Inviting Others Into My Journey of Infertility & Miscarriage

By: Ashley Negard

From the time I was a teenager I’d had issues with my reproductive system. Every doctor I saw for the issue treated it the same way – with birth control pills. I was told there was nothing they could do until I was ready to get pregnant. At age 15 that desire seemed a long way off, but even then I understood the reality that I would one day have trouble conceiving.

Years later, the day arrived when I was ready. I was happily married, settled into a house with an extra bedroom for baby, and a job I was happy to leave. Our Bible study group for newly married couples grew to be a family group as babies were added to our number. So many babies were added that it soon became unrealistic to meet together in one living room. I loved these babies because I loved these friends, but conversations gradually became dominated by baby sleep schedules and the comparisons of child development. These were conversations to which I could not contribute.

Infertility feels like a deeply private issue. It isn’t exactly casual dinner conversation. Even in a group of close female friends it was hard to talk about my own heartache and fear of never having children, let alone a mixed gender Bible study. Would others feel uncomfortable? Would people awkwardly try to comfort me and say the wrong thing? Instead, it became a dark cloud hanging overhead, a secret that was largely suspected but never voiced.

During these months I was regularly crying out to God about what He wanted for me, and for my husband, and for our future lives. I was struggling to feel content, as I believed I ought, in the life that had been chosen for me. In a moment of prayer and despair I felt, rather than heard, the still small whisper of God’s personal words spoken to me.

He said: “The miracle I want to do in your life isn’t just for you. Invite others into your story.”

While there was no promise that God’s plan included a baby, I understood that He wanted to do something beautifully miraculous through my pain. The issue was private but God’s miracle would not be. It was an exhortation to be bold in sharing what felt deeply personal.

In the beginnings of an effort to be faithful, I tentatively began to share with those closest to me. I told of my hopes for a child one day, my medical history that spoke doubt into the situation, and the hurt that was brewing in my heart. Telling the truth about my circumstances and feelings became easier over time, and I graduated to sharing authentically with people in outer circles, and when appropriate even strangers.

At times my fears came true and people responded awkwardly, or said the wrong thing that played upon my insecurities. I had to let it go, believing that they largely had good intentions. Over time, it became my deepest desire that my heartache could be used for good, even if my circumstances didn’t change to what I wanted. Uncomfortable or not, I was inviting others into my story, and it felt right.

There were doctors involved now, and modern medicine played its part when that first miraculous moment arrived and I saw the double line appear on the pregnancy test. There was great rejoicing heard all around our county! Nothing could steal my joy.

… except an ultrasound that showed no heartbeat.

Devestation. Hurt. Anger. Fear. Uncertainty. While I had been somewhat prepared for the battle of infertility, I felt blindsided by pregnancy loss. What part of a miracle was this?

Pregnancy loss is another tricky pain to navigate because from the outside it doesn’t appear that anything has been tangibly lost. There wasn’t an extra mouth being fed at the table or even a room full of baby gear for us. So many had been told about our pregnancy that I was required to share this misfortune with them as well, but I didn’t feel strong in this new struggle. It was hard to find permission, from even myself, to grieve my disappointment or voice my greatest fears.

Looking back, I can see now that in prompting me to invite others into my story, God had prompted me to build a network of loving support that I would need to walk through the next years of continued miscarriages and struggles to conceive. Every hard-earned positive pregnancy test was colored by the fear of miscarriage. There were a number of seasons when I felt desperately alone, but because of my community, no part of my story was physically walked alone.

I could also see that the miracle God promised was far more complex and beautiful than the one I would have written into this story. I do get to joyfully report that I currently have three healthy, happy children of my own, and I realize that it might not have ended this way. There is no question that from conception, to birth, to growth outside of the womb any child is a walking miracle of life with God’s fingerprints all over. But that doesn’t complete the miracle.

I had to grow to a place where I could trust God’s bigger plan, no matter the outcome. That in itself seems almost more miraculous than a pregnancy. Insolent teenagers can get pregnant, but a change of heart is something only God can do. I believe God challenged me to invite others in to witness a life change rather than a physical change. Sometimes He likes to throw in both, just because He is God.

Experiencing my own walk through infertility and repeated miscarriages taught me things I couldn’t have learned otherwise. I learned that we are to mourn with those who mourn, and rejoice with those who rejoice, and that it is possible to do both at the same time when fully dependent on God. I learned that the only way to heal a secret is to put it in the light. I learned that it is okay to grieve and cry and feel, and that no one should feel guilt over a season of needing to say goodbye, to whatever it is. Sometimes we even need to say goodbye to an ideal that we have held in our minds of what it might look like to be happy. And most importantly, I learned how to speak an authentic kind of truth and hope into the lives of women who are hurting.

Just as miraculous as a change of heart and a change of body, is the fact that I wouldn’t exchange all I’ve learned for an easier conception story. It is part of what has made me a better version of myself.

My story is peppered with heartbreak, and doubt, and loneliness, and yet, all of that pain has been miraculously redeemed through the opportunity to share God’s love and compassion with other broken-hearted women because of my own journey. That is the kind of redemption miracle made possible through Jesus Christ alone.

Friend, I don’t know what kind of painful pieces are hiding in your own story. What I do know is that Jesus Christ is the author of redemption. He is the miraculous healer who works through the most divine paradoxes. More than anything else, He wants to perform the miracle of freedom for captives, comfort for those in grief, beauty for ashes, joy for mourning, praise for despair, and He wants bind up the desperately broken-hearted (Isaiah 61). This is the ultimate display of God’s splendor, and He longs to display it in you too.

Ashley is primarily a story-teller at A Child’s Eye who enjoys capturing the stories that happen in unanticipated turns in her day, in the trenches of motherhood, in the heartbreak of ministry to women, and in the lessons of daily living on a piece of property on California’s central coast full of wildlife and unforeseen adventures. She shares stories of laughter and tears and the truth that God reveals in the midst of it, in the hopes that someone will laugh or cry or find truth alongside her. She loves dessert for breakfast, a rainy day, a meaningful conversation, and the husband and three kids that are a constant reminder of God’s process of holy sanctification.

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