Today marks 38 weeks of pregnancy for me.  Just two weeks until that line is drawn in the sand that says my son is due to be born.  But, getting here has not been an eight-and-a-half month journey.

Counting it out, we have anticipated the birth of this baby for:
•    5 years and 2 months
•    62 months
•    267 weeks
•    1874 days

This is by no means the longest journey in infertity for a couple waiting to experience the blessing of a child.  We’ve heard of couples who’ve waited 15 years for a child to come along and then finally have held their child in their arms.

It’s not an easy road to travel.  Decision making becomes hard – do you make significant changes in your life in the hope that maybe in the next couple of months you might fall pregnant?  Do you say no to certain things that are scheduled months into the future just in case?  How long do you keep trying before you stop trying?

And along the way well-meaning people give advice that’s not too helpful at all.  Things like “If you just relax it’ll happen” or “when you stop trying, that’s when it’ll happen for you” or even “maybe you need to look at how stressful your life is”.

Let me tell you, this was not our experience at all.  For us, it was probably the time of greatest anticipation that we had success in falling pregnant.  Our lives were not at all stress free and we were very much deliberately trying.

I’ve decided that the struggle to fall pregnant is not rectified by a list of do’s and don’ts.  It may be rectified by medical intervention or perhaps by the introduction of natural therapies and remedies.  Prayer is significant, faith is necessary and God is indispensable.  Ultimately, though, it’s an area of life that we who struggle to fall pregnant need to accept we have no control over.

What we can control, though, is our attitude.  It’s funny because I’m two weeks away from my due date, but there’s a little part of me that’s still controlled by the 53 months before I fell pregnant.  There’s still that part of me expecting something to go wrong, because things going right to completion in this area of life is so completely out of my experience.

Here’s where choice comes in.  I can be controlled by my fear, or controlled by my hope.  And my daily choice is to be controlled by the vision of holding my child in my arms.

If falling pregnant is a struggle for you that seems completely overwhelming at times, please know that you are not alone.  Help and support is available.  For us, the best thing was being given the freedom to talk about it without judgment and we found this in the company of other couples going through the same thing.

If you’ve never spoken about it, may I encourage you to find someone to talk to, perhaps even an anonymous counseling phone service such as Lifeline or the Salvation Army Careline or check online for an infertility support group near you.