The Jeep, the Boat, and the Helicopter

After the Lupron, we tried on our own again for a few months. Again, nothing. We were at the point where the doctor had done all he could do as far as treatment; now we had to decide how far we were willing to go to have a baby. I knew about artificial insemination and in vitro--I have some moral issues with in vitro, so I didn't really want to go that route. In in vitro, after the eggs are inseminated in a lab, the embryos that look less viable are thrown out, and this is one part I have a problem with. I also have a problem with freezing the embryos that aren't used.

I was under the assumption that artificial insemination cost about as much as in vitro, so my husband and I reasoned that if we were going to spend thousands of dollars, we might as well go with the procedure that is more likely to work. Maybe, I thought, a doctor would be willing to respect my beliefs about throwing out and freezing embryos.

While reasoning through all this, always in the back of my mind was the issue of faith--was considering these medical procedures showing a lack of faith that God could make me pregnant? Or a distrust that God would not make me pregnant? I thought of the women in the Bible who were barren but were touched by God: Sarah, Hannah, and Elizabeth, for example. I knew God could do it if he would. I also knew that God works through other people and medical technology. I thought of the story of the man whose home was being overtaken by flood waters. A state trooper in a Jeep knocked on the man's door and told him to evacuate; the man said, "God will save me." A few hours later the water was running through the man's first floor, and the coast guard pulled up to his second story window in a boat, but he sent them away, saying, "God will save me." A little later, the man was on his roof, with floodwaters ravaging his house. A helicopter flew over and dangled a ladder, but the man waved it off. The man was swept away and drowned, and when he got to heaven, he angrily confronted God: "Why didn't you do anything to save me?" God said, "I didn't do anything? I sent a jeep, a boat and a helicopter."

I soon talked on the phone with Michelle, my doctor's nurse. I led her through my thought process about artificial inseminatin and in vitro, and she told me that artificial insemination cost only a couple of hundred dollars, not thousands like in vitro, and they had had some success with it. So, we decided to try it.