Testimonies: Infertility
After almost 20 years of marriage, I and my wife were still in search for medical help to have baby. I was 44 years then and my wife who was one year older than me was at 45. We had gone through many infertility treatments starting from artificial insemination, sperm freeze, G.I.F.T. (Gamete Intra-fallopian Transfer) and Z.I.F.T (Zygote Intra-fallopian Transfer) techniques.
By then we had visited Gynecologists and Urologists for 16 years (we did not seek medical help in our early years of marriage). We traveled in and out Thailand for more advanced medical helps overseas. My wife had at least 20 pregnancies and miscarriages. The process was not only painful physically but mentally too. You can imagine the suffering of tears after tears when treatments fail.
We would avoid church attendances on Mother’s day, Father’s day or children’s day. The word baby or pregnancy scared me. I bought Christian literatures on infertility to read for consolation. I remember one day when our Gynecologist told us that my wife started menopause, after failure in stimulating multiple ovulation with fertility drug, tears simply poured out my eyes. I could not sleep that night. I did ask God, “Why us Lord.” I did not hear his answer in that dark night.
The next morning, our Gynecologist called very early in the morning and said he would make the last attempt in our case with another type of fertility drug for the next menstruation cycle. That would be our forth In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) treatment, a technique in which egg cells are fertilized by sperm outside the woman’s womb, in vitro. The process involves hormonally controlling the adulatory process, removing ova (eggs) from the woman’s ovaries and letting sperm fertilize them in a fluid medium. The fertilized egg (zygote) is then transferred to the patient’s uterus with the intent to establish a successful pregnancy.
We were not discouraged though, and we thanked God as usual in all our circumstances for the incident. Two months later, we go back to our Gynecologist and started a new round of twice a day hormone injections to stimulate egg for 10 days, followed by egg withdrawal, sperm selection, in vitro fertilization and embryos implantation back to the uterus. We had done many times and nothing was exciting about it. The difference may be the Gynecologist transferred in for the first time four of our frozen embryos left over from our prior IVF treatment.
Two weeks later while I was working in my office one afternoon, our Gynecologist called to break the pregnancy news. It was cheerful although not so much of an excitement as we had had heard of pregnancies a dozen times before which only ended with miscarriages. “But this time is different, the hormone test is exceptionally high and your wife should move into the hospital immediately to prevent repeating miscarriage”, he sounded optimistic.
We packed and went off to the hospital immediately without further questioning him. It turned out to be the longest stay in the hospital for my wife. Eight months later, Doctor decided to have a caesarean operation to deliver the twin. It fell on the auspicious day of December the 5th, the Birth date of our King.
How time flies. John, the elder twin and his brother James are 15 years old now. They are in the High school 3rd grade in an International school near by the house. Looking back all these years, I can really feel God’ presence in our family and I thank him as usual as we do in all our circumstances