Find Me Here
By Jennifer Smestad
IVF is basically a last resort for couples or individuals trying to have a baby who are not able to conceive naturally, it’s a painful process, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Before the process actually starts there is a lot of pre-testing done, including blood tests, ultrasounds, semen analysis, etc. Once the doctor confirms that IVF is your only option to potentially have kids, the journey begins… and you jump in blindly.
Afterwards, you will find out how many eggs the doctor retrieved, which could make you very happy or very sad. You’ll also feel like your ovaries are going to explode with the most intense pain. Personally, I could hardly walk for the 5 days following egg retrieval. It was as bad as kidney stone pain for me. It’s not always like that for everyone, but it was brutal for me. Next, you’ll get a call every day to tell you how many eggs are being fertilized and how many don’t make it. Super emotional and stressful. Finally, after 5 or 6 days they will tell you how many embryos made it to freeze and they will grade each one of them. Those are your future babies.
On the day of my sister’s 8 weeks and 4 days along, she had extreme bleeding and pain and rushed to the ER. The hospital ran some tests and checked on the babies, and they had perfectly healthy heartbeats and looked great, so they sent her back home. Two and a half hours later, news that you could never be prepared for entered our lives, as the babies were gone. She had miscarried both of her perfectly healthy babies. Still to this day we don’t know why this happened medically.
I’m usually one to push away my feelings and pain and pretend bad things don’t happen (I know that’s not healthy – I’ve been working on it), so I attempted to feel the pain and sadness for about a week and then started to avoid my feelings. I turned to my medicine which is music and my healer Jesus to pen lyrics for what we experienced as a family, and what so many experience every day. I really desired to write a song about miscarriages and all that my sister went through, but I avoided it for months because I didn’t want to go there emotionally. I didn’t want to have to experience that pain all over again. I’ve never been great at showing my emotions in front of other people, so the thought of co-writing it with someone terrified me; but I knew I wouldn’t have written it by myself either. It took a very special person for me to be able to finally write it.
This song, “Find Me Here” was written about my experience as an aunt-to-be, placing myself in a mama-to-be’s shoes. Writing it made me realize that miscarriages and infertility are extremely painful journeys and SO many people go through it every day in utter silence, confusion and many times feeling alone and misunderstood. My dream for this song is to let my sister’s babies’ legacy live on and for their story to touch every single grieving mother, every couple, and every family going through infertility, miscarriages, and infant loss.
Forewarning: This is deep, it’s vulnerable and quite traumatic, but completely worth the read.
Have you ever gone through something so painful that you question if life is even worth the pain? Ever felt like giving up because everything seems so pointless? Been in a season that seems like it’ll never end?
Do you question God or hav
As a human, do you ever ask, “Does He hear me or even care? Why does He allow certain things to happen? Why does He answer some prayers but not others?” A final question, does any of this sound familiar?
Yeah, me too. I’ve been there, and still am at times.
Late last year (2018) I felt like I hit my lowest low. I had every single one of these thoughts and felt every single one of these emotions. I was going through a rough patch between handling a rough breakup, being in a weird and awful slump in my career, and a few other things piled up in my own human drama. Everything seemed to be spiraling down at once and my perception was clouded by the circumstances I was experiencing, but there was ONE good thing in my life, ONE still holding me together (I was grateful for life, but at the time it felt like everything was crumbling beneath me) … my sister, Kalynn was pregnant with twins and I was going to be an aunt. So my anticipation was great! I was elated of the news, as she was told at fifteen years old that she would never be able to have kids due to endometriosis, cysts on her ovaries, and other health issues. In addition to these problems, when she got married she found out her husband, Casey was infertile too, so the chances of them having a baby were extremely low. They consulted with a couple fertility specialists to see if there were any options for them, and ended up going through the process of something called IVF (In-Vitro-Fertilization), which is a whole other story in itself. If you don’t know what IVF is (or if you do, but have never gone through it), let me explain to the best of my knowledge.
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| Photo by Tana Hughes |
No one can prepare you for what’s to come. It’s one of those “no one fully understands unless you go through it yourself” kind of things. And even as a sister/family member of someone who went through it, I can’t say I understand it fully.
For a better understanding, I asked my sister a few questions about her experience with IVF. Here are some of her exact words. (If you’ve been through or are currently going through IVF, feel free to skip ahead)
“First and foremost, the cost. There are very few insurance companies that will cover IVF, so you will likely have to pay out of pocket. One round of IVF can cost anywhere from $15,000-$45,000. The medications are just as expensive.
Second, the physical journey. Going through IVF is seriously like a full time job. You basically live at the fertility center. First, you must prepare for egg retrieval. This consists of 4-5 shots every single day for 2 weeks. One of these shots hurts like a wasp sting. During this time, you will be going in to the fertility center every other day to track the growth of your follicles and blood draws. Once they see you are getting close, they will schedule your trigger (HCG) shot and your egg retrieval. The trigger shot causes you to ovulate within 39 hours. Egg retrieval is scheduled 36 hours after the shot is injected. You hope for as many eggs as possible. Typically, you will be under twilight anesthesia for this procedure, which means you’ll be out.
Afterwards, you will find out how many eggs the doctor retrieved, which could make you very happy or very sad. You’ll also feel like your ovaries are going to explode with the most intense pain. Personally, I could hardly walk for the 5 days following egg retrieval. It was as bad as kidney stone pain for me. It’s not always like that for everyone, but it was brutal for me. Next, you’ll get a call every day to tell you how many eggs are being fertilized and how many don’t make it. Super emotional and stressful. Finally, after 5 or 6 days they will tell you how many embryos made it to freeze and they will grade each one of them. Those are your future babies.
Next is Frozen Embryo Transfer (FET.) To prepare for FET, you have to go on birth control for about a month. Then you begin taking estrogen pills to thicken your endometrial lining, which will protect the embryo. The estrogen pills can cause intense nausea and vomiting, moodiness, hot flashes and more! You will go in to get ultrasounds to check your lining. If everything goes according to plan and your lining looks good, they will give you a transfer date. Then you will begin an antibiotic a few days before the transfer, as well as the dreaded progesterone in oil injections, also known as PIO shots. PIO shots are HARD. There is no way to sugarcoat it. You have to do them every day and night at the same time. The needle is pretty thick and long and it has to go into the muscle. You can inject it into your thigh (OUCH!!!) or your love handle area. The next day you’re pretty sore and can get lots of knots in the area. Like I said, it’s not fun. And you will continue doing it until you hit your second trimester. You have to do these shots to trick your body into thinking it’s pregnant.
Then... TRANSFER DAY! One of the best days of your life. You get to watch your embryo or embryos being placed into your uterus through a catheter! It’s simply amazing!!! You leave the appointment with an ultrasound picture and are called PUPO (Pregnant Until Proven Otherwise). The 2-week wait is the longest wait of your life, which is when you get your blood drawn to see whether or not the transfer was successful and you’re pregnant. If you hear a yes you are ecstatic and have to wait until 2 days where you get retested and they make sure your HCG number has gone up at least 66%. Then, you will get an ultrasound appointment to see if it’s a good, viable pregnancy.”
So, there’s a little bit of an explanation. My sister specifically only ended up with four embryos, which was a little disappointing and scary to say the least, but we were hopeful. The first round of IVF didn’t take after transferring two embryos, so she lost those two babies and only had two embryos left. This was heart shattering, but she still had a chance to have babies, so she went through her second and last round and transferred the final two embryos. Miraculously, IT WORKED. My sister was pregnant and with twins! You can only imagine the joy, happy tears, and excitement our family experienced together! As the weeks went by we got to see the twins’ tiny heartbeats through ultrasound and their little bodies being formed. It was beyond fascinating!
On the day of my sister’s 8 weeks and 4 days along, she had extreme bleeding and pain and rushed to the ER. The hospital ran some tests and checked on the babies, and they had perfectly healthy heartbeats and looked great, so they sent her back home. Two and a half hours later, news that you could never be prepared for entered our lives, as the babies were gone. She had miscarried both of her perfectly healthy babies. Still to this day we don’t know why this happened medically.
I was in Nashville when all of this happened and got a call from my dad telling me the devastating news. I didn’t even believe him at first. It took a while to sink in, but when it did I was absolutely crushed. I felt like my heart was ripped out of my chest and torn to pieces. After I lost the one thing that seemed to be going right in my life, I hit my lowest point. I never understood the amount of pain people go through with miscarriages. It’s a type of trauma that couples don’t know how to manage, a type of loss nothing could prepare you for. I never knew anything about them prior to this, so I was oblivious. My heart hurts knowing that so many women, couples, and families go through this more often than we think.
I’m usually one to push away my feelings and pain and pretend bad things don’t happen (I know that’s not healthy – I’ve been working on it), so I attempted to feel the pain and sadness for about a week and then started to avoid my feelings. I turned to my medicine which is music and my healer Jesus to pen lyrics for what we experienced as a family, and what so many experience every day. I really desired to write a song about miscarriages and all that my sister went through, but I avoided it for months because I didn’t want to go there emotionally. I didn’t want to have to experience that pain all over again. I’ve never been great at showing my emotions in front of other people, so the thought of co-writing it with someone terrified me; but I knew I wouldn’t have written it by myself either. It took a very special person for me to be able to finally write it.
Along this journey, a friend introduced me to a songwriter in town, Robert Ricotta (who is now my boyfriend) and I told him about this song idea. I mentioned to him that I’d been avoiding writing it, but he took it upon himself to make sure I did because he knew how important it was for me to write it for others to hear and experience hope. He encouraged me and challenged me to share something so real, deep, and personal. God brought so much love, peace, and understanding into the writer’s room that day, and I felt safe to cry. This song wouldn’t be what it is today if I wrote it with anyone else. Ironically, we wrote it the same week of my sister’s due date, which was a week before Mother’s Day. Coincidence? I know not. I knew Mother’s Day was going to be hard for her since it was supposed to be her first Mother’s Day with her babies, so Rob and I decided to demo the song quickly and give it to her as a Mother’s Day gift.
This song, “Find Me Here” was written about my experience as an aunt-to-be, placing myself in a mama-to-be’s shoes. Writing it made me realize that miscarriages and infertility are extremely painful journeys and SO many people go through it every day in utter silence, confusion and many times feeling alone and misunderstood. My dream for this song is to let my sister’s babies’ legacy live on and for their story to touch every single grieving mother, every couple, and every family going through infertility, miscarriages, and infant loss.
Before I sign off I want to leave you with this… when you’re angry with God, questioning why He would allow something like what you’re experiencing in the now to happen. Let me share this with you:
In everything that’s hopeless, in every part that’s broken, when your heart is cut wide open; in the tears that turn to sorrow, when you can’t make it to tomorrow. Heaven is here on earth to let you know that He’ll find you here.
This song is for you, Sissy.
Job 1:21
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” – Job 1:21 (ESV)
LYRICS:
“Find Me Here” by Jennifer Smestad
Written by Robert Ricotta and Jennifer Smestad
Why would You give just to take away
Don’t see beauty in these ashes
There’s no joy for my pain
Hard to believe, was this Your plan
To never hold them in my arms
No I’ll never understand
Among the silence You speak
I hear You whisper to me
You find me here
In everything that’s hopeless
In every part that’s broken
When my heart is cut wide open
Find me here
In tears that turn to sorrow
When I can’t make it to tomorrow
I need heaven here on earth to let me know
When I’m reminded of how far I have to go
You find me here
I never knew what could be
I had everything I wanted
Now it’s gone in just a beat
Among the chaos You speak
I’m overwhelmed by Your peace
You find me here
In everything that’s hopeless
In every part that’s broken
When my heart is cut wide open
Find me here
In tears that turn to sorrow
When I can’t make it to tomorrow
I need heaven here on earth to let me know
When I’m reminded of how far I have to go
You find me here
Though You give and take away
I’ll sing blessed be Your name
You find me here
In everything that’s hopeless
In every part that’s broken
When my heart is cut wide open
Find me here
In tears that turn to sorrow
When I can’t make it to tomorrow
I need heaven here on earth to let me know
When I’m reminded of how far I have to go
You find me here
(P.S. The photo in the frame of the "Find Me Here" artwork is the real ultrasound of Kalynn and Casey's twins)
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