Mother’s Day Struggles and Triumph

I was one of those women that cried every Mother’s Day… But let me back up a bit here. “Don’t have children for at least a year,” people said when we first got married. “Get used to being married before you add kids to the mix.” “Ok,” we thought. We could do that. But after a year we would start our family; after all, we did get married at 31 and 32. But what I didn’t expect was that I would have trouble getting pregnant. I thought I’d come off the pill and poof, I’d be with child; not so fast!

With each passing month I got more concerned because I so badly wanted to be a mother and couldn’t seem to get pregnant. In fact, my husband and I tried for 8 years… tests, laporoscopy, Clomed, Acupuncture, Artificial insemination, Massage, Invitro fertilization, Chiropractor, ultra sounds, blood tests, hormone shots, prays, tears and more prayers, Trying, then trying “Not to try.” Trying to surrender and getting more and more confused and upset. Why didn’t God want to me to be a mother? Was I being punished for some reason? He promised if I delighted myself in the Lord he would grant the desires of my heart (Psalm 37:4) Why not this? What possibly could be his plan? We even started the adoption process from Russia at one point but had to stop because we just didn’t have the money. In the midst of it all a girlfriend of mine got pregnant and had an abortion! Why didn’t she give the baby to me???!!! I was so angry. I was a public school music teacher during the years we tried invitro- and it involved getting vaginal ultra sounds and blood tests almost every morning to monitor the egg development and hormone levels… I couldn’t handle that before school every day so I did it in the summers. Praise God the insurance covered it! I met women who had done it time after time… out of their own pockets! Thousands of dollars and still no child!

What I didn’t think about in all this was Ralph. Yes, he was tested, too to be sure he wasn’t the problem in out infertility. He seemed healthy in THAT way, but not in all ways.  You see at that time he had Fibromyalgia, migrains, back spasms and cramping, severe allergies to everything just to name a few things. He was very weak for much of the time and I was the main bread winner with basically three jobs and doing all the heavy lifted etc..  If we had had children then it would have further exhausted me since he was incapable of pulling much weight at that time. God knew what he was doing! When I began the second round of invitro I prayed to be surrendered. “God,” I said, “This is the last time I will do invitro, if it doesn’t work this time I will surrender that it is not your will that I have biological children.” Maybe that was what God was waiting for- my surrender! We were so over joyed when we heard their first heartbeats at only a month old in my womb!  And when they were old enough to identify that we had twins, a boy and a girl we were OVER-JOYED!!!! And praising god with all our might! Everyone should have to get ultrasounds before they get an abortion. It would probably save lives- it is so incredible!

We named them Hannah Caleb for Hannah the prayer warrior in the scriptures who prayed for a child and Caleb the spy of Israel with great faith and courage. I fell in love with them when they were still inside me! I wrote them a song called “Precious” which is on our Grace With Jazz On Top Album. Miraculously I had a very smooth pregnancy, playing gigs till over 6 months (I was quite a site singing “Respect” on New Years Eve with my band Main Attraction with my huge belly! ) and teaching school till 35 weeks! I used to balance photocopies of music on my big “Shelf” belly! One week later they were born.