The Pain of Infertility Podcast Episodes

I think what was hard about this grief too, is it’s such a cycle, like when someone passes away, you have initial shock, you have the funeral, all of that, and you get closure with this. This, you’re on a constant monthly cycle of this where you have hope. You’re really excited for two weeks, and you have to wait for two weeks and then everything will come crashing down again. 

Greetings and welcome to Breaking Bread, the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Service. I am very glad to have you along, and I’m very excited about today’s topic. One that’s been waiting for a while, and we’re going to tackle the topic of infertility. I’ve got Kaleb Beyer here. 

You know Kaleb as our marriage and family specialist. Welcome, Kaleb. Glad to be along for this conversation. And to help with this conversation, Tyler and Casey Zimmerman are here as well, and they are a couple in Bloomington Normal Church, my home church, and I’m glad to have them along here as well. 

Welcome to both of you. Yeah. Thanks, Matt. Now, I said this has been long in coming, Kaleb, you know that we get questions for us to step into this space of infertility. I know I have asked our listenership to provide topics and this topic comes up and I’m sure some people have been thinking I’ve been kicking this can down the road long enough and maybe they think we’re not interested in the topic and that’s not it at all. This, like some topics is too important to get wrong. Does that make sense? And that causes me pause to say, this just needs to be carefully done. And I think our listenership understands without a lot of explanation why it is sensitive, but I’ll tell you one reason why it’s sensitive. 

Kaleb, I can’t speak to infertility. Beyond just ethereal, what I can learn from people and the relationships I’ve engaged with people and what I can read through research. But I think the topic warrants more than that. It warrants more than a textbook address of infertility based on a clinical, right? 

Yeah. You see it in the counseling room, too. Right. Yeah, for sure. This is coming, this impacts folks, and so I wanted a couple to be able to speak to it. And that’s not easy, necessarily. Who wants to speak about this? Right? Right. I don’t even know who to ask. And then a number of months ago in Bloomington, we had an evening where infertility was addressed. 

Both Casey and Tyler, as well as another couple, just did a fine job speaking to it. I said, here’s a couple that’s willing to step in and be vulnerable in this space. So that’s my big intro. Yeah. Thank you, Todd and Casey, for doing it. You’re welcome. And I would love to hear maybe a little bit of your heart right off the bat. 

Why are you raising your hand to this? We both just really feel like God gives you a story to share it. And we went through a lot of hard, but to God be the glory through all of it. And that’s why he gave us this story. We wouldn’t necessarily always choose the hard, but a lot of good came out of it. Yeah. 

And we had couples going through when we were in our infertility that would share their story or share their experiences, share their hardships with us. And we’re able to connect, we’re able to feel a part going through infertility. That was a big part for us is feeling separated, maybe from our friends that were getting pregnant or having children or even our family and finding out that there were other people that experienced that same loss and experience that same grief brought a connection and brought a lot of help. And so, we want to be able to provide just another story for people to be able to go off of that too.  

Sounds to me like your healing process or maybe your maintenance process going through this journey was people. Is that a true statement? Yes. And so that has motivated you to be vocal because this is a topic that can go silent, and it goes silent for very reasonable reasons. 

I don’t want to guilt anybody out there who’s been silent with a struggle and saying, listen, you need to blab it. Yeah. That’s not the message here. Right. I appreciate you stepping into that space of making that connection through sharing your story, because I don’t know if this has been your experience, but sometimes even when individuals do try to step out and share, it may not go well. 

The expression back is one that isn’t intended. No one intends not to be helpful. But it can be a well-meaning expression that leads to perhaps more shame or yes, more internalizing. Wow, maybe something’s going on with us. And so, I just appreciate you stepping into this for couples to be able to make that connection. 

So, I think our goals here today, really, our goals are two pronged. One is to be a voice for this hurt and for this pain and this grief and this reality that quite a few endure at some level. I think the CDC reported 10 percent of women struggle with infertility. I have seen numbers higher than that. 

And so, this is a known struggle among many, but it varies, doesn’t it? It does. And I would say, I would just clarify and say, sometimes it’s the male. It’s not always the female that struggles with infertility. And so that’s what we commonly go to is the female, but yeah, 10 to 12%. And think about that in your congregation out of a hundred couples, you know, 10 to 12 of them are struggling with infertility. 

And whether or not it is maybe a problem with a female or the male. It’s a couple thing. You know, they’re both experiencing that loss, both experiencing that grief. Sometimes it’s together. Sometimes maybe one person has a little bit more of the share. So, I’d love to be a voice. And then the second prong would be to encourage the couples that are enduring infertility or have endured infertility, even if you have children, that doesn’t mean you’re exempt from the pain of infertility, right? So, I think sometimes we like closure and like, okay, they had a child. Okay. Everything’s good. But that’s not necessarily the truth, right? It’s more complicated than that. 

It is. Yeah. What is the nature of infertility that makes it so sensitive and there’s probably a dozen reasons, but Tyler and Casey be a voice in that pain. I guess there are those that heard about it. Is it such a silent grief? It’s an intimate thing with you and your spouse, and you’re inviting people into that space, and it’s hopes and dreams. 

It’s a loss, but it’s not the loss of something physical yet. It can turn to that, but it’s not the start of it. And Kaleb, I think the clinical term is disenfranchised grief, right? Yeah. When do you start grieving? Like our typical grieving, when you have a funeral and you come together as a community and in infertility, when does that start and stop? 

And then the silent piece, like you said, is like, we are bearing this, and we have this community that we’re with on Sunday, yet we feel separate from them as a result of this, that we’re carrying. Right. And that makes it really hard. Our church very much celebrates children, which is something that we love, and we’re focused on children. But when you don’t have that and you want it, it’s very hard to walk in the doors on Sunday. Yeah, you know speak even to when you don’t have that and you want it. You feel like it’s a God given desire to be parents to be a mother and it is built into you to carry a child. 

I feel like God builds that into the nature of a mother, even before you ever are pregnant. And when that’s not happening, it is easy to start questioning, well, why am I not good enough to have a child? Am I doing something? Is there, I mean, God doesn’t punish you through life circumstances. He’s shown that through infertility in the Bible, but it’s also, why can’t I have this? 

It can feel like a punishment. Kaleb mentioned there in some of your opening comments shame. Would you say shame is a good word? Yeah, you can definitely feel a lot of shame. Shame that you were supposed to be able to, you know, we have a body that can procreate and shame that’s not working. 

Shame that we can’t be included in things. I’m sure. Yeah. Your body’s not enough or your relationship or something lacks somehow. I think that’s an important word to highlight because I think some people would be surprised that you endure shame because of infertility. Does that make sense? 

I don’t think it’s a natural connection. Well, shame means that you did something wrong. And you know what I mean? Saying we run that script. If we haven’t experienced it, it’s a little bit more of mental gymnastics to say, they are shameful, but I think it’s important to elevate. Kaleb, say a little bit more about shame. 

One of the things that feeds it is just being alone. Being hidden, right? It’s an environment, a fertile environment for shame to grow. Unfortunately, in this situation, it’s really difficult to shed light and truth into that. I think that’s an excellent point for us to understand that nature of shame or where shame flourishes. 

Yeah. And it’s going to flourish in a situation like this. And even like one of you touched on of going to church where we value family. We value connections and to be reminded we don’t have that, speak to that experience of community. It’s a double-edged sword, isn’t it? It is. Yeah, I mean, you would talk, Casey, a lot about your friends would announce a pregnancy or something like that. 

And you’re like, well, I’m trying to figure out the best way to not have my mascara run or something like that. And, you know, just figuring out a way to celebrate with your friends because they are definitely joyful and excited and happy, but yet at that same time, it’s reminded of what that loss, what that desire that we don’t have fulfilled. 

So, managing that was difficult. It was a balance of trying to celebrate with our church family and trying to celebrate together and rejoice together. And yet still protecting ourselves from the reality that we had to face. I would say we definitely had people weeping with us too. We definitely had some close friends that were standing alongside us through this. 

But even through that, at times, we both noted that sometimes that drifted apart a little bit too. Because after several years of this, what else is there to say? And sometimes people lost touch with it because there isn’t anything to say. And so that was hard. I think what was hard with this grief, too, is such a cycle, like when someone passes away, you have the initial shock, you have the funeral, all that, and you get closure. With this, you’re in a constant monthly cycle of where you have hope, you’re really excited for two weeks, and you have to wait for two weeks, and then everything will come crashing down again, and so you walk into church one Sunday, super hopeful that you’re pregnant, that whatever happened, with medical procedures or whatever worked that past week and then you walk in the following Sunday knowing it didn’t and watching your friend that just announced her pregnancy. Kaleb, when you hear that when you hear of a cyclic and then dashed hope cycle, that has to have some emotional toll. 

Oh, for sure. At what point do you just give up that hope? Right? I mean, at what point, because the very thing that I hope for is bringing me the pain. And so, at some point, the longer this cycle goes on, the harder it is to grasp hold of that is what my mind goes to hope, is holding on to those negative emotions and pain. 

And I want to shut that negative stuff down, which also shuts my desire and hope down, right? And so that is hard, painful, and exhausting. Yeah, and I would say that adds to some of that shame as well, you know, just you talked about having that hope and that hope was for us to have a child and we knew that we had this desire that was clear in evidence. Case and I would talk together, and we dreamed about that since we’ve been married, having children, developing a family together. 

And so, we, we felt that was something God given. And so, when it wasn’t happening, we kept going back to what are we doing wrong? Or, you know, that hope was dashed, and we kept looking at ways to try to improve or change something different or, you know, even things like dieting different or something like that. 

We’re grasping at straws eventually. But that just built up that shame more and more each time that hope was dashed. Yeah. And even I imagine, I don’t know, but this process is a fairly invasive process as far as what you need to do to, you know, the process you go through once a month to make this happen. 

And I’d like to go there. I’d like to give Casey and Tyler this opportunity to really kind of share your story and maybe to do that. Let’s set that up and say yours is unique. Every story is unique in its own way. Just because ours ended a certain way doesn’t mean that any other story is going to end this way. 

In between the friends that we know of, all of our stories have ended differently. And that makes all of us unique and doesn’t make it right or wrong in any way. And I think what’s important, Tyler, and I think sometimes when we listen to a testimony, I think sometimes it’s important for us to know how to listen. 

And I might encourage our listeners to listen in this way. That’s a good idea. Number one, look for common pain. We can all connect with your story, whether we’ve endured infertility or not. There are going to be some things that are common. Pain is common in some ways. So, listen for the common pain because that builds a level of empathy, but also listen for a unique pain, unique pain to Tyler and Casey, unique pain. 

Kind of holding both of these in tandem, common pain and unique pain. And I think the outcome then will be a good one. I think we’ll hear and learn what we need to hear and learn. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah. Take us on this journey. Let’s start with the end because I think our listeners want to know what the end is. 

Sure. So, you’ve got two precious children. We do. Give us their names, their ages, and how they came into your care. We have Jaycee, and she is four and a half, and she was born on July of 2016, and she came to us through domestic adoption. And then we have Emmy, and she was born at the end of March of 2017. 

So that is eight months and 16 days apart. And she is our biological child. Okay. So, a little bit with the end in sight, let’s hear a little bit of that story to bring us to that end. And we’re not at the end of the story, but anyway, bring us up to speed. We were married in June of 2010, and we began trying to have a baby in 2013. 

We had the initial meeting with our doctor, and she said, go try for six months, and if nothing happens, come back and we’ll do some preliminary blood work. So, we went back, did the blood work, nothing came back as a red flag. So then, we came back after a year, because insurance will not cover infertility until you have been trying for a year. 

And so, we went back, and we started taking a medication called Clomid. And after a couple rounds of taking the med and nothing happened, they sent us for some more testing. Again, nothing came back as abnormal, and so they suggested more aggressive treatment at this point. And we ran into some other issues with this doctor’s office, so we ended up switching doctors at this point. 

And each time we went to another doctor, they would suggest another more aggressive treatment. And all of these processes included several doctor’s appointments at specific times of the day. We were there at seven in the morning, we were there at five o’clock at night. Yeah, they’d open the office doors. 

Yeah, we were there, just us and the doctor. Saturdays and Sundays. And through all of this, we had different battles with the insurance company and whether they would cover medications or not. And so, there was one instance where I needed a specific injection within a four hour window. And as I was standing at the counter, they told me that insurance was going to deny it because I needed a pre-approval within their pre-approval. 

And so, we had to pay 275 for one shot that day. And so that was just one of the many battles we had. Thankfully we were able to switch insurance companies. Let’s just accent this part of the journey, Kaleb, and that is who’s my doctor, who’s my insurance carrier, right? All of these things are very intrusive, number one. But number two, very organizational, very administrative. And I would have to think because of the nature of having children and a sunset on that, you’re probably always wondering, should I be having a different doctor? And when do I make that move? Does that make sense? Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yes. That’s interesting. 

And you quickly find out that like everything, doctors have lots of different opinions on what should be done and what shouldn’t. And what was hard for us is we eventually were diagnosed with unexplained infertility. So, they never found a medical reason why. And so that made it even more difficult. 

Difficult because maybe another doctor wouldn’t know. Well, and going back, like you’d said that we’d been placed on Clomid with our first doctor. And when we went to the next doctor, she was like, oh, Clomid is such an old drug. I mean, I don’t even prescribe that anymore. And so just a difference of opinion there, both are still widely used. 

But it’s still positive. Tyler posits an idea in your head. It does. Says that last doctor was crazy. Yeah. Or this is the answer. This is going to work again. Yeah. Definitely about something you value so highly and so much. Right. You know, to be told that’s an old drug. You know, that’s the answer. 

That’s the easy answer type of thing. This insurance thing too, how difficult it must have been to talk to a business as usual person on the other side of a phone. Right on something so personal and important to you. You just kind of look at the different worlds, right that infertility raises this institutional world of I know you need to talk to so and so in department such and such, and we need this formality when so much is at stake in your heart. 

Yeah. You can’t put a value on that, right? Yeah. And yet, you’re talking about nickels and dimes. Yes! True! Well, and my wife is very determined, and she ended up really working through the insurance companies, ended up finding a specific name of a lady that she wasn’t even supposed to have the name of, and got her direct number and was calling her. 

And the lady at one point was like, how did you even get my number? And so, I mean, at some point you just feel desperate. You’re just, I’m going to do whatever it takes just to get through this. You learn how to do your research. You do. You definitely do. Yeah. So, we did treatments for two years with only a few small breaks in between, including exploratory surgery to see if there was something that wasn’t showing up on the normal tests. 

Let me pause and say one thing with that is the majority of this has been Casey so far. The majority of these treatments have been invasive towards Casey. I had one or two small doctor’s appointments in there that, while they were uncomfortable for me, weren’t nearly as intrusive. And so, Casey was undergoing, while I was watching it and going with her, this was her body being affected. 

Her getting the meds and the hormones and having the treatments done to her and having some of the pain going through, especially the surgery and stuff. And let’s just accent, the exposure you must have felt, everything on display. Every question is fair game, which is tough. And then they put you on hormones, which lead to all kinds of physical symptoms along with emotional and spiritual. 

And just every part of you is under a microscope. And you have symptoms in every part of you. The shared struggle you have, but also the different struggle for you, you know, being exposed early on in this process is extremely, you know, a vulnerable place to be and holding on that tension with the value. 

And then for you as a husband to see your wife going through that, you know, and see her like, at what point do you start thinking, wow, is this, I don’t know, should we continue with this, you know, and just having that wrestling match but I think in different ways, maybe not, but that’s what’s going through my mind as you’re talking about this. Definitely, and as most husbands we’re a fix it type of husband. 

Yeah, we want to be able to go fix that for our wives Yeah, this was well out of my control. And if fixing it means more exposure to my wife. Yeah, and definitely because I’m supposed to protect my wife. Yeah, so what does protecting my wife look like right through this? I don’t know, but then also the shame part of it as a wife comes in. Which for us, they never found a medical issue that it was one person’s body or the other of why it didn’t work, but that does come into play if one spouse is specifically infertile and can’t provide that for their spouse. 

Yeah, I feel that shame. Thanks for elevating that. Because that is part of some people’s stories. We’re looking for what’s common and what’s unique here. And some have that. And that would be a lot to bear. I would say our story, and that is very unique, that they didn’t find a cause. Many times, they do find some type of reason. 

And some are able to be treated in many or not. So, this brings us to September 2015. And so we were up to an even more aggressive medication, which consisted of injections every day. Five doctors’ visits within seven days, and my body not responding the way it should have. And also, my husband is a firefighter with 24-hour shifts. 

So, planning all that around his work schedule got very complicated. I work 24 hours on and then I’m off for 48 hours. Cycles don’t just go every third day. I got injections and an ambulance bay and coworkers. Sometimes I’d get called out on a call. One of my coworkers would go and give her a shot. 

Wow. Yeah. So, this was our last cycle of intensive treatment. Basically, we had done everything up to IVF at this point. And so, our choices were to stop or pursue IVF. And for us, we felt like God closed the door to IVF. We don’t know why up until this point we were pushing let’s do whatever we can we on the same page with that. Yeah, we both had full intentions that we weren’t going to stop. 

Yeah, we were planning to go to IVF. In fact, we had a doctor’s appointment set up to pursue and then all that stopped All of our mindset changed. I want to say that it stopped because we actually kept the doctor’s appointment. But our mindset changed, and it changed over to adoption. Just our heart changed. We just really felt like God closed the door. 

That’s how we’ve done stuff throughout our marriages. Okay, God, we’re going to start walking. And when you tell us you close the door and we’ll stop, but until you do that, we’re going to walk. And so, we were doing that. We did keep one final appointment with a fertility specialist, and we had an appointment with him, and he said, you have less than a 10 percent chance of ever having a child biologically without IVF. 

Wow. But we walked out of that appointment, and we just felt God telling us, no, don’t pursue this. You need to pursue adoption. And adoption was something that had been in Casey and my heart since we had been married. We talked about it. We never believed that it would come before biological children. 

We’d always thought that, oh, we’ll have a couple of kids and then we’ll, you know, we’ve got our everything planned out just perfectly and X number of years that it’s going to happen, and we’ll eventually get to adoption. This was the first time that adoption really came forward to us. And it was like, no, this is something we should pursue right here, right now. 

And this is the God story. And it was the week that we stopped treatments and found out we were done and signed up with the adoption agency. Our oldest daughter was conceived that week. The one that you would adopt here in a few short months. Okay. Okay. So, we began. Talk about planning. Yeah. 

He’s a better planner than me, that’s for sure. 

So, we kept going, we started doing our home study, got that all complete, and then we were starting to see potential situations for adoption. And one night, after we had had a few nos, we hit a dark spot. A few nos of potential situations. Door shutting, saying no to adoption. Yeah, so, adoption process, at least for an infant domestic, is you become matched with a birth mom. 

We would present our profile, we’d make a little profile book beforehand, and we’d present that, and we’d presented it to multiple potential birth moms, and it came back no each time. I’m going to put my finger on something, I think that’s incredibly painful. It’s one thing if God says no. We have, I think, a place in our brain that says, okay. 

God can do whatever he wants. But when people start saying no to us, when people start saying, no, you’re not good enough, that shame piece screams, doesn’t it? Yeah. Yep. Yeah, it definitely was. It was a new feeling that I don’t think we’d even experienced in infertility, but it definitely brought all the infertility emotions rushing up. 

So, we talked a lot about hope here, you know, before this, and I think going into it, the adoption and doing all that paperwork brought just this new hope to us of having a child and bringing a child into our family. And then suddenly this wasn’t working either. And it was just incredibly frustrating. Yeah. 

I’m going to interrupt now my conversation with Casey, Tyler, and Kaleb. Thanks, each one for being on. You’ll want to return with us to hear the remaining part of their story. There is hope for all of us in it. Have a great day. 

I just prayed to God. I said, okay, God, whatever you have desired for us, we trust you. And if children aren’t in the future, just please help me to accept that. Even if the adoption is a no, even if children are a no, just help me accept it. And that was something new for both of us that we came to that realization that night. 

Something’s changed in my heart. I feel broken, but yet I feel that God is alive and can do wondrous things with whatever’s going to come. Welcome to Breaking Bread, the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling. and family services, I’m glad to share with you the second part of my conversation with Tyler and Casey Zimmerman and Kaleb Beyer on this topic of infertility. 

I think going into it, the adoption and doing all that paperwork brought just this new hope to us of having a child and bringing a child into our family. And then suddenly, this wasn’t working either. It was just incredibly frustrating. I think it surprised us both, the level of emotion that we felt from having those nos. 

I don’t think we were prepared for that. Even though we thought we had our expectations built up that this would be a long process and wouldn’t be an easy process either. I think for us, at the start of the adoption, there’s a lot you can do, which felt really good after all the infertility where you can’t do anything. 

Our social worker said I was the fastest person to ever get all of our home study paperwork done. I got it done in two days. This is the same one that contacted that individual insurance company. Yeah. She is determined. Do you need a 50-page paper? Yeah. What else do you need? I felt I could do something, and I was finally in control of something and so here, now that we were seeing potential matches from expectant mothers. 

All of a sudden it was out of my control again, and all of those feelings started coming back. Yeah, came together on one specific night that we’ve got, it I don’t even remember everything that surrounded that night, but we both were feeling very discouraged this night, and you know, going into infertility, we knew that it was a big stressor on marriage and we can touch on that a little bit later, but it was something that we were very conscious of and we’d work very hard to put efforts into maintaining our marriage as well. 

But it was starting to put stress on our marriage at this point that neither one of us had the capacity to be able to try to fix. And we went out one night and we actually, I think we went to Hobby Lobby, and we were just wandering around searching for something. You had a friend say something to you to go get something for our baby room, set up something in the baby room, have that faith God is going to provide you a family. 

So, you had a room in your house. That was a baby room. It was empty Yeah, because we didn’t know when it was going to happen. We just didn’t want to buy that stuff and have a constant reminder of an empty room Yeah, but the encouragement is to step into and start buying things so well, so that’s what she had told us. And so, we went out to Hobby Lobby that night. 

We ended up finding a sign. It said, for this child we have prayed, and it just really stood out to us. And we took it home and I think I just tossed it into that baby’s room and on the floor and I was like, oh, we’ll get to that eventually. And we bought it and yeah, we took it upstairs and shut the door and walked away. 

And then a little while later I heard a noise, and I went upstairs and I found Tyler screwing the sign into the wall in the dark. And we hung up the sign and we just collapsed on the floor together, just crying out to God. We didn’t know how to have hope anymore. We were desperately clinging to what we felt like God had called us to. 

We felt like God had given us this desire to be parents. And what we didn’t discover until years later is this night ended up being Emmy’s due date a year later. And so, we just cried out to God and were completely broken. And I think that’s one of the biggest lessons that God showed me through all of this is, you get to be broken before God. 

God can handle your emotions. Up until that point, I don’t think even through all the disappointment and the heartache, I don’t really feel that I was truly broken before God. That night was a new feeling for me, and I remember going and telling somebody in church. I just wanted to share what had happened to me, because it was such a profound change. 

I just laid down, and I was sobbing, and I just prayed to God. I said, okay, God, whatever you have desired for us, we trust you, and if children aren’t in the future, just please help me to accept that. And I had never had that prayer before. That’s what happened that night. Yes, accepting that even if infertility is a no, even if the adoption is a no, even if children is a no, just help me accept it. 

Help me to move forward. Help me to just trust you in that. Yeah. That was something new for both of us that we came to that realization that night. Something’s changed in my heart. I feel broken, but yet I feel that God is alive and can do wondrous things with whatever’s going to come. Yeah. You know, what I really am blessed by is to hear that resolve that you had. 

And I don’t hear you saying that because you were broken, God gave you children. That’s not what I hear. Not at all. Which is a very different message, because there are a lot of couples out there that have come to that same brokenness without the reward of children. We know how your story ended, right? 

But I think you’ve separated that very importantly. Yeah, at that point, I certainly didn’t really feel that we were maybe going to have children. Yeah. I don’t know how you felt. God always redeems. There’s always redemption in every story. And for us, redemption wasn’t in the fact that we had a successful adoption or pregnancy. 

The redemption was all about God revealing himself to us in all of this. He became my father through all of this. He was the one I cried to and ran to. Before this, it was always the father. Okay. God’s there and I’m here and I need to process my emotions before I go to him. But through all of this, it made me realize I need to process my emotions with God. 

I’m not hiding anything from him. Kaleb, I’d love you to weigh in on that too. As couples go through pain like this, there is a togetherness and a separateness that they have to walk through. Am I right about that? Yeah. I’ll let you, the two of you speak first from your experience and then maybe I can interject. 

Yeah. Yeah. You know, Casey and I, we’d focused on strengthening our marriage when we found out that we were going to be faced with infertility. We both were, I feel like very aggressive towards let’s keep our marriage close during this. And we both almost made a pact. We’re like this is going to be hard. We don’t know where this is going, but we can’t turn on each other through this. 

Clinically, we would say seeing this as a couple issue, not an individual issue, is a critical piece, and it sounds like that’s what you’re talking about. We’re in this together. And we know ourselves, and we challenge ourselves and push, and we work to get things done, and we knew that if we weren’t careful, it would be the detriment of our marriage that we could get so wrapped up in the medical treatments and this goal of having a family that we might not have a marriage at the end of it. Yeah, so I think the hard part sometimes is, and you guys help me out here, but we can process emotions differently. Back to what Matt was saying. Some of us are external processors, some of us are internal processors, and then also just the different roles that you have. 

Which brings nuances to your grieving experience and then seeing each other. Right. And so, I think that can be difficult and hard. What’s it like to sit with my own pain while also buffering and making space for my spouse’s pain? Sure. And I don’t want to make it sound like we were perfect through that. 

We definitely had moments where maybe we even told each other, like, I can’t process this with you right now. Right. I don’t even know how to process my own feelings in it. And there were many nights where we would just sit in silence together. Yeah, definitely didn’t have words to be able to just explain away the hurt. Yeah, but we had time to be able to be together. 

We tried to focus on that. Thankfully God provided a really good support system for us at the start of this journey so that we had other people that we could go process with, so we weren’t always doing it only with our spouse. So, when our spouse wasn’t available to do it with us. We had other people there to pick us up. 

That seems really important. It’s very important. Yeah. Yeah. And for us, it was important to have that open communication with at least several other couples that could help us do that. And you learn the hard way. Which couples are good and which ones aren’t. Yeah. That led to hurt, too. 

There are many people that want to help so badly that maybe they say or do the wrong thing or interject at a time that’s not helpful. Yeah, what would be an unhelpful comment? That’s a really difficult question, you know with ours being a unique story, maybe some of the things that people said to us some of the actions that were done with our infertility story was hurtful to us, but for so many people maybe they enjoy that, and each story would have been helpful. Each story is different. What were some of the most helpful things? People that would give us space to talk, especially when we wanted that space. But yeah, they wouldn’t pry. They didn’t come and ask questions all the time. They didn’t come and, you know, they weren’t the tracking the cycle type of overbearing, but they were there. 

They were present. They would let us say whatever needed to be said and grieve with us as we said those things. And sometimes it was as simple as, I hear you, I hear you. That sounds hard and nothing more. And also from a woman’s standpoint, the friends that came to me and told me about their pregnancy in private helped a lot because they recognized that I am still joyful and happy for them but they gave me space to process my grief before it was in a public space Yeah, well, yeah honored that you know and recognizing gave me permission to not go to their baby shower if I wasn’t able to that day and would let me decide the morning of if I was up for that day or not. 

It’s very hard when you’re in the life stage with your friends and getting to watch them do what you have been dreaming about doing for years. I was thinking what did you need to hear but you heard what you needed to hear. That’s the question coming to mind, but it sounds like that’s what you needed to hear is just that I see you and so I’m coming to you. So, to share this with you before I disclose it to the public, and I’m giving you space to talk about this and not have an answer and just sit with you in it. 

And so, I guess what you need is just to be seen. Sure. And maybe just be treated normally, not that there’s something wrong, I guess. Yeah. That we can be over identified with the grief that we bear. Sure, yeah. Is that a true statement? Yeah, that is. Everything in your life is arranged around this. 

What’s encouraging about your journey is you are committed, okay, we have our marriage, we’re in this together. Yes, infertility is part of that, but it’s not the entirety. And that we are separate from that, even though we’re walking through this. Yeah. So, let’s pick up our story. I think Tyler’s on the floor. The room is dark. 

Yeah. So, we went through that night very broken. Kind of almost had a renewed faith, renewed confidence in God, in our lives, that whatever was going to happen, that God was with us still. He was walking beside us or carrying us. You know, there are many ways to say that, but God was there, and we could go forward. 

We continued to pursue adoption, and why don’t you take it from there, Case? Yeah. The adoption’s a whole story on its own. God worked miracles the whole way for us, answered some very specific prayers, and papers were signed for JCB, our daughter, in July of 2016. And a week after the papers were signed, we found out we were pregnant. 

We were still in Florida. She was born in Florida. My cycle was longer than it should have been. I didn’t know exactly how much. When you decide to stop treatment, you quit tracking, you quit doing everything associated with it. And we were in the blur of adoption and lack of sleep with a newborn, and so I went and bought a pregnancy test simply because my doctor said, if your cycle ever goes over 35 days, take a test and then call me. 

So, I took the test, and I went back to bed. I knew what the answer was going to be. And so, you didn’t check it. I didn’t check it. I just went to sleep. I didn’t wait three minutes or whatever. So, you were exhausted. You were really sick. And so, when I came back later, the test said positive, you were pregnant, and I made him come in and check it and make sure I was actually reading it. 

But yeah, you know, both of us kind of looked at it and just went, huh. There really wasn’t any celebration to it. But at that moment, I’m sorry, I’m interrupting, you’re okay. I’m just thinking to let that in after all those years when you wanted and longed for that, right? And then at the end, we’re told no, of course you didn’t celebrate, right? 

I mean, we had a newborn child that was, yeah, we had our daughter, our first daughter and suddenly now this, yeah, absolutely. I don’t think either one of us truly believed it. You were really sick, so we needed to get some medicine for you. So, you ended up calling your doctor and telling her and she was very surprised as well but got you some medicine to be able to get home. 

We still had to drive from Florida to Illinois with a newborn. Yeah. Wow. And sick. And the morning sickness hit full force very quickly. So, and yeah, I think we just kind of shoved it down as like, okay, you’re going to get home. And so, we got home and went to the doctor a few days later to confirm the pregnancy. 

And we heard Emmy’s heartbeat for the first time. And, what was interesting about it is hearing that heartbeat should have been some relief for us, but it wasn’t. That’s what infertility did for us, even the entire pregnancy, we were terrified. We thought every appointment, something was going to be wrong. 

In fact, one appointment. The second appointment. They weren’t able to find a heartbeat. Oh. With just the initial Doppler. And they went out of the room to get something else set up and, we both looked at each other and said, there it is. There’s that now. Yeah. This is what I know. I know loss. 

Yeah. So we went, we had an ultrasound about 10 minutes later and she was fine. And we just went through the pregnancy, but very cautiously went through the pregnancy. That is a very common experience for many couples that endure miscarriage after miscarriage. When can they start to celebrate? 

It’s kind of like that tough cycle. Yeah, right. So, yeah, a couple weeks before Emmy was born, I noticed that I hadn’t felt her move all day and that evening even when I was pushing on my stomach to get her to move, she still wasn’t moving and so we decided to go in and get checked out and everything ended up being fine And she started moving all around as soon as the monitors were on but you’re still bracing herself for the worst. So we didn’t come to this realization until a couple years later, but even going into the hospital to deliver, we were not expecting to walk out of the hospital with a child. 

I vividly remember. Walking into our home and seeing her in Tyler’s arms and then I breathed a sigh of relief. There’s something really deep here about hope and about hurt. There’s some real collateral damage that hurt and loss brings, doesn’t it? And it seems like hope is at the stakes. 

And I’m not even sure I can tease out the right answer. Yeah, I’m not sure I can either I think as we think of it just from a purely clinical standpoint, we would say that those things that we long for and we desire our hopes, when we don’t have them there are hurts. And so, when we’re dealing with this hurt, over time, it’s one of the ways to just release hope, right? 

You hurt less, but you also give up hope in that sense. And to hope again means to hurt again when I’ve walked through that already. And to open myself up. Yes. And one of the things that occurs to me as the two of you are walking through this is, it’s like there’s a different struggle now. Like you are pregnant. 

In reality, you’re pregnant. You’re pregnant. But in your mind, in your experience, you are not pregnant. So, at what point do you share this with others? They’re like, oh, wow, that’s wonderful. And you’re thinking, no, it is, but it isn’t. And even in that, we both had conversations with, that’s some of the scars for us as well, of not experiencing that first pregnancy. 

And, like, what was that like? Maybe all those feelings that we felt with Emmy and, believing, you know, being scared when we didn’t hear the heartbeat and things like that, and being convinced that we weren’t going to come home from the hospital. Maybe that would have been normal for us. I’m guessing not. 

I’m guessing everything prior to that led to those feelings. But some of that is normal. And so that’s almost a loss as well. It’s experiencing just the normal progression of that. I think the lines of normal, we will never get normal. You know, you dream of announcing that you’re pregnant. Well, we announced, well, we might have a baby. 

And even after she was born, you have to wait another five days to find out if she’s actually ours or not. And then the baby shower happened after we brought JC home because we were too scared to do it ahead of time because you don’t want that stuff in your house to stare at. You have to grieve a little bit of the normal that everybody else gets that we just never will have and it’s okay, but it took us a while to get to.  

Sure, Casey and Tyler. Thank you for sharing this story. So much has been gleaned from it We’ve mentioned this already but just because it’s so important. You have a unique story Yours ended with an adoption and a biological child and there is a myriad of other stories out there. We would love to hear you speak to that couple that is enduring the reality and much of the pain similar and non-similar ways that you did. 

The biggest thing I would tell someone going through this is just keep running to God. He knows your emotions already. He knows what you’re feeling. Just keep going there. And then after that, find your community. And Tyler and I are both open if any of the listeners want to reach out to us, we will happily talk to you, grieve with you. 

One of the harder things was that we felt like we were alone a lot. And so, we are willing to be that and just lean into what God is showing you. He’s not trying to make you reach the certain mark to build your family, but ultimately God wants you. Keep running to that. Yeah, I would second that. 

Find somebody that you can truly trust and dig into that person. Share with them your struggle. Dig into God. Trust God. One of the verses that Casey and I went back to really often was in Proverbs 3:5-6, trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not rely on your own understanding, in all your ways know him and he will make straight your paths. And trust that God has a path for you that may not be what you had planned. 

It may not be what you maybe want, but God has a plan for you and it’s a very special plan and trust God in that. Ultimately, it’s God’s story. As you’re saying, I mean, that’s what it came to is this redemption that was ultimately God’s story. And I think that’s important because I think there could be a couple out there that say, all right, well, Casey and Tyler adopted. 

That seemed like the way they processed and moved forward. But your testimony is God led us that way and he may lead you differently. Yeah. Is that fair to say? It is. Adoption is not the cure for infertility. That has a whole. separate calling on its own. That’s important. Yeah. I’d like to share a Scripture that I think is really profound and I think it speaks to the heart of God with this particular topic of infertility. God has always had a heart for this particular issue. And Isaiah chapter 54. He writes, sing, o barren, thou that didst not bear. Break forth into singing, and cry aloud, for thou that didst not travail with child. 

For more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married, saith the Lord. I just want to accent a point that God, through his biblical narrative, has used infertility. It’s not hard to come up with some women in the Bible who were infertile. But I can also see him redeeming infertility in powerful ways among those who have been infertile. 

And I’ve got some couples in my head right now who have never had children, no biological children. They have had so many Sunday school children and so many Bible school children and so many church children that there are many that call them mom and dad or grandma and grandpa in their heart. And the impact for the kingdom from these couples is immeasurable. And I think they are personified in this passage that their children are innumerable in such a powerful way. And I know that doesn’t fix it. It doesn’t make the pain go away; it doesn’t make the grief go away. But just to see that God has a heart here, big heart for this pain, and he is working redemption in so many ways. 

Does that make sense? It does. Yeah. That’s great. And something else even a lot of times that infertility doesn’t get added into is like those who never marry and never have that opportunity for children. Yeah. And that’s a form of infertility in its own right. It is. Tyler and Casey, thanks. 

Thanks for sharing. Thanks for being open. Such a vulnerable topic. Yeah. Thanks for having us. Thanks Kaleb. Yeah. Oh, I’ve been blessed by this conversation. Thanks, each one to our listeners who has listened to the intent of growing in empathy and understanding with a heart and desire to bless those who endure this private pain. 

Thanks for being here.