When even NaPro fails you

Several weeks ago, I was invited to attend a Healing Mass for those struggling with infertility and miscarriage at a local parish. As I took my seat in the church, I looked around. I was sitting among women and couples whose wounds, I could recognize, were very fresh, very deep.

I knew those wounds because I lived them once intimately.

I knew well the grip of a wife's hand on her husband's. I recognized the posture of those women who attended alone, sitting by themselves with heads bowed low, some stifling tears. I saw some sitting stone-faced and with arms crossed, eyes locked at the tabernacle. You could feel the tension and the desperate longing in their hearts. Each of these women were here for one reason: their wombs and hearts were all broken. And they sought healing.

What was I doing here? I asked myself.

I felt like a bit of an impostor. Not that I didn't share in their brokenness (nearly 15 years of infertility qualifies me, I think) but I had something that the rest of these women clearly didn't: children to go home to. Even if my womb still weeps (literally, monthly still) my heart is largely mended with 3 children who call me "mama". My heart is in fact very very full.


So what was it that brought me here to this healing Mass? 


In the back of church, I had seen a table full of resources for Catholics struggling with infertility. I saw cards that read "Prayers for a Child" and prayer cards to St. Gerard Majella with little medals attached. And of course I saw the NaProTecnology pamphlets. Lots of them. And I saw women hungrily reaching for everything on the table, filling their purses with these pamphlets and cards and their hearts with hope.


BTDT. Bought the T-shirt.


I felt my stomach lurch. Why should I have such a guttural reaction to these good and noble people, prayers and resources that have in fact healed so many? Perhaps this was why I was here at this Healing Mass. Perhaps the remnants of bitterness residing in my heart still emerge from time to time, potent enough to still be dangerous, still cause damage. To myself but also to others.

Though I don't intend to, I admit that I have been dismissive when talking about NaPro in the past. I have caught myself recommending NaPro on one hand but then rolling my eyes as I quoted their "effectiveness" rates for infertility clients. I could always feel the piercing question on the mind of my listener: but why didn't it work for you?

Indeed. Why didn't it?

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I first sought the assistance of NaProTechnology back in 2000 when we had been married about a year an a half. I had no clearly problematic issues in my early Creighton charting and my first hormone profile showed normal levels on everything but a slightly low post-peak progesterone level. I initially tried the less-invasive medical route of clomid, hCG injections and vitamins. But after 4 years - and shortly after we brought our first son home from Guatemala - I finally succumbed to the idea of NaPro surgery and flew out to Chicago for a lap with Dr. Stegman. (Hilgers was not on our insurance plan at the time.) Diagnosis: stage II endometriosis.

Two more fruitless years of clomid, hCG and monitored cycles. We adopt again - another baby boy - but I kept looking back over my shoulder. I had two children now but the question plaqued me: will I ever be at peace with my infertility? Will I regret if I don't try every last avenue? Now while I have at least some semblance of "fertility" (laughable though that last thought was). My Catholic infertility comrades and champions of NaPro (most of whom were online) kept cheering me on.

The message was clear: go to Omaha. Talk to the man who wrote the book on NaPro.

And in 2008 I did go to Dr. Hilgers. Diagnosis: "mild endo" (he wouldn't even stage it) and an "unimpressive" luteinized unruptured follicle. The great and powerful Wizard of Omaha sat across from me the day after my surgery and in one fell swoop, dashed my last hope by telling me that given all we had tried in the past 10 years and his largely "unimpressive" surgical findings (he kept using that word), there was nothing left in his bag of tricks. Oh, he kept me dangling for another year experimenting with taking my temps along with hydrocort as well as a brief stint with low-dose naltrexone. But my heart was no longer in it. My attitude about anything to do with NaPro after that point was bitter and/or sarcastic.

Statistics be damned. I was one of NaproTechnology's "failures". And I felt a door slam in my face.

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These were the thoughts that were plaguing me as I attended the Mass of healing. Why was I even here? These other women might have a chance at it--but me? Why waste the healing oils on my head if my heart is supposedly so full?

But something had clearly brought me there. And now I was standing in line, walking up to the priest who would anoint and pray over me. Clearly I was still (and continue to be) in the need of healing. The scars on my heart run deep. And though I no longer pray to be healed of infertility (am I not fully a mother now, 3 times over?) I confess that I still struggle with news like that of my brother-in-law who announced this week that he and his new wife of 19 days whole days of marriage are expecting. My heart still clenches at the thought that my husband and I will likely never see the physical fruit and embodiment of married love.

Yes. I need some sort of healing. Whatever it is, Lord. Heal me of what ails me the most. As the priest laid his hands on my head I closed my eyes and heard these words, inspired by the Holy Spirit, he spoke as he prayed over me:

"I am the true vine and my Father is the vine grower. He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit and everyone that does bear fruit, he prunes so that it will bear more." (John 15:1-2)

He removes every branch that does not bear fruit.

Could it be that NaPro was never intended to do for me what it's done for others? What right have I to even indirectly scoff at NaPro and their statistics? My miracle baby may never grace the wall of Dr. Hilgers' Wall of Miracles but neither am I a "method failure". Drs. Hilgers and Stegman are merely tools in the hands of the Divine Physician. No one is ever promised a baby. I allowed myself to be duped into thinking that that's what would happen. And that's not NaPro's fault. It's time to bury the hatchet.

We have certainly had a fruitful marriage - and an extraordinarily happy one at that - and our lives are full with the children who have been entrusted to us. Adoption bears rich fruit indeed, albeit at a slower pace than I would like. But my cup overflows. And the pain that still comes? It's a remnant. A reminder of what has been cut away to make room for that which is actively bearing fruit. The years of infertility treatments and NaPro surgeries were a withering branch that just wasn't bearing fruit. It's time to recognize that there was a time and a season for that and not make apologies or excuses for why we made the decisions to fly to Chicago and Omaha. It's time to move on. Without the bitterness.

I should still be capable of endorsing and recommending a resource even if it didn't do for me what I wanted it to do. I do no one any favors by allowing my experience to overshadow someone else's.

NaPro truly offers a couple the very best chance at both achieving and avoiding pregnancy, depending on the intention of how it's used. I salute all my NaPro friends and professionals who have worked with or counseled me over the years. I am grateful for the large chunk of their lives they have devoted to helping couples, however ungrateful we might seem. I'm grateful for the data collected through my surgeries and hormone profiles even if all that data never lead to a firm diagnosis ("unexplained infertility" is a frustrating term). I am still grateful that someone once gave me one of those NaProTechnology pamphlets all those years ago. I can be at peace knowing that I all those meds and procedures, regardless of the outcomes, were done cooperatively with my cycle as it was designed by my Creator.

And that peace is truly a healing balm to the soul.