I invited COnnie Peebles, a fertility coach, to share with you today.

Like many of you, one day, I woke up and found myself in the thick of my fertility journey. Month in, month out, I kept dangling the reality further out into the future, telling myself, “I’m not REALLY having infertility struggles. This could be the month!…This could be the week!...This could be the day!”

My journey over those five years of trying to conceive would lead me to the peaks of pregnancy, then the dramatic, downward plunge of miscarriage, not once or twice, but three times. Even in the midst of my second miscarriage as I came close to hemorrhaging in the local emergency room, I clung to the not-even-remote possibility that my little one just might pull through. Hope is a funny thing, that is “funny strange”, not “funny ha-ha”.

Hope was the life raft that I clung to—a glimpse, a whisper, an inflection of the voice. I looked for it in the nuances of my life when I could no longer see it in the details. Even as I received the death knell prognosis from my reproductive endocrinologist that I had a less than five percent chance of ever conceiving with my own eggs, my reflex was to grasp for any sign of hope. I asked my doctor if he knew of anyone, even just one woman, with a fertility history similar to mine who had ultimately conceived on her own. That moment before he answered is frozen in time for me. I willed him to say “yes”, yet felt embarrassed that my desperation had led me to this miserable place. After what felt like an eternity, my doctor said “yes”, and I clung to that word.

I would like to say that I consciously chose to stay with hope and leave desperation behind. The reality for me—as it is in most, if not all, of my fertility coaching clients’ lives—is that whether we like it or not, both hope and desperation are our companions on this fertility journey.

Desperation is the primal scream of our spirit as it craves relief from the fear and powerlessness. Yet, when we find ourselves bottomed out, the flicker of hope re-ignites once again. Synchronicities (aka “God’s coincidences”), nudges, our Inner Voice show us our next step, our new path, our possibilities. And, before we know it, we find ourselves soaring again, spiraling upward with renewed energy and hope.

Is it naïve to continue to hope in the face of improbabilities?

Is it self-sabotage to feel such extreme desperation when you still have even a slight chance of conceiving?

No, on both counts! As an ocean wave is both ebb and flow so is that of our spirit. The key is to avoid getting stuck in the ebb of desperation and to sustain your spirits’ momentum to shift into the flow of hope. Desperation grabs your attention, showing you the depths of your desires and the measure, the capacity, of love and joy that is yearning to be fulfilled. Hope is the compass, the magnet that draws you ever closer to your heart’s desire, with a knowing beyond your earthly knowledge. Hope creates an opening that allows you to co-create with Spirit, interweaving faith and actions together to manifest in the outer world what you have only imagined in your inner world.

So, what to do? Sustain that ocean wave in your life through support. Support—at the mind, body, and spirit levels—is the glue that binds together the ebb of desperation and the flow of hope. It comes to each one of us in different forms at different times…through fellow fertility bloggers, support groups, mind/body/spirit practitioners, books, workshops, spiritual retreats, and life coaches. As a life coach, my focus is on walking alongside my client to provide her with encouragement and a fresh perspective, asking the tough questions and keeping my client true to her heart’s path.

May each one of you who reads this know in your heart a full measure of support with each step you take on your journey, and may you find peace and joy not only at your destination but also as you travel along.

And, so it is!

For more information about Connie and Fertile Possibilities, visit www.fertilepossibilities.com.

Or should I say, several different Catholic responses to infertility. While there is some agreement on official Catholic doctrine regarding infertility treatment, there are a number of people from this faith tradition who have addressed fertility issues in many different ways.
Here are some resources that may prove helpful for you:

Catholic Infertility
This is a good place to begin. It’s a pretty slim site, but it does offer teachings, Scripture, information on support groups and other helpful information.
http://www.catholicinfertility.org/

Pope Paul VI Institute
The Pope Paul VI Institute is the only Catholic Institution of its type in the United States and perhaps the world that has dedicated its services to the development of morally and professionally acceptable reproductive health services.
To find out more, go to: http://www.popepaulvi.com/about.htm

All Ye Who Have Hope blog
One woman’s story of infertility and adoption
http://allyouwhohope.blogspot.com/

This Cross I Embrace blog
A journey through infertility Catholic-style
http://thiscrossiembrace.blogspot.com/

Catholic Infertility UK
A UK site presenting one couple’s struggle, as well as forums, Scripture and other resources.
http://catholicinfertility.co.uk/

Or should I say, several different Catholic responses to infertility. While there is some agreement on official Catholic doctrine regarding infertility treatment, there are a number of people from this faith tradition who have addressed fertility issues in many different ways.
Here are some resources that may prove helpful for you:

Catholic Infertility
This is a good place to begin. It’s a pretty slim site, but it does offer teachings, Scripture, information on support groups and other helpful information.
http://www.catholicinfertility.org/

Pope Paul VI Institute
The Pope Paul VI Institute is the only Catholic Institution of its type in the United States and perhaps the world that has dedicated its services to the development of morally and professionally acceptable reproductive health services.
To find out more, go to: http://www.popepaulvi.com/about.htm

All Ye Who Have Hope blog
One woman’s story of infertility and adoption
http://allyouwhohope.blogspot.com/

This Cross I Embrace blog
A journey through infertility Catholic-style
http://thiscrossiembrace.blogspot.com/

Catholic Infertility UK
A UK site presenting one couple’s struggle, as well as forums, Scripture and other resources.
http://catholicinfertility.co.uk/

I banned the word desperate a few months ago from ever being used to describe an infertile couple. This was one time I almost made an exception.
A fire department volunteer set his home ablaze twice in two days because he wanted insurance money to pay for his wife’s infertility treatment. It is a bizarre story and plenty of people are lining up to say, “See, this is why we need infertility coverage with our health insurance.”
Not me.
Here are the facts of the case: after first saying he had extinguished a cigarette in the carpet on the second floor, Ralph Brown allegedly admitted to setting both fires so he could obtain insurance money to enable his wife to have a medical procedure, which he hoped would allow her to become pregnant again. Ralph Brown, 41, from Bennington, Vermont denies arson and other charges. Police say Brown set fire to his home on Friday morning and then again on Saturday night. The first fire was started by crossing wires, the second with a torch. The home is in the name of Brown’s wife.

What it doesn’t say? The man was an idiot. No one will ever think that two fires in two days is suspicious? That she already had children. That he made sure he got out his exotic birds before the fire.
This isn’t about infertility. At all.
Maybe it’s a good thing he wasn’t fathering children, since he’s likely to spend time behind bars for this dangerous stunt.

Stinne Holm Bergholdt of Denmark was diagnosed with bone cancer at age 27, and she was afraid she wouldn't be able to have children.
Mrs. Stinne Holm Bergholdt of Odense, Denmark, gave birth in 2007 after fertility treatment and again in 2008, her doctor reported in the Feb. 25 online issue of the journal Human Reproduction. Both children are girls. Before undergoing toxic cancer treatments, doctors retrieved part of her right ovary and preserved it by freezing. Her left ovary had been removed previously because of a cyst.
Her treatment included multiple sessions of chemotherapy and then surgical removal of the rest of the tumor. The chemo put her into early menopause.
In December 2005, doctors transplanted six thin strips of ovarian tissue from what remained of her right ovary and it began working again. She underwent mild ovarian stimulation and became pregnant, giving birth to her first daughter Aviaja in February 2007. She went back to the fertility doctor last year to begin ovarian stimulation again, only to find she was already pregnant.

"This is the first time in the world that a woman has had two children from separate pregnancies as a result of transplanting frozen/thawed ovarian tissue," her doctor, Claus Yding Andersen, professor in human reproductive physiology at the University Hospital of Copenhagen, said in a news release from the journal's publisher. "These results support cryopreservation of ovarian tissue as a valid method of fertility preservation and should encourage the development of this technique as a clinical procedure for girls and young women facing treatment that could damage their ovaries."
In an interview for WebMd, the doctor explained, ''We performed IVF [in vitro fertilization] initially, and expected to do that for the second child also," says Andersen. ''However, this wasn't necessary and it turns out that maybe we do not need to do assisted reproduction in many of the cases.