Infertility is More Than Physical. Research-Based Advice for Engaged + Newlywed Couples.

In the heady first days of engagement and marriage, it’s hard to imagine the possibility of anything but lifelong joy.

Though the head knows marriage calls spouses to suffering and purification, the heart is frequently focused only on the blissful--and in many ways, rightly so.

Where, then, does that leave you and your spouse the first time you face a major cross or struggle? How can we live in the tension of suffering and hope while seeking to support and understand one another?

Marc Sherman and his wife Erin struggled to conceive for nearly a decade after their wedding day. With all glory to God, they are now parents, yet their personal journey illuminated a deep need: while science and medicine offer a wealth of physical support, where were emotional and psychological resources for spouses experiencing infertility?

Marc and Erin set out to meet this need, working with research psychologists to produce qualitative and quantitative research pertaining to husbands and wives’ individual and interpersonal experiences of infertility. Their business, Organic Conceptions, was founded in 2015, offering online education designed to develop couples’ emotional awareness, communication, healthy thought patterns, and understanding of the holistic relationship between mind and body. 

Whether infertility is or is not a part of your current season, the principles of communication and understanding are relevant to all couples. Marc chatted with us to share his advice and perspective for spouses-to-be and newlyweds.


Organic Conceptions is rooted in you and your wife's personal journey with infertility. Can you share a bit of your story, and how your struggles impacted your marriage and spiritual lives (for better and for worse)?

We often see life evolving and sequencing in a particular way, and “struggle” is such an understatement in terms of what’s happening behind the scenes. Within just several months, that anxiety, worry, and concern over did we wait too long? And what’s wrong with my body? Becomes so emotionally difficult.

For my wife and I, after many, many years struggling, we were prepared to adopt and then conceived naturally--not once, but on two occasions. When you’re struggling, these are the most frustrating stories to hear. Friends and family try to encourage you, but it’s such a sensitive space. 

After living this twice, it was very clear that things were different in each of our experiences. For my wife, it changed her perception of herself, her body, our relationships, past decisions leading to this journey...that led to the start of Organic Conceptions. We hired research psychologist Dr. Kate Webster to look into the patterns that emerge in [couples’ experiences of] infertility. From a marriage perspective, this is potentially one of the first major [challenges] you face as a couple. Everything you do is called into question, including your faith.

Dr. Webster’s research ultimately showed every couple’s story would map to the same set of emotional transitions through grief, pain, and worry. These emotions are validated through the research, and then we can start to empower and support couples to stay married and close through these difficulties. 

There is a way in which a woman experiences this differently than her husband. We tell our couples, neither is right nor wrong. It’s about emotionally coming closer together and leaning on each other. Like any issue in a marriage, there’s middle ground that, through this research, can bring them to that place. Couples begin understanding how to engage and stay connected in the light of uncertainty--and there are other instances of pain and uncertainty in marriage [in addition to infertility; this provides a solid foundation for future difficulties.

For recently married couples bearing this cross of infertility, what practical advice you can share?

I want these couples to know: your emotional health and well-being matters. Research speaks to what happens in the month-to-month devastation of hope to despair.

At the highest level, our emotional and reproductive health aren’t entirely separate systems. We are physical, emotional, and spiritual beings.

[I encourage couples to not be] be too quick to jump only to fixing the physical and seeking answers; give meaning to emotional processing and experiences, as well.

Individually, couples need to make sense of this journey, but it does need to be entered into together. At the root, it’s about building a marriage, family, and life.

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What about engaged couples? How can they work through fears or preexisting fertility issues in a productive way? 

Erin and I often say, Wouldn’t it be great if someone got to us sooner and made us feel we matter as individuals and as a couple; that our faith matters and that [conception] is more than a to-do list item? This is a wonderful time in couples’ lives, and for some it might not go exactly as planned--wouldn’t it be great if a couple actually puts on the table early on, asking, if this doesn’t go as planned, what options or treatments are we open to as alternatives? What a healthy conversation to talk about the timing and methods you each are open to. It’s a conversation that needs to happen earlier on than it typically does.

Marriages are damaged by the journey, not the outcome.

If a couple’s journey wasn’t made in a connected, intimate way while making decisions together throughout an infertility experience, it can carry over into family life.

The ache for children and family is a natural and human desire. How can Catholic couples respectfully, lovingly answer friends and family who suggest they pursue infertility treatment options not in line with the Catholic faith?

I suggest couples focus on connecting emotionally, share their thoughts as a unit, and remember their faith. IVF and fertility treatments emphasizes the physical, treating it as a problem to be solved, and leaves out the emotional and spiritual pieces [of who we are]--we need to make room for all three.

I’ve had the pleasure of working with so many NaPro doctors about getting to the root of what the body is telling us: are we brave enough to listen to what our bodies are saying? In my mind, these are the most logical first steps: learning and having confidence in our bodies. Rather than leaping over and dismissing it, let’s pay attention to it. Couples can use this language of the body and the logic of fertility care in their conversations.

PHOTOGRAPHY: Her Witness Photography

An exclusive offer for Spoken Bride readers

If and when you feel called to sign up for Organic Conceptions’ programs, fill in “Spoken Bride” at checkout in response to “How did you hear about the program?” to receive the program workbook and journal for free. Questions may be directed to Organic Conceptions.

Surrendering Infertility to a Loving, Creative God

ERIN BUCHMANN

 

When my husband and I were engaged, we looked forward to someday raising a family. We did have a few conversations about that Big Unknown: what if we’re unable to have kids?

But we--especially I--didn’t consider it to be a real possibility, or even necessarily a totally negative one. “Of course we’ll be open to life and try to have a family, but if kids aren’t part of God’s plan for us, we’ll be fine with that,” I thought. “Besides, then I’d be able to continue with my career. That would be nice.”

Now happily married and having discerned together that the time is right to try to conceive, months start to pass by. Despite our careful NFP charting and frequent visits with our gynecologist, we’ve not been able to.

 Frustration set in, and emotions ran the gamut. Being unable to conceive when it suddenly seems like every other couple around is either expecting or juggling a handful of kids is really, really hard. 

The words of a hymn my childhood parish sang jump to my mind with fresh relevance: “The kingdom of God is challenge and choice.” The presenting challenge: physical infertility.

 With regard to how we approach this challenge, God gives us a choice: do we let ourselves fall into a sinful, selfish attitude of impatience or anger toward him, presuming to believe our wedding vows somehow entitle us to a child? Or do we instead imitate Our Lady’s response of unhesitating trust in God’s plan: Fiat, let it be done unto me according to your word?

Just as God had a unique, perfect plan for Mary’s fertility--one she had almost certainly not foreseen a moment before the Annunciation!--he also has a plan for yours.

 Your seasons of physical fertility and infertility are willed by him for the sanctification of the world and the salvation of souls. In my own experience, this time of physical infertility has actually been incredibly spiritually fertile.

As Christ has been helping me carry this cross, He has been moving my heart in new ways. He has been planting gardens in my heart in places I didn’t know there were stones. He has been immersing me deeper into the mystery of his love as he and I and my husband live out that love in our marriage.

Where did his gardening work begin? With the label of “infertile.” In my mind, our being unable to conceive at this point in our marriage meant we were never going to have children. Further, as it appeared from our NFP charting that my body was the reason for our unsuccessful attempts at achieving a pregnancy, I saw myself as broken. Having had a rocky relationship with my body before, this feeling of brokenness was particularly poignant--and painful.

As I was praying (and crying, to be honest) after receiving communion during one particularly difficult Sunday Mass filled with many families, I heard Christ’s voice speak to my heart: “Is my life inside your body enough for you?”

When one is in a state of grace, Christ’s life is present in that soul. But when we receive him in the Eucharist, Christ comes to dwell physically inside our bodies also. My body is most certainly not broken, for the Most Precious Body of the creator of the universe lives safely inside me.

 Christ’s transformative work on my heart has continued further. Although my body is not broken, medical help does offer assistance in restoring to the female body the ability to conceive a child and then sustain that pregnancy.

My husband and I began seeing a Catholic gynecologist during our engagement, when we noticed our marriage-prep NFP charting wasn’t looking like the examples in the textbook. When we found we weren’t able to conceive after we married, our doctor prescribed medication intended to normalize my hormone levels—and I resented taking those two little pills.

 The Catechism teaches “spouses who still suffer from infertility after exhausting legitimate medical procedures should unite themselves with the Lord’s Cross, the source of all spiritual fecundity” (CCC 2379). I researched the jelly out of those two medications and found them totally within the lines of moral legitimacy. But I still begrudged taking them.

I asked my husband for his thoughts on the whole matter, including the Catechism’s perspective: “Honey, what do you think? Does ‘exhausting legitimate medical procedures’ mean I am morally obligated to keep taking those pills until I reach menopause?!”

My husband paused and thought for a time. I waited.

“I don’t think it’s morally wrong to eventually stop taking the pills, if time has confirmed they aren’t helping,” he began, “but we’re not there yet. Not enough time has passed for us to reach conclusions like that. For now, I do think a decision not to take them would say something about your openness to pregnancy. Is taking two pills really too much of a burden for you, if they may be helping your body function as God intends it to?”

That brought all my defensiveness crashing down. Here, Christ brought another tangled piece of my heart into his healing light.

I realized taking those pills is one way I am called to work with God and my husband to make our marriage one truly open to the arrival of children. This is, concretely, one way I can assent to my role as a co-creator with them.

My daily “yes” to taking the medications can embody, in a little way, my continual surrender of my desire for a flawless body, my ambitions for my career, and my fear of the unknowns that would accompany motherhood--all for the greater good of fostering a marriage that is fully open to the Lord’s plans, whatever they might be. Fiat, let it be done unto me.

Personally, this season of infertility has been a blessing in disguise. Christ has taught me in so many new ways what it truly means to be a wife and a mother.

 As a religious sister once shared on a middle school retreat, God intends each and every woman he creates to be a MOM: a Master Of Magnanimity. We are called to be generous of mind and heart, willing to endure hardship and discomfort in order that great things might be accomplished through us.

For me, this has meant a daily surrender of my desires and fears while coming to a deeper acceptance of my body exactly how God has made it.

The lessons Christ wishes to teach you during this season might be different, but through all the challenges and choices, never doubt that he has amazing plans and the perfect timeline in mind for your fertility. Our loving, creative God will never be outdone in generosity. Never give up hoping in, trusting, and walking with him.


About the Author: Erin Buchmann enjoys daily Mass, outdoor adventures, crossword puzzles and Ben & Jerry's. She and her husband reside in Virginia but dream of the day they'll move back to the Midwest.

The Sophia Series | Juliana

JUILIANA TOMLINSON

 

We invite our longtime married readers to share the experiences that have marked, refined, and anointed their marriages; months and years that, by grace, transform the mundane, the bitter, and the incomprehensible into the fruits of holy wisdom. A purification and a clear vision for the path to heaven that lies ahead. The Sophia Series.

“How can I repay the Lord for all the great good done for me?” Psalm 116:12

 I sit here while I watch my baby boy sleep. With my heart filled with gratitude, I try to write some words to best describe 2018, the best year of my life so far. Usually words come easily to me, but when I think of the events of past year I become speechless.

For many years--over half a decade--my husband Greg and I had prayed, hoping the Lord would bless us with a child. I still remember clearly that on our wedding night we prayed for that undeserved gift: “Lord, give us a baby!” That prayer was repeated countless times, and friends from around the world joined us as we kept petitioning before him. Still, year after year, my womb was empty.

 After one year of trying on our own, our marathon of doctor visits, tests, and medications began. We saw doctors local and far--even in my native Brazil-- read articles, researched, and again and again I begged before God. Nothing was working.

One day, totally unexpectedly I saw that positive test I had hoped for every day. I was pregnant, and I couldn’t believe it! We rejoiced, bought a stuffed animal or two, and got so excited when it was time to see our baby on an ultrasound for the first time. I close my eyes and can still feel the pain of hearing the doctor say, “I’m sorry, we can’t find a heartbeat.”

That day was one of the worst of my life.

How could I love someone that small so much, and miss a baby I didn’t even have a chance to hold? I had some tough days ahead of me. Depression knocked on my door and stayed for a while.

A few months after, I wrote down the promises of God to me and I taped them on my door, where I could see them every single day. That simple gesture brought peace and hope back to my heart. It healed me and gave me strength to keep going, keep praying for my miracle to happen.

A few years more had come and gone and still no baby. I was almost giving up, but somehow I heard God saying wait. I faithfully waited until I was very close to my breaking point. I was losing sight of the promises God had for me, entering a place of bitterness and resentment. I was so close to throwing in the towel. I never doubted the existence of God, but started thinking he didn’t love or care for me.

So, after not going to Brazil to visit my family for awhile because of a Zika outbreak, I was sure my turn to become a mother would never arrive.I decided to pack and go. Greg and I visited a state that was very high in cases of Zika, but I didn’t care, because in my mind I would never get pregnant.

We enjoyed our time with family and friends, yet deeply within me, that sadness wouldn’t leave. The sadness of a woman who was losing hope.

We came back to the US after our trip, and as many many times before, I took a pregnancy test just so I could relax and my period would come. When I peeked  and I saw “PREGNANT +3,” I started crying like crazy, and ran through the house screaming. I fell in the hallway where Greg, looking a little lost, was trying to help me. I was so certain the test was wrong. I was crying because in my mind it was a trick; someone was messing with me.

I told Greg I needed to go to the pharmacy and get another test, because I was sure the entire lot I had at home was defective. It was almost 10 PM and off we were to CVS. We got home and there it was, two pink lines that would change my life forever.

I was so, so happy. I called the doctor the next morning and it all started, a happy marathon of visits this time. Test after test, my HCG levels were doubling. We saw a little “dot” on the monitor and this time, the greatest sound of a little heart, beating strong, filled the room. I cry writing this as I remember that day. My baby was alive inside of me.

Even though I had an amazing doctor, his face showed how shocked he was. After all, every single doctor we saw said the same thing: you two will never be able to conceive naturally. Yet, God did it. When I least deserved it, when I was losing hope, when I started to doubt his love for me. The Lord taught me his love is totally unconditional… it doesn’t matter what I do or don’t do; he’s there, loving me every step of the way.

2018 was the year we welcomed our baby boy into this world. Theodore Clark Tomlinson was born on February 19th of 2018 after a difficult pregnancy and delivery. He is a reminder that God still works miracles. My son reminds me every day how much God cares for us.

Infertility can be devastating and can be hard on marriages. One thing that really helped us going through those difficult years was our small family prayer group.

They prayed for and with us, shared their wisdom and kept us motivated on days of doubt. Being part of a community that believes in what you believe can give you the strength you need to face another day.

Juliana’s words of wisdom for brides:

If you are waiting for a miracle, don’t give up. I don’t know what you are waiting for, but I can tell you God is faithful and powerful. Keep praying, keep asking. And know that he is always caring for you, even when you can’t see it or feel it.


About the Author: Juliana is a Catholic wedding photographer and Spoken Bride Vendor who lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania with her husband Greg, miracle baby boy Theo and fur baby Arthur.

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The Sophia Series | Jessi

We invite our longtime married readers to share the experiences that have marked, refined, and anointed their marriages; months and years that, by grace, transform the mundane, the bitter, and the incomprehensible into the fruits of holy wisdom. A purification and a clear vision for the path to heaven that lies ahead. The Sophia Series.

Jessi Caruthers, married since 2011, discovered the sorrow that unexpectedly lay beneath the thought of openness to life. And through the grace of her marriage, she learned to sit within that sorrow and find its redemption.

Photography: MD Turner Photography

It was on our first real date that my future husband told me there was a good chance he would never be able to parent children. We were sitting in this overpriced little Italian restaurant before going to an awful opera where Tim held my hand for the first time. We had known each other for a couple of years, and I knew he was a childhood cancer survivor. Before we began any sort of serious relationship, he wanted me to know that the treatment which, by the grace of God and modern medicine, saved his life, had the possible--even likely--side effect of causing infertility.

I thought very little of infertility that night. I was too busy worrying about what to do with my hands and if there was something in my teeth.

A little less than a year later on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, on a shared kneeler in our beautiful parish, Tim asked me to marry him. I said yes. Six months later, we were married in that same beautiful church. We vowed openly to accept children as gifts from God. We were also vowing to accept that our marriage would not be given that gift; at least not in the normal way.

While it is true that from the very beginning of our relationship I understood we were unlikely to conceive children, somehow I didn't really think that would be our cross.

We are good people. We would be good parents, I thought. Surely, God does not want us to be childless.

Doctors were pretty hopeful, too, since there were no other indications of underlying problems. So, we hoped.

We were eager to start our family when we married. I drove myself and my dear husband a little crazy each month when the signs I thought pointed to pregnancy actually pointed to quite the opposite. I was a wreck. I cried a lot. What made it worse was that I knew Tim felt responsible. After a year, Tim convinced me we should seek a diagnosis or prognosis to determine whether there was any hope of conception. Over the phone, we received the medical answer: zero chance. No clarification was needed. No explanation was given, just "not going to happen."

Once one has a ring on her finger, everyone from her hairdresser to her aunt, the nice lady who sits in front of her at mass, even her social media ads start wondering when the children will start coming. If it has been a couple years, some ask. Others simply assume that perhaps a couple isn’t really open to life.

Infertility is invisible and so isolating.

I remember sitting in the choir loft of our parish, looking down on all the women who stood for the priest's blessing, on the first Mother's Day after we found out with some certainty that we wouldn't have children. Sitting there, looking down, I wept bitterly. I was angry with God and I was angry with myself. Children are gifts from God--truly "the supreme gift of marriage"--but one that I would not have and that, I knew, was not owed to me. How dare I be angry with God for withholding a gift I don't deserve?

So, in shame and fear I hid myself from my husband, from my friends, and from my Creator. It was precisely in my desire for children that I neglected my vow to give myself totally and freely to my husband. Instead of leaning into my marriage by leaning on my husband; instead of leaning into my faith by embracing our cross; instead of allowing my friends to share my burden, I hid myself in work and pity. I busied myself, but I stopped praying. I felt all the feelings, and I tried to feel them alone. And at that I failed.

Photography: MD Turner Photography

During one of our monthly confession dates, a priest told me that in withholding this darkness from my husband I was failing him as a wife. I was not allowing him to be what he vowed to me: to be my husband, my rock, "in sickness and in health." It was a valuable lesson, a lesson that is unique to every marriage, but one I have realized all marriages need to learn in some way. For it is precisely in the hard things that we learn to love.

What we’ve learned is that marital love is a total and complete gift of self. And sometimes the gift of self that you would like to give--that gift of the self that has it together and is in control--is not the one you are able to give. Christ emptied himself on the cross. We are called in marriage to empty ourselves to our spouse, trusting that they will not leave us empty. That is precisely the icon of God's love that is found in marriage.

So, I became vulnerable before my husband. In allowing myself to be vulnerable, I allowed my husband to be who he vowed to be to me. And I allowed my husband to bring me back to trust in God.

I would not wish infertility on anyone. But as with any suffering, there are things to be learned and graces to be gained that could not be learned or received without that suffering.

I learned why the Church teaches children are the supreme gift and fruit of marital love. From an abstract, theological perspective, I understood, but it wasn't until it was suggested to me to get a sperm donor that I really got it. "You can even get a family member if biology is important to you," someone said.

I realized viscerally what I had only understood intellectually before that day: that I didn't just want to be pregnant and to have children. I longed for children precisely as an outpouring of our love. I wanted children that had my husband's nose and my eyes. Not for stupid aesthetic reasons, but because it is precisely out of that kind of love that children are gifts, and that children deserve to be born out of that love.

We might have been able to "fix" my not being able to be pregnant and my desire to have children, but it would have been without the only man I wanted to be their father. This is why only couples, not individuals, are infertile. My husband's cancer and his diagnosis might be the reason for our infertility--but precisely because we are married, if he is infertile then so am I.

I also learned to allow myself and others to grieve. I felt that because I hadn't lost a child, and we aren't owed a child by God, we had no right to grieve. We have this desire (especially Americans, I think) to fix people rather than embrace their sufferings. Suffering is uncomfortable, and we want to get over it as soon as possible.

When my husband and  told others about our infertility we were often told that it was God's will--as if taking away the right to be sad; if it is God's will then I should just surrender to it and even be happy about it. Even more often, we were given the ubiquitous advice that "you can always adopt". But adoption is not a replacement for fertility. And despite the myth, it doesn't cure it, either.

In Catholic theology we learn we are called to beget children as the gift and outpouring of marriage, but both in infertility and adoption, something has gone wrong. If we allowed ourselves and each other to grieve the fact that we would not have children by nature, that I would never feel the kick of a child in my womb, that Tim would never have children that look like him, we would be treating the children we adopt as replacements rather than the unique and unrepeatable individuals they are.

Infertility also taught us about grace. In the Easter Vigil liturgy we hear the proclamation "O Happy Fault that merited such and so great a redeemer!" It is precisely in our brokenness that God is able to fulfill us and to bring about an even greater good than we could have expected.

We are his children by adoption. It is through our brokenness that we are his, by grace.

It wasn't until we were able to accept our brokenness that we were free to suffer our inability to have children by nature, and that we were really ready to become parents by grace. And adoption is always from a place of brokenness. Something has gone wrong. We aren't there to fix that brokenness, but to redeem it in love. Love for expectant mothers in fear and crisis, love for birth parents who love their children more than themselves, and especially for those children, who enter into the world of brokenness and are placed in our family to be our children by grace. And like our redemption, it is truly a beautiful grace.

We learned to trust in God and listen to his desire for our family--to rely solely on him. Adoption is expensive and, as two teachers with student loans and small salaries, it seemed hopeless that we would be able to bring children into our home. My husband and I relied so heavily on each other's strengths: I relied on his ability to trust, and he relied on my ability to plan every eventuality. By relying on each other, and especially through the incredible generosity of our friends, God made adoption happen for us. We pray he has other children in mind to become part of our family.

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you... and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.

Through our struggles with infertility, I learned that the yoke of selfishness and control is so much heavier than whatever cross Christ asks me to take with him. I learned that my husband is here to share that burden. And that, really, is what marriage is: carrying our cross together.

Jessi’s words of wisdom for brides:

Tell your husband what you need instead of making him guess: You need to hear that he thinks you are beautiful? Tell him. You need to feel appreciated? Tell him. You need him to do the dishes? Ask him to do the dishes! In the first couple years of marriage, I wanted my husband to just intuit what I wanted and needed, until I realized I was setting him up for failure in my mind. My husband is a great man; he wants to bring me to God and help to make me happy, but I was expecting him to be a mind reader, too. When I tell him what I need, he exceeds my expectations.

Find a prayer life and time that works for you and your spouse, and pray together. Make it a part of your shared lives, so that even when you don't feel like it your husband can move you to prayer, even when he isn't feeling it you can help him, so in your life you are always both pointed toward God, together.

Try to outdo your spouse in service and forgiveness, and try to outdo yourself each new day.


About the Author: Jessi Caruthers is a wife to a really good man and a mother through adoption to an adorable and busy toddler. She puts her degree in Thomistic philosophy to good use teaching high school Ethics and Religion in a suburb of Houston. She aspires to shabby hospitality in her little yellow house, living a simple liturgical life and making beautiful things.

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