I find reminders of how long we've been trying to be sort of funny. It's like a a weird time hop type of experience. I noticed this week that the cheap pack of 50 pregnancy testing strips I bought through Amazon expires this month. It's weird to think as we were starting out last year I thought, "Are these too many? What if I end up not using it all? What if I get pregnant this month?" and so on. I now think about taking a pregnancy test daily just to use up as much as possible. I was no where near using even half of these, given how little I ended up ovulating last year.
I truly don't think of this in sadness, but just in a funny/joke sort of way. There aren't enough jokes about this experience. I guess this type of thing could rub people the wrong way, but if I can't laugh at myself I figure I'd make for a terribly serious mother.
I recently listened to a Tim Keller sermon on Christian Happiness (Romans 8:28-30). I mean he basically takes Jonathan Edwards's sermon (which he wrote when he was 18 years old ya'll!) and sends it to our modern ears. There is so much material in it, that I only mention it here so others could seek it out. The TK sermon was free in the Redeemer app, and the JE sermon is Googleable. More relevant though, it applies to my current thoughts of how we expect life to go. This Romans passage does not promise that bad things in your life will lead to a better life circumstance. It's not necessarily like, my struggles with conceiving now will mean I will all the more have a sweet pregnancy later or that my children will be perfect (ha!). This, in fact, is not the promise of the Christian life at all. There's a possibility I will never be pregnant, maybe even never have children. In fact, the passage is not about us. It says that bad things in our life will make us like Jesus, and ultimately (in totality) we gain a good life. Good life does not equal good life circumstances. Often, I find, the opposite is true, especially in my life. Christ did not suffer so we would not suffer, but so our suffering will make us like Him. Suffering is not pointless, but a means to be unified with Christ. And there is nothing we can do to stop it as Christians loved by God. The more I can contemplate this, the more true joy I can have, this moment, right now, no matter what.
Where we are in the process:
My Reproductive OB/GYN is on maternity leave. I haven't thought about this too much, since it seemed like just such a fact. But that is kind of ironic isn't it? She's not taking too much time off though (only 8 weeks poor lady doctor :( ), and will be back in February.
Before she left, she had me do this type of glucose test, which I actually haven't done since the summer after my Freshman year in college, when I was first diagnosed with PCOS. It showed that even with the medication I take to control such things, my insulin resistance is still rather high. And this could definitely be affecting how I even respond to the Clomid and Letrozole. So we had a chat and she told me I needed to lose 20 lbs or so and then we could reconsider trying the ovulation induction (taking meds) again. I'm seeing her again in late February to see how far down the road I'd gotten. This was a bit of a relief actually, because prior to this convo we were starting to talk about considering IVF. Planner that I was, I was already starting to weigh the financials and what my spiritual discernment was on the ethics.
Weight loss journey:
I had already lost 15 lbs since I started exercising and going to Weight Watchers in July. So now I've joined a gym to try to up my game exercise wise. Let me give you some perspective on my decade long weight loss journey. I was my heaviest when entering college. Then when I was diagnosed with PCOS, I started medication and seeing a nutritionist and I lost 50lbs...almost like without trying. And since the end of my Junior year, I've been gaining a little bit of the weight back at a time. I was about 10 lbs up at my wedding from that low. Marriage added another 5 lbs to that. Then LA living basically added 15 more. So I'm essentially, trying to get back down to that 50 lbs weight loss low, which btw, is still not my ideal weight BMI wise. Weight Watchers has really been helpful in this arena. The weekly group meetings is probably the cheapest group therapy available (aside from Veterans I suppose). There are people there who lost 75 lbs, and there are people who are just starting and taking baby steps. It seems silly while I'm there, but it's actually helpful.
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