I remember reaching my lowest point in our infertility difficulties. It was probably 8 years ago. I was broken down…crying, mourning the family life that just wasn’t happening.

I’m not sure I was ready to hear it then, but my husband attempted to console me with this truth:

“Having children is not required to get into Heaven”

As much as I wanted a child…this truth was an important grounding for me as I worked through our first year of infertility (which lasted at least another year after that).

I was still young in my faith as a Christian. And letting go of the hopelessness surrounding my deepest desires for the direction of my life seemed impossible. It was driving me to rush ahead to try all the “best-chance” procedures to make a baby. And of course, there was the Fertility Industry offering all kinds of solutions to provide exactly that to us.

The fertility industry’s stated purpose is to help people have children, something that many people (understandably) recognize as a good thing.  But we cannot only focus on the result and ignore the process used to get there.  

I was not aware of many of the moral concerns that needed to be considered when we first found out about our own infertility. The fertility clinics offering these services are not likely to outline moral considerations for Christians as part of their sales pitch, and unfortunately, most Christians aren’t aware of them either…which is why I am writing this post. Cameron and I want to help Christians be better informed about how In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF) works and shine the light on the moral concerns to be aware of and consider, preferably before you are in the traumatic emotional state that prolonged infertility brings.  

Ultimately, my husband and I decided we were not comfortable utilizing IVF and only moved forward with Intra-Uterine Insemination (IUI) as a means to address our fertility issues in hopes of conceiving our first child.  Without any success in our first 4 IUI attempts, we discussed other alternatives, like adoption, and what our next steps might look like.  On the 5th attempt however, I became pregnant!  Even though children aren’t required to get into Heaven, God had chosen to bless us with one.  

Now that my faith has grown, I’m thankful that I eventually accepted the truth that having children is not a requirement of Christianity. Recognizing that God is enough brought me closer to Him. That no matter what the circumstance, I can try to glorify Him in my sadness. I can try to glorify Him in the waiting. I can lean on His strength throughout the difficulties we face. It challenged me to place Heaven as my highest goal.

Although I’ll never know, it is my hope that I would have kept this perspective even if God hadn’t answered my prayers and blessed us with not just 1, but 2 children so far. God allowed for my heart’s desire to be met, though not according to my timeline.

Today, as our third attempt at conceiving a child has continued for almost 4 years, I have learned more about the methods available in “Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART),” the broader term given to medical innovations which can help couples have children that includes manipulation of both the sperm and the egg.  These fertility treatments include sperm and egg donations and the process for creating an embryo outside of the womb, typically through In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF).  Since Intra-Uterine Insemination (IUI) does not remove any eggs from the woman and only manipulates the sperm, this is not technically considered an ART fertility treatment.  

Even as we struggle to conceive, I have plenty of reason to be grateful for the answered prayers in front of me. The peace in my life at this stage of infertility is far greater than it was 8 years ago, even though my life is far more chaotic!

My hope is that through this blog post series, you and your spouse (or any Christian for that matter!) might wrestle with these questions without the added emotional complexity of being in the midst of infertility. We need to understand how a Christian worldview applies to advances in technology and opportunities that we are given in our current day and age.  We must also recognize, however, that Christian moral concerns are not something we can rely on the fertility industry itself to consider or honor. 

This country’s worldview is increasingly uninterested in and often at odds with the Scriptures. We have to do the hard work of evaluating our life choices by the word of God and not trusting the answers given by an increasingly Godless society.  

Please do not interpret this series as an attack on anyone who has used ART methods.  My heartfelt desire is to educate others so that they can make their own choices, and settle their own conscience before God before making a decision about the life of a future child.  There are also unique needs that children have when being created as a result of these methods that are important to be aware of.  I hope to give people an avenue of discussion about Christian principles amidst a world that doesn’t often evaluate these decisions by the same standards. It is a desire to share what we have learned on our journey to help you in yours. 

So let’s begin our story…

I was sent to a fertility specialist because I was investigating endometriosis symptoms, not because we were trying to have children.  As is apparently typical at fertility clinics, part of the process is to evaluate both partners’ fertility, though we repeatedly emphasized that we were simply there for answers on my own health. The doctor determined surgery was the best course of action to investigate endometriosis and to check on my reproductive systems. During the surgery, we planned to remove my birth control device, in part because I felt it may be contributing to my symptoms.

I came out of surgery hoping for answers to my women’s health issues, specifically a confirmation of the endometriosis diagnosis and to have it removed.  At the follow-up with my doctor however, he explained that he didn’t find any endometriosis (later contradicted by a women’s health surgeon who did remove it—see this post or this one), but assured me that my tubes worked despite extensive scar tissue from a childhood ruptured appendix.  It seems he felt confident that the scar tissue was the cause of my pain.  He pointed out many times that I was still an ideal candidate for pregnancy using IVF, even though the scar tissue may negatively impact my fertility of trying on our own. 

The path to investigating my health concerns seemed at a dead end.  It was the end of the line for answers to the pain I was experiencing. It took almost 10 years for anyone to actually dive in to my medical problems surrounding women’s health again.  I was supposed to be thrilled that my tubes were open, despite feeling horrible otherwise. But there was more…

The surgeon announced my husband’s less-than-ideal fertility report to me (and my mother), without him there.  According to the doctor, it would be a miracle if we had children.  Then I was handed their IVF brochure and shown to the office of what I can only describe as an IVF saleswoman. This may not be everyone’s experience, but it was certainly mine.  I went there for answers to my women’s health pain and came out with no solutions or understanding of my issues, but with a sales pitch for an immediate workaround to a problem we had just been blindsided by.  

Despite not going to the doctor to address infertility, I had always worried about what impact my health concerns could have on my hope for children.  The news that Cameron had concerns on top of my unresolved troubles before we even attempted to conceive children was… devastating.  While I had tried to stay focused on just my own health, with no answers and no other path forward, I was left to stew on the new problem in front of me.  Remember I had JUST taken out my birth control device during that surgery.

In all of my time at the fertility clinic, no one walked me through any efforts to improve our fertility naturally.  Nowhere in their process did anyone discuss how to identify ovulation or any coaching at all for “trying” at home.  No one evaluated my hormone levels to determine if my natural cycle could support a pregnancy…which ultimately impacted both of my pregnancies, resulting in being categorized as high risk.  They took tests to determine the feasibility and odds of IVF success, which is a completely separate topic from women’s health and a healthy cycle.  

With all of this swirling in my mind, I had to then tell my husband the news. I don’t think I’ve ever been so nervous for a conversation before in my marriage. Thankfully, my husband’s confidence in his own masculinity was not shaken by the news of his infertility issues. Our marriage, however, was…

Despite the unexpected and uncomfortable news, Cameron was his typical calm and accepting self.  He wasn’t in a rush to begin IVF.  He never puts all his trust in an “expert opinion” anyways.

We had already agreed to start trying for children a bit earlier than Cameron had preferred if the surgery outcome indicated fertility difficulty. Since it did, in a roundabout way, he insisted that we try naturally for a while. He was very hesitant about the IVF process and wanted to look into the moral considerations before we jumped to those measures.  I was negotiating with him over how many months of natural trying he would accept until we could pursue IVF since I didn’t really believe we could conceive naturally with our circumstances.  I worried that he would find something that would dismiss it as an option, showing my bias towards pursuing anything that would help us with conceiving a child. 

As you might imagine given the place I was in mentally and emotionally, the months ticked by without success.  Though my health wasn’t ideal, I was determined to power through.  I detoured from a focus on my own health into a complete focus on babies.  My focus was exclusively on conception.  

But as each test reported negative, Cameron watched my hope fade to almost nothing and my sadness consume me along with my dreams for a family.  This obviously didn’t make trying for children very enjoyable. 

Every man deals with infertility in their own way, I’m sure. But for Cameron, he wondered if he was truly enough for me.  At one point, he asked me if I would be able to be happy if it was just us.  I struggled to answer that. I hoped I could accept a life with just him as being enough, but couldn’t envision our life together that way.  I felt sure that we would have children somehow, even if through adoption, which introduced another complex topic into our marriage.   

In truth, children are not required to be considered a family.  God reminds us that a family is created when He makes the two into one flesh.  

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”   Genesis 2:24

And even then, a family is not required to go to Heaven either. I have friends who have prayed for a spouse for years.  I know many couples who have struggled with infertility and child-loss for years, some still without the blessing of a child.  Our faith can carry us through these difficulties.  While it can be heartbreaking to never marry or never have kids; these are blessings, not guarantees.  

Thanks be to God that He is just and would never require something of us that we can’t control!

I found peace in that God knows the desires of my heart.  I was married to an incredible man (already an answered prayer) and we didn’t have kids and I had to be content in that place, without giving up hope on what may come down the road.   

In the end, it wasn’t really about whether my husband was enough for me.  It was about recognizing that what God had given me was enough.  I had to accept the circumstances as they were and trust that God would hear me and do something good with it (Romans 8:28). 

At the same time, hoping for children, even your own biological children, is not wrong.  In fact, according to the Scriptures, the desire for one’s own biological child is consistently praised and prayers for a child are answered by God throughout the Bible.  “Be fruitful” is more than just a command given by God to populate the Earth, it is the recognition of a natural desire we typically have.  We need only to think of Sarah and Abraham, or God answering Hannah’s prayers for a child.  The fact is, throughout the Scriptures, God shows his willingness to intercede and grant children to women who are barren and often added the blessing of being incorporated into the lineage of Christ for those faithful to Him.   Over and over again, God shows us that having children is a subject He cares about.

But this assurance didn’t completely alleviate the tension in our marriage.  It is hard to navigate these roads of faith, even when the Scriptures provide the perspective we ought to have concerning our desires.  

During this time, we discussed our fertility difficulties with other Christians and many were immediately supportive of IVF, sharing stories of other couples who had had success with IVF and had children. My husband kept me grounded in our need to answer the specific concerns we had. He wasn’t as consumed by the desire for children, though he seriously wanted them like I did.

Slowing down and asking how the Scriptures affect or shape our position is extremely important!  We should be careful as Christians (even in the advice we offer other couples) to evaluate emerging issues introduced by technology against our Christian worldview.   We need to slow down and be cautious about what we endorse as Christians.  

Even with the acknowledgement that a desire for children is good, that does not relieve our responsibility to consider how we go about having them.  We can relate to this by comparing it to other Biblical considerations about having children.  While a desire for biological children is good, the Scriptures don’t approve of certain approaches:

• Having sex (and the potential to make children) before marriage
• Being unequally yoked in marriage (we can infer the impact on children from this)
• Killing a child who has been born (child sacrifice/murder) 
• Killing a child who is still in the womb (abortion)

God is full of grace and forgiveness toward us when we misstep his loving boundaries, but he never changes His standards.  We need to better understand this unique, new option for the creation of life which technology has afforded us before we give it a Christian endorsement.

Now, let’s get back to our story.

As I struggled to be content with our family of 2, we continued to try naturally with no guidance or coaching on natural fertility for almost a year.  I stumbled through trying to understand the natural fertility process and how to read my body’s signals.  After I learned how to properly identify ovulation, we still weren’t successful after months of “perfect trying.” I almost completely gave up on the idea of natural conception; which is a bit ironic considering that my second child was completely natural despite our “impossible odds.”  

I’m grateful that my intense desire to have children didn’t result in us rushing through a process I hadn’t considered in its fullness. That credit goes to Cameron and I’m grateful to God for his balancing input during that difficult time. With so many voices encouraging IVF, it was incredibly hard to slow down and be objective.

It is our sincere hope that over the course of this series of posts, that our story and the questions we encountered along the way will help bring clarity to confusing, emotionally charged, but critically important decisions about bringing new life into this world.

Key questions related to ART and IVF:

How much control over making life are we comfortable taking responsibility for?

What is the appropriate balance between the best odds of having a child and addressing medical needs?

Are we crossing a moral boundary in the creation and termination of life?

What is a child’s right to life once he/she has been conceived?

What happens to embryos created by the IVF process?  What happens to unused embryos?  

Is the approach of the industry appropriate? Are we morally or financially supporting something that is immoral?

What about adoption?

We approached these questions a bit out of order and haphazardly during our journey and my hope is that you can benefit from some of our hindsight lens on the process.  

One of the key perspectives missing from the entire consideration of ART methods (even in our own journey) was the impact these methods have on the children. We now have more information about the trauma or detrimental impact of some of these methods and we need to evaluate these choices from the child’s perspective first and foremost.

In my next blog post in this series, we are going to look into the creation of life and our experience with IUI.