a sigh of relief.

I write this with great hesitation. Pregnancy is such a fragile thing. It’s such a personal thing. In telling my story I hope not to offend others whose hearts are currently downcast about the subject. At this point, I can’t imagine the pain of infertility or the loss of an unborn child. It must be a pain beyond understanding.

In these next few paragraphs, I only hope to share my story in its own struggles and imperfections. Acknowledging that many have had it much worse while also knowing that all I have as a reference is my story.

It took my parents roughly three years to get pregnant. That’s 36 months of wondering when the Lord will show up. Roughly 156 weeks of smiling and congratulating as yet another friend tells you they are pregnant. 1095 days of feeling as though your dream of becoming a parent will forever remain a dream.

My mom was told it was time to start trying medical intervention. She considered it and was days away from beginning treatment when she felt the Lord tell her to wait. August 28th, 1998 she found out my sister Callie had happily set up camp inside of her womb. No sooner had she made her entrance into the world when I decided it was my turn. To everyone’s surprise, I was born 16 months later on August 28th. Caroline (and truthfully the cutest baby) joined the family in 2003. And then, there was one last little Sirmans. This is the baby brother or sister I’ve still yet to meet. I was old enough to be excited about another sibling, but too young to carry the weight my parents must have felt when the baby was lost to a miscarriage.

I grew up knowing this story well. To me, it was a story of the Lord’s faithfulness even through the heartbreak of losing the last baby. In my early years, it made me feel as though I was made for a purpose. As I got older though, and began to think about my future, the story became one I was scared to live.

You know that box in your head? The one you put things in you don’t want to think about at present but probably should think about at some point. That friend you should probably reconnect with. That house task that isn’t pressing. That work assignment that no one is going to check if you finished or not. That email that you have no idea how to respond to. That box. The one you put thoughts into but rarely ever get back out. This is where I placed the possibility of my parent’s story becoming mine. The thought of struggling to get pregnant or losing my baby was neatly placed in the box we rarely return to.

The issue with this box is the heaviest things you place in it tend to spring back out at you. Never responding to an email is one thing. Not dealing with complex feelings and emotions that dictate decisions you make daily is another.

The box was unwelcomingly opened when my husband and I decided it was time to start trying for a family. Now, my fears and anxieties about starting a family was no longer far away but overwhelmingly close. My fertility was about to be put to the test, and I loathed that thought.

I grasped the fact that trying for a baby wouldn’t be easy, but I never thought about how emotional it would be. There are no months longer than the months you are trying to conceive. My cycles felt like lifetimes. Each start of a period felt like my body had failed me for yet another month. More than anything, I hated that it was all completely and totally out of my control. In fact, I’ve never felt so out of control of something in my entire life. This drove me mad. My hands weren’t open to the Lord’s will out of choice, but out of having no other option.

I pause here to say, it takes the average woman eight months to a year to get pregnant. I didn’t know this. In a world where everything is made to be so instant, conceiving a life is not.

It was month six when I lost it emotionally. Looking back, six months is nothing to be concerned about, but there is something about conceiving a child that makes every month feel like life or death. Maybe, because in some ways it is. It was the anxiety of not knowing my ability to conceive a child, paired with my desperate need for control, all tied together in a perfect bow of not believing the Lord would provide.

I cried a lot that particular day. The unhealthy emotions I had been holding seemed to well up, and this time they couldn’t be squeezed into the box of later. It was time to face them, even if they were going to destroy me. That night I showed up to church, per usual for a youth pastor’s wife on a Wednesday night, and proceeded to avoid as many people as I could. I sat for worship, partly because I wanted to rest in that moment, and partly because I had little desire to worship. I poured out my heart and tears that night to a close friend who was gracious enough to call out the white-knuckled control I had been holding my fertility with. I doubted the Lord would come through. She knew He would.

A week later my mom could tell I was not well. She took me to dinner. Over chicken veggie bowls she pulled out her Bible. The same one she has used for my entire existence. She pulled out old journals. She flipped through journal entry after journal entry of her begging the Lord for a child. She reminded me of His goodness in the midst of her waiting and disappointment.

I was pregnant that night, though I had no idea at that time. Where this blog begins is now where we pick up in the story. With an undeserving child holding a positive pregnancy test.

It’s ironic that infertility is not the factor that made this season so hard but my fear of it. I think this is a shared experience among women. In the last week, I’ve had multiple conversations with women who are overwhelmed and anxious about where trying to conceive a child might take them. They hope for the joy of a positive pregnancy test and fear the heartbreak of never receiving one. Though men carry this burden too, I think it falls a little heavier on the women. After all, it is their body that will become a house for their child.

Once I hit about six weeks of pregnancy I became very ill. I thought I knew what nausea was prior to pregnancy, but I quickly discovered I had no clue. I’ll spare you the details, but many mothers know the pain and debilitation of this season of pregnancy. I fell housebound because of the illness and the constant fear that if I went anywhere I would throw up and have to explain myself. The absence of people in my life, stirred together with the anxiety of throwing up, combined to make for a shaky mental state in this season. Not to mention the anxiety of praying I would make it through that fragile first trimester with a healthy baby on the other side. It was the hardest season I’ve walked through in my 24 years of life.

As you can imagine, being on the couch all day, every day forces you to think about things. It makes you ponder the season you are in, even if you don’t want to. I had wanted this pregnancy more than I could express and now I had it. And yet as happy as I was for a baby, the sickness and loneliness overshadowed most of the joy that could’ve been felt in that season.

I began to think about what it meant that I was growing a life inside of my womb. It seems unfathomable that my body has the ability to grow another body.

I’ve realized that no life is made without great sacrifice. In the case of birth, it’s the mother’s body that is sacrificed. The pain of nausea, nine months of a changing body, about 1000 other side effects of pregnancy, all followed by the even greater pain of childbirth; there’s a sense that the woman's body is not her own. The ripping and tearing of the mother’s body for its long-awaited prize to be revealed leaves a permanent reminder of the birthing experience. Many women have scars that will never go away. A permanent tattoo that reminds them of the sacrifice it took to bring a new life into the world.

As I sat on my front porch chair, hating my body for what it was doing to me one hot summer evening, I realized I’ve never experienced the gospel in a more tangible way.

For the price of my re-birth was at the sacrifice of my Savior’s life. The new birth I needed was rendered at the expense of hands that will never heal. The nausea and pain and emotional turmoil were once more fully felt on Calvary. In order for my life to be renewed, a greater sacrifice had to be made. The making, or rather, the saving of a life has always come at a cost.

May the road you walk in your fertility journey bring you closer to the one who has ordained each step of it. May the pain of housing a child inside of you remind you of the sacrifice that was once made on your behalf. May every anxious unknown be met with the assurance that your Father does know. May the scars you carry from childbirth mirror the ones your maker has in heaven. May the sacrifice of creating and sustaining life never be something we take lightly, but may it always point us back to the originator of life.

Hebrews 12:2

“fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer, and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him, he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”