So most of you know already know the life update and our big new because you got here through a social media post but just in case you missed it…
We are having a baby!!
Andrew and I have been keeping a secret from all of our sweet clients, most of our friends, some family, and heck most of the world. And our secret keeping skills have gotten really good.
You see our journey to Baby Maigur did not go the way we planned, like at all. Our skills have been honed through 18 months of keeping our pain, our constant medical testing, praying and pleading before the throne of grace for a miracle. And we have waited longer than normal to share the big news with everyone for several reasons. First to really enjoy it ourselves. Second, so we could enjoy seeing friends and family reactions in person. And thirdly, because we have been trying to come up with the right words to say, the right way to handle this. This is the most exciting moment in our lives up to this point, but we also know what it is like to be in the depths of the struggle. To know what it feels like to see another baby announcement online and still not be expecting yourself. So our prayers go out to all of you who are still in the trenches, still pleading, still trying to figure out how to keep going. And know this, we feel you. We are HERE for you! Your brokenness, your struggles, your times when you just need to cry are 100% understood here.
We also believe that our stories aren’t our own. We are part of God’s story. And our story is part of his grand plan. So we hope our story of deep struggle turning into our deepest joy will encourage you in some way.
Our baby journey might not have gone the way we planned, but God’s plans are ALWAYS better then ours could have ever been.
Yes, you did read that right, our journey to sweet little baby Maigur started 18 months before we got the answer to our biggest prayer!!
It all started sitting at the dinner table. We started planning and dreaming about bringing little ones into our family. With my job and having to book weddings 6 to 18 months in advance, having a game plan for birthing a child in the midst of it seemed of the utmost importance. Andrew’s regular job is tasking and exhausting too, planning was a big deal!! So our plan in May of 2017 was hatched. We thought of how many weddings I could handle in a year, when I would need to start to say no to sweet brides and grooms, how to work around family and personal vacations on our schedule, what would life look like with Andrew’s job, and oh so much.
But a month in we noticed that things weren’t going to happen the way we had it all planned out. We thought we had made it happen that first month, but 3 failed tests broke our hearts. And more than that it made us ask the question, what is going on? No baby but no cycle either (sorry any guys that reading, but that is the truth of the matter!!) Dr. Andrew immediately jumped into action trying to answer the questions and encouraging me to get in to see my GYN. That isn’t an easy task and about a month later we had an appointment to start to figure out what was going on.
You guys, I don’t think I have ever said this about a doctor (except the incredible Dr. Andrew Maigur that I get to walk through life with), before but we got majorly blessed by my OB/GYN. She was so thoughtful, careful and patient with us. She answered every question, did all the tests she could think of and pointed us into the direction of a great fertility specialist!
It was beyond incredible to catch things and start with a specialist that quickly. I know not everyone that walks this road is that blessed. Looking back on those days we can see the blessing, but at the moment that is the last thing you see or feel. I remember the feelings of less than human, less than a woman. Like I was already failing as my job as the mother to our children because I couldn’t do or be what I was supposed to be. We remember those feelings of hopelessness. Those thoughts that there would never be a sunny day again through all the rain clouds. We remember the questions of, why us? Why now? What about our plan? What is God’s timing and plan?? We remember crying through most songs at church, we remember putting on a smile and pretending like we were fine but we were the farther from fine we have ever been in our lives.
The next step was sitting in the specialist office. It was in mid-November of 2017 and it was the longest doctor’s appointment ever! If memory serves me right it was like 2 plus hours of talking and learning about your body and making lists of all the blood tests we needed. After we left that appointment, the realness of what was in front of us truly hit us. Little did we know that waiting would be the biggest part of our story. Every time we went into that office we expected answers, we expected the next step to take place, and what we got in return was more waiting. A month would go by in between appointments.
Finally, it was time to take action. Finally, it was time for treatment to start. To make a long story short, after a week of medications and level checks, and then another week of waiting and dreaming…it didn’t work!! What a heartbreaker that one was.
The thing that no one can prepare you for is the heartbreak. You let your head dream, you dream up what it’ll be like to hear them say “you’re pregnant”, how you are going to tell your spouse, how you are going to tell family and friends, how you will decorate the baby nursery, what name you will give him or her…you dream of these things. You plan, you open your heart. And then you get the worst call. That it didn’t work. It hurts like nothing you have ever felt before. One of our close and dear friends said it best, that bad and hard days are more a part of the infertility process that anyone on the outside would ever know. And that they hurt so much more deeply than any typical “bad day”!
Let’s fast forward past another failed try in April, to the summer of 2018. Around the end of June. After weeks of trying to get in touch with the doctor’s office to schedule a new appointment, finally an answer. But not the answer that was expected. The other end of the phone was speaking but none of it made any sense. They were saying that the doctor was leaving the practice and heck leaving the country! We were completely taken back, it didn’t make any sense. Why would we go this far just to have the door slammed in our faces?? It felt like a HUGE step in the wrong direction. I remember crying out to the Lord through tears, asking where He was, why was this happening, what do we do now and oh so many other things. Nothing about it made any sense.
But his ways are so much higher and better than our ways.
We started at another fertility practice at the beginning of August! And Y’all, sometimes you can just see the Lord has a better plan. This is one of those moments. This practice was like a night and day difference from where we had come from. You got answers to your questions right away, a whole system in place for making appointments, so much more efficient. We could see that the Lord had led us to this place for a reason, just after one visit.
In the midst of all these medical appointments and moments of waiting for them, the only thing that sustained us was the Lord. He would speak to us through so many different means, from songs to Bible passages, to his people, to sermons on Sunday morning at church.
Andrew:
Through the ups and downs of emotions, an almost supernatural peace flooded my heart and mind when I knelt before Him in prayer, although I did not hear a very clear answer, do we keep trying procedure after procedure, do we adopt, Lord just given me an answer……..but each time I walked away knowing that our creator God was at work in our lives. Through the pain He brought me low so I could see Him clearly and worship Him in the midst of the uncertainty, His Grace is truly sufficient for every moment of our lives, He taught me to say and mean it when I did “Lord even if we never have our own children, I will still praise you and glorify you.”
And then the answer came, I knew we were going to get results of the blood test that evening, I was at work distracted, but suddenly I get a call from “Wifey”, her voice filled with glee and joy, she didn’t have to say anything I knew the Lord had performed a miracle, joy tears worship excitement and fear coursed through my veins…..I can only imagine what it felt like for Old Abraham and Sarah.
The Lord has just impressed on us a consciousness that there are so many couples out there silently bearing this burden, every Facebook-Instagram announcement can be a dagger to the heart, every careless question from family and friends can unknowingly create pain, but know this dear one the Lord is always with you no matter what state of mind or walk of faith, He cares, He walked this earth, He felt pain and anguish, He walks with you!!!
Fast forward to the week we had our 1st ultrasound scheduled at the doctor’s office, the night before we lost power due to an ice storm which displaced us to our in-law’s home, that evening I received a frantic call from my mom in India, in the middle of the night my dad unexpectedly passed away. A roller coaster of emotions and thoughts running through our minds the next day as we hear the heartbeat of the precious life gifted to us from above only to know my dad’s had ceased to beat a few hours ago and he was now in the presence of His maker. In the midst of grief, He gave us true joy, He orchestrates our lives, He is a good God!!!!!
