Its a game... well sort of.

Some of you might know that I love sports! I love playing them and I love watching them. My favorite sport has to be basketball because I love the fast action, the skill, the strategy, and the team work that all has to be there for a team to win and be successful.

Now fertility I think is very similar to a basketball team: all the parts of the body must work together for one to be fertile. In basketball you have the point guard, the shooting guard, the small forward, the power forward, the center and you can’t forget the coach. So in the world of fertility, the main players involved are the uterus, the ovaries, the cervix/vagina, the fallopian tubes, the sperm, and all the hormones.

The ovaries are like the point guard. Their goal is to shoot, run the plays and make sure that the ball gets into the right hands.

The shooting guard and the small forward are like the fallopian tubes. Their responsibility is to make sure that the ball makes it down the court, and the plays are set up properly so the ball can be scored.

The power forward and the center are like the cervix and the vagina. They are there to make sure that the path is clear to the hoop and make sure everything stays on course.

The Uterus is like the basketball court because it is where all the magic happens.

The hoop is like the sperm: reason being is that when the hoop and the ball match up the team SCORES!

Lastly the coach is like the hormones because the coach is the one who plans and orchestrates the whole game. Without the coach the players wouldn’t play as well and the likely hood of scoring is diminished.

I know that this analogy might not be the best but I wanted a way to explain the fact that the body has many different integral parts and that when they all work together, life is good. When even one player is not working well, the whole team can suffer and in the long run the game suffers. The goal for fertility is to get the team working well and unfortunately that is much easier said than done.

Nothings Impossible

I have decided that on Thursdays I’m going to share a favorite scripture, random thought, poem or song.

Tonight I feel that I should share a scripture from St. Luke 1:37. It states, “For with God nothing shall be impossible.”

Yesterday I wrote about the importance of remembering your better half during this trial but it is also very important to remember that we have a Father in Heaven who cares about us. Although it is hard to feel his love when we are feeling the pain of being denied the righteous desire of having children, we have to remember that he allows us to suffer so we can grow. He loves us and cares about us! Through him we can do anything, including the ability to conquer the trial of infertility.

The Better Half

A few years ago I had a wonderful friend who told me something very wise. She said that it is, “Very important to remember that the journey of fertility is not something that we women travel alone, our husbands are very much a part of it all. Without them, there wouldn’t be any trying for children.”

I am very grateful for my husband and all the support that he has given me and that he continues to give me. I know that for me it is very easy to get caught up in the emotions of the fact that “I” cannot get pregnant, but really it is not just a me thing, this is a we thing. I have to remember to check in with my husband and see how his emotions are as well. Granted, most of the time the response is very non descriptive but it never hurts to make sure that as a couple you are on the same page.

It can be healing to know that you are not going through this alone. You can lean on your best friend when you just need a shoulder to cry on and a loving embrace.

It was just holding hands!

When I was about 7 or 8 years old there was a little boy (whose name I can’t remember) that lived across the street who would come over often to play. One day we decided to get married because we felt if we wanted to play house, we needed to be married. One of my siblings preformed the ceremony under an old pine tree in our front yard. I had a bouquet of dandelions and he held my hand. After that we were married for the rest of the day and any other time we would play.

One day as I was getting ready to take a bath I noticed that I could stick my belly out far and it made me think that I was pregnant. I thought this might be because I had pretend married the boy next door. At that time all I knew was that to get pregnant you had to be married and even though it was pretend it made me wonder if I really was pregnant. I was so worried that I was going to get in trouble because I had “gotten married” without my parent knowing and we had held hands so I must have been pregnant.

Now I don’t remember exactly what convinced me that I wasn’t pregnant but the reason I shared this story is the fact that there are different definitions of what is considered “trying to conceive”. In the mind of a 7 year old the holding had was enough to get one pregnant. On a more adult perspective of it, some feel that trying for a baby is just throwing away the birth control and that is it. Others may think, “Well we aren’t preventing it but we are not actively trying for a baby” and then for some it’s a planned, well thought out process in which they stop using birth control, and start charting and timing their intercourse.

Whatever the method, I believe that a couple is considered “trying to conceive” when they are having intercourse for the reason of procreating. Granted the couple should be having intercourse for fun too but it should be done for the purpose of getting pregnant.

The hard part of the conceiving process is that some people will go into the baby making process already knowing that they will have difficulties, there are those who have no idea what they are getting themselves into, and there are other who are trying not to get pregnant and get pregnant anyways. Such is the trials of life.

Copyright Melissa Witcher http://www.melissawitcher.com/

Just like Julia

The other day I was watching the movie Julie and Julia and there was a part in the movie after Julia Child’s sister Dorothy had gotten married, where Julia was sitting in the kitchen reading a letter from her. The letter was announcing the fact that Dorothy was pregnant. This part of the movie broke my heart because Julia was trying so hard to be happy for her sister but you could feel pain that she was feeling because they were not able to have children. Even now I cannot write about it without my eyes getting misty.

The reason I share this story is not to show that I am an emotional person that cry’s because someone is sad but it was because I truly knew what she was going though. The pain that she felt, I have felt. Infertility is real and it is a powerful trial that many of us have been called to go through.

What makes infertility so difficult? This is a question that cannot be answered in one single post but I would like to define what infertility is. According to www.medterms.com infertility is “The diminished ability or the inability to conceive and have offspring. Infertility is also defined in specific terms as the failure to conceive after a year of regular intercourse without contraception.”

I know that some people know they are going to have troubles conceiving before they even start trying but other, like me, have no idea that they have problems with fertility until they after they have tried for a while but have not succeeded. Either way, dealing with infertility is very much so an emotional roller coaster and I am grateful that I don’t have to ride it alone!

The Firtle Mirtle

Today at church, there were two babies who were blessed by their fathers in sacrament meeting. One of which was the first baby in the family and the other was baby number 9. While I was sitting there I had a thought that I have had many times; what allows one person to have children where someone else is not able to?

I understand that this question can be quite a loaded one which has many different answers to it and it really can be looked at it from a spiritual perspective or from a scientific perspective. As I was sitting there I realized that ultimately it all boils down to the fertility of the couple trying to have children. For example this family that has 9 children, they have been able to conceive naturally, they haven’t had to have any help getting pregnant at all and what I would call a “Fertile Mertile” . According to www.medterms.com, the definition of fertility is, “The ability to conceive and have children, the ability to become pregnant through normal sexual activity.”

I know that in the world of trying to conceive, there is a lot of different terminology and differences of opinions. This week I really want to give my thought on what fertility and infertility is all about and define some basic terms. I know when my husband and I started trying to have a baby; I didn’t have any clue about what was entailed in fertility or infertility. Hopefully these next few post can help build your fertility vocabulary or maybe freshen up on it.

The Beginning!

Today is the start of a great adventure! I am going to post everyday in 2011 about different thoughts and experiences I have had and will have while traveling though this journey of infertility. I know that this is a big task to take on but I also know that I want to share what I have learned with others. I know one of the biggest things that has helped me is to know that I am not alone! I’m not the only one who’s biggest wish is to be able to have children and that wish has not been fulfilled yet.
I like many of you, growing up all I wanted to be was a mom. After getting married, we waited about 6 months before we felt like the time was right to start trying to have children. I thought that in a couple of months we would get pregnant and then 9 months later I would be a mom. Well obviously that plan didn’t work out because here I am five years later writing a blog about infertility. Although I still want to be a mom, this trial has given me the opportunity to grow and become a much better and stronger person. I wouldn’t take back everything that I have learned and the people I have met along this trail.

This blog will not be perfect, I am sure there will be misspellings and grammatical errors. There will also be some posts that are really long, where others will be really short. This blog will be from the heart and the purpose is to share my story, what I have learned, to help others, and share my testimony of Christ’s love for each of us.

I hope you are all having a wonderful New Year’s Day and that you don’t hesitate to share this blog with someone you love who could benefit from the words that will be shared here.

Love

Kaleen Nelson