I didn’t know this, but Octo­ber is National Preg­nancy and Infancy Loss Month. My Mom, a devout Catholic, told me this infor­ma­tion last week after read­ing her church bul­letin. Appar­ently, the Cathe­dral of the Most Blessed Sacra­ment (which is also the Arch­dio­cese of Detroit’s “home parish”) was hold­ing it’s annual mass for those cou­ples who have lost their baby or for those cou­ples who were try­ing to achieve preg­nancy. She had called me think­ing that my sister-​​in-​​law (SIL), Janet, and I might be inter­ested in attend­ing the mass. I told her that I would talk to Janet and then call her back the next day if we decide to go.

Right away, I knew my deci­sion was going to be based on whether my SIL wanted to go. It’s not that I don’t have any spir­i­tual faith or that I don’t believe in a higher power. It’s more because the past 10 years of infer­til­ity have caused a “rift” between God and myself.

Let’s start with a lit­tle back­ground. As I men­tioned before, my mother is a strong believer in her Catholic faith. Grow­ing up in our house­hold, God was always present in our daily lives and activ­i­ties. The week­ends revolved around when we were going to mass. We would spend sum­mers vol­un­teer­ing to do “Meals on Wheels” through our Church and any Catholic hol­i­day help­ing out with prepa­ra­tions for our Church. Every night, we would read a chap­ter from the Bible. And because reli­gion was very impor­tant to my par­ents, I attended Catholic school up through high school. I con­sider myself truly lucky that my par­ents invested their time and their money in bring­ing me up with such a strong faith back­ground. And I truly admire my Mom for all that she con­tin­ues to do on a daily basis for her faith.

And there’s me. After twelve years of Catholic school and the free­dom of going away to col­lege … well, of course I detoured and explored life with­out orga­nized reli­gion. It’s not that I stopped believ­ing in my faith or stopped prac­tic­ing the basic morals of what I was taught grow­ing up. Rather, I stopped going to mass weekly and only went when it was absolutely nec­es­sary. I also stopped my habit of say­ing my nightly prayers. Let’s face it, col­lege life (and even post-​​college life) was just more inter­est­ing and reli­gion was put on the back burner.

How­ever, even back then I always knew that I would return to my faith. The one thing that Hubby (who is also Catholic) and I always said was that when it came to rais­ing our chil­dren, we wanted to pro­vide them with the same faith and morals that we were taught grow­ing up. And when that time came, we both knew we would whole-​​heartedly return to our faith.

So imag­ine what has gone through my mind these past ten years as preg­nancy never came. Now most peo­ple would have turned closer to their faith. And at first I did. I returned to my nightly prayers and attempted to go to mass weekly. My prayers for a fam­ily ini­tially started out as “Please God, I ask that you pro­vide me with the fam­ily I’ve always wanted.” As the years went on, it became “God, I know I’m a good per­son but I don’t under­stand why you’re test­ing my faith. Why can’t I get preg­nant?” Even­tu­ally, I just became very angry at God. Why would He do this to me? Why does He allow other peo­ple to become par­ents when they don’t deserve to be? If God has a rea­son for doing things (as every­one has a way of telling me over and over AND OVER again), what “rea­son” did He have for mak­ing me feel so sad and mis­er­able and GUILTY for feel­ing the way I do?

So when the oppor­tu­nity to go to this mass came along, I wasn’t jump­ing at the bit. How­ever, I knew that this would be a good thing for my SIL, espe­cially since her loss is so recent. After a bit of dis­cus­sion, we decided to meet up for break­fast on Sun­day and head down to the Cathe­dral, sans hus­bands (my hubby had to work and hers is not of the same faith).

Over­all, I am truly glad that we went. My SIL had the oppor­tu­nity to place Liam’s name in the Book of Inno­cence, in which prayers will be said for these babies’ souls. A prayer was said to all those par­ents who lost their infant and each fam­ily was given a rose and a rosary blessed by Car­di­nal Maida. A prayer was also said for all the cou­ples wish­ing to become preg­nant or adopt a child. We were indi­vid­u­ally prayed over by the bishop with an actual relic of St. Ger­ard and given his medal­lion to con­tinue to pray to him so that St. Ger­ard would “inter­cede” to God on our behalf. It was pretty emo­tional being up there and being sur­rounded by the beauty and strength of the Cathe­dral. And I do admit, I cer­tainly did feel God’s pres­ence that day.

How­ever, there was one thing that truly bugged me. This mass was spon­sored by the archdiocese’s Nat­ural Fam­ily Plan­ning pro­gram. Which makes sense, given the nature of what this Mass was about. What had both­ered me was the hand­out they pro­vided on all their meth­ods for Nat­ural Fam­ily Plan­ning. Not that I have any­thing against it, but obvi­ously I wasn’t able to get preg­nant using that method. At the very bot­tom of their hand­out, it made men­tion about the Catholic stance on infer­til­ity pro­ce­dures. The basic gist of what they said was that cer­tain infer­til­ity pro­ce­dures are appro­pri­ate; how­ever, those pro­ce­dures that involve a third per­son in the cre­ation of a child is morally unacceptable.

So wow. My first response on that? Holy Mary, Mother of God … I sinned. And I sinned REALLY badly. And appar­ently that’s the rea­son why my IVF cycle failed. So guilt was my first reac­tion. The sec­ond one was that of anger. Why the bloody hell is it con­sid­ered immoral? I tried every­thing under the sun to try to pro­cre­ate nat­u­rally and it didn’t hap­pen. So are they telling me then that if preg­nancy didn’t hap­pen “nat­u­rally” then it’s God’s will that I remain child­less? And yet … (here it comes again) there are peo­ple out there who don’t deserve to have children?

Okay, so log­i­cally I know my first reac­tion was irra­tional. And the sec­ond one is indeed jus­ti­fied. But it’s that type of thing that leaves me feel­ing dis­ap­pointed in my faith.

Despite all that, I do admit that I’ve been try­ing to work on return­ing to my faith. As of recently, I have started meet­ing with a Stephen Min­is­ter through a local Catholic Church who just sits and talks with me about all this anger and guilt that I feel, espe­cially about my infer­til­ity and my fears about the adop­tion process. Per­haps one day, whether I con­tinue to pur­sue hav­ing a fam­ily or not, I will fully, with­out any reser­va­tions, return to my faith.

Hmm … I won­der if the Catholic Church knows that the week of Novem­ber 4 – 10 is National Infer­til­ity Aware­ness Week. And I won­der if they’ll have any events that com­mem­o­rates that week?

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