About Hannah

I love what this study on women of the Bible had to say about Hannah. In part:

When God met Hannah at the temple in Shiloh, he not only answered her prayer for a child, he answered her prayer for comfort in her misery. He gave her consolation in her disappointment and strength to face her situation. Scripture does not say that she went away sure she would bear a child, but it does make it clear that she went away comforted: "Her face was no longer downcast" (1 Samuel 1:18). What even the love and care of her husband Elkanah could not provide, God could provide.

To read more visit BibleGateway's Women of the Bible sketch on Hannah.

You might also appreciate my recent article entitled What About Me? For my friends specifically dealing with infertility or sterility, you will find a supplement of this article, written just for you, by following that link as well.

Please come visit me on my new official author page on Facebook. I'm gearing up to publish my next book and would love your support at www.facebook.com/HarvestingHope/. Please help me show potential publishers I'm serious about this book writing thing. They need to see numbers of likes well into the thousands while I'm only in the low hundreds, so far.

Looking Pregnant, But Not

#InvisibleFight #MyInvisibleFight #IIWK #IIWK15 http://invisibleillnessweek.com/ What #Infertility can look like!#IF 

I faced "female problems" from my early teen years. Thirty years later, this picture was taken last week, a few days before my final hysterectomy, which will hopefully lay the consequences of a diseased reproductive system to rest once and for all!

You see, this was actually my second hysterectomy, going back to take my cervix, remaining ovary, and once again (as has been surgically required so many times over the past 20 years) clean out the mess and pain created by Endometriosis. I am 43 years old and dramatically entered menopause in full force last week.

There had been absolutely NO CHANCE of that belly hosting the life of a baby for nearly seven years since I had surgically said farewell to the body of my uterus and first ovary, yet to look at me, all bloated and inflamed, it would have been a common presumption to think I was well-along into pregnancy!

This got me thinking and reflecting on our decade of active infertility. My tummy HAS looked like this before, sometimes, at least six in fact, from the hard-fought blessing of carrying a child within! For all those stretch marks, I am rewarded far beyond anything I had ever dared hope during our infertility years, with three living children in my home today, ages 15, 12 and 9. I do not take them for granted. I so wish I could have worn a t-shirt (or neon sign on my forehead) that read something like, "Don't hate me infertile friend. This baby has been 7 years in the making!" Just because I was finally pregnant, the feelings of infertility were not magically erased! I readily still related much more with the infertile word than the fertile one!

Our living miracles' known siblings who never got to come home would be 20, a likely twin of the 15-year-old, 14, and 13. I am ever so blessed that my womb was their entire earthly home, yet they are still missed! Pregnant tummy mis-speaking about the state of my fertility once again, in each of their cases.

More strangely, my tummy has looked like this before because of the very reality of not being able to conceive! Illness and swelling such as I just pictured , from Endometriosis or other reproductive illness, but also sometimes from PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome), in response to fertility drugs, and/or due ovarian hyper-stimulation! What insult, added to injury, to "look pregnant" simply because of whatever condition(s) is causing sub fertility in the first place!

So next time you see a "pregnant" woman, don't presume! Maybe she is. Maybe she isn't. Either way, there may be much more to her story than meets the eye. And to the lady I naively asked how far along you were, 20-some years ago, before I knew better, I'm still so very sorry for the tears I brought to your eyes that day. Please forgive me! - Hannah's Hope by Jennifer Saake (on Facebook)

Picture and article also posted at http://infertilitymom.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-tummy.html - please share!

Infertility Is...

Kristi Bother, of This Side of Heaven and Naomi's Circle, posted a fantastic article on Infertility: What It Really Is for a motherhood blog this week. Here are my memories her list stirred:

Infertility is hormones so far out of whack that your ovulation predictor test (measuring the surge in hormones that should only happen to bring about ovulation, but when chronically elevated actually prevents ovulation at all) tells you that you are “ovulating” when you are just starting your period and know it to be a medical impossibility.

Infertility is extra pounds that will not be shed, deep painful acne and intense sugar cravings.

Infertility is squirming under the teasing of friends who ask, “You guys know how this is supposed to work, right?”

Infertility is going to someone’s baby shower on Day 2 of another negative cycle and making a blubbering fool of yourself.

Infertility is taking your cat to the vet to get “fixed” the same week you are taking fertility shots to try to get your own ovaries to actually work!

Infertility is driving to the lab with your husband’s sperm sample tucked safely into your bra (gotta keep it body temperature you know) and praying you don’t get in a car accident where you will have to explain the contents to an EMT.

Infertility is being the only woman in your row who doesn’t stand for a flower at church on Mother’s Day, then having a “pity flower” gently placed in your lap during prayer because the usher saw your tears.

Infertility is attending a loved ones funeral and realizing you will never get to tell this person if you ever are blessed to have a child joining your family.

Infertility is grieving another wedding anniversary, not because it marks years of marriage, but because it is a firm reminder of how long you have been trying to conceive and/or adopt.

Infertility is celebrating months of severe morning sickness because you never thought you would get the chance!

Infertility is being 7 months pregnant and feeling like you don’t belong at your own baby shower because this world has been so foreign to you for so long.

Infertility is answering your two-year-old’s questions and confusion when he tells you he wants a baby sister and you tell him you want that too, but know it took years to have him.

Infertility is trying to help your toddler grasp that their baby who was in your tummy just yesterday now lives in Heaven and will not be coming home to us.

Infertility is when your preschooler would rather watch the adoption agency welcome video for the millionth time rather than a new episode of Blue’s Clues or Thomas the Tank.

Infertility is hearing people tell you how perfectly you “planned” and spaced your children over a six-year-window and rolling your eyes inside because you know that the three living miracles they see are totally God’s doing and not your plan at all, part of 13 sibling (biological and adoption attempts) who touched your lives over more than a decade.

Infertility is realizing that now you are the “mother with the most children” but still don’t qualify to claim the title in this Mother’s Day contest because the number in your home doesn’t match the number carried in your heart.

Infertility is getting to claim some kind of title in the contest but not wanting to take the prize because you know the whole affair is hurting someone else’s heart and there is no chance to tell your story and let her know how you got here.

Infertility is learning that I am not God.

When You Hate Hope

Such a good article: When You Hate Hope

http://herviewfromhome.com/when-you-hate-hope/

God's Works

Video recorded for WEGO Health nomination (written transcript is half way down page, at this link), February, 2014.

That Sunday Each May

An wonderful Mother's Day article , not quite like any I have read before, is found at Happy Daughter's Day by Elyse Fitzpatrick.

If you are interested in after-infertility and loss thoughts on Mother's Day, here's what on my own mind today (finishing with a link to an open letter to pastors about this Sunday).

It can be the very hardest day of the whole year.

Kinship With Tragedy

Thinking of recent tragedies, I can't help but wonder if there were any long-awaited, after-infertility children involved? Or children of parents who are already trying to live again after the loss of at least one child during pregnancy or infancy? Praying for all hurting hearts!
 
God, you know we question how you could allow such a thing, especially when longing for the very thing that was so brutally ripped from the arms of hurting parents today? We pray your comfort, peace, and ultimate glory through these tragic events! We trust that you have a good plan and can use even this evil to work good from what seems so senseless to our way of thinking! We feel kinship in loss and grief and longing. Please bring your hope out of this hopelessness! 

Thoughts from Max Lucado are linked here.

Natural PCO Option

Here is part of a post I recently wrote for another blog. I got to thinking it might help someone here as well.

One area where she has been overseeing my health care is in the area of PCO or polycystic ovaries. I have take the diabetic drug, Metformin, with great results in the past, but the long-term concerns over taking this medication offer some real concerns. So, with my doctor's approval, I am now trying to gain similar results through more natural means, the medicinal use of cinnamon to address IR (insulin resistance is strongly linked to many cases of PCO). Because I am now on blood thinners (due to the stents placed after my strokes), I am on the kind without blood thinning concerns, Ceylon Cinnamon (something anyone on medicinal levels of this spice should be informed about)!

Infertility Grace

I am doing a 30-day writing challenge on one of my other blogs. Today I shared about What NOT To Say To An Infertile Couple. (After-infertility children are briefly mentioned.) I would love your thoughts (here or there). What should be added to this list?

On a different note, I would treasure your prayers as I push to finish my next book. Writing during stroke recovery offers many unique challenges!

Write Their Names

Today is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. I know this date is bittersweet for some of my friends in an unexpected way, a date they wish they could "celebrate" for it would mean they were Mommies, even if only to heaven-born babies. To other friends, October 15 holds mixed emotions, thankfulness that we can recognize the existence of our children, but horror that a day such as this should even need to exist.

Where ever you find yourself today, I invite you to join me in sharing your story in the comments in whatever way you feel compelled to do so. If you have children awaiting you in heaven and would like to share their names, please do so. If your children have only lived in your hopes and dreams and you would like to document your infertility journey here in some way, I welcome you to do that as well.

Today I remember:
- Noel Alexis, our Christmas Minister of Needs
- Joel Samuel, a child for whom we long desired a greatly prayed, a reminder of God's faithfulness
- Hannah Rose, named in reminder of God's grace that blooms through darkest grief
- I also remember 7 precious children who touched our hearts and carry our prayers, but who never officially joined our family through adoption as we had hoped they each would.

- And I humbly thank the Lord for bringing 3 living blessings into our home to share our lives through the storm of 13 years of praying and waiting.

What is your story? Where is your heart hurting today? Who are the children of your longing and dreams? Will you share them with me today by taking a moment to simply write their names?

Hannah's Story and Jewish New Year

Today is "Rosh Hashanah" or the Jewish spiritual New Year. It's a fascinating, God-ordained celebration, a time to confess sins, give and seek forgiveness, and to contemplate upon the sweetness of God's Word (represented by dipping an apple in honey in reference to such Scriptures as Psalm 119:103).

But in the midst of the festivities, there is also acknowledgment of grief woven through the story of Hannah. You can find out more here (please note, there is a baby pictured on the linked page as well as in the following fun celebratory video).

Finding Answers

The woman at the well sought happiness in the arms of men.
Jesus provides peace that could be found in none other than Himself.

I sought joy in the new life of a baby.
Jesus offers New Life in Himself.

I wanted to know the feeling of carrying another soul inside my body.
He provides the Holy Spirit to indwell me...

Won't you please join me today over at Held to read the rest?

Wonderful Counselor

I never knew what depression felt like before this. Sure, I'd been “down,” had bad days, knew PMS could be brutal. But this deep black hole that left me unable to climb out of bed, uncaring that I hadn't attended to personal hygiene in three days, this slimy pit of numbness and despair, this was all new.

I sobbed my puffy eyes dry and my voice horse. My heart was stone-cold, robotic. If there had been enough ability to engage emotion, it should have been terrifying, but this all-encompassing grief was beyond even fear.

Where was God? It felt like I had been praying to brass heavens for a lifetime now. It had only been a year and a half since He fell silent in my life, but that could easily have been a lifetime; the lifetime of the baby I expected to be carrying by now.

Everyone who knew me knew I was upset over “the baby thing.” While I'd made others miserable around me for months, even those closest to me could see only the surface. I had been able to hide the ugliest so far.

I tried to fill the emptiness with a precious kitten who had been separated from his mother much-too-soon. It didn't even cross my mind to think myself irrational when I privately tried to devise a way to nourish this helpless creature from my own breasts that ached to fill a hungry child.

If those had been my most unsettling compulsions, maybe I wouldn't have been in such bad shape. But over recent months I'd daydreamed about driving my car into oncoming traffic, unmindful of the lives I would unwittingly involve in my destruction, uncaring for the emotional wreckage my suicide would leave in its wake.

When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you.
- Psalm 73:21-22 (NIV)

They called that day “Mother's Day.” I called it “Humiliate-the-Infertile-Lady-by-Making-Her-Stay-in-Her-Seat-When-Nearly-Every-Other-Female-in-the-Congregation-Stands-for-Honor Day.” It was the day I became no longer able to hide.

My dear husband had tried to soften the blow after church, taking me out to a fancy lunch then to the mall for a shopping spree we really couldn't afford. It was Wednesday now and I hadn't been out of bed, showered, brushed my teeth or hair, had hardly eaten since.

I needed serious medical care, psychological intervention. My husband and I were very young, far from family support, struggling in church and friendships, too vulnerable to understand just how critical and precarious my mental state had become.

My friend, if you find yourself reflected in anything I have described, PLEASE know there is hope! This is not a reflection of spiritual lack or failure on your part. God does not call you to do this alone. (Here are some resources!)

I should have been hospitalized. We didn't even understand that was an option. When I was without answers, God Himself stepped in as my Wonderful Counselor. Please join me today at HELD where I share how God worked in my heart that Mother's Day week of 1994. I don't share my story as a model for the proper way to deal with such crisis, but instead because the way God chose to work was so unique and I want to give Him all the glory for preforming a true miracle in my life.

I'm still in your presence, but you've taken my hand. You wisely and tenderly lead me, and then you bless me.
- Psalm 73:24 (The Message)

© Jennifer Saake, 2011

My Voice

Dare I admit that I have "voices in my head" that I "hear" when I'm reading someone's book or blog? If you also put voices to written words and would like to know what my voice actually sounds like, you can hear me today for about 40 seconds at the opening of a Focus on the Family's interview on infertility and miscarriage.
My sweet author friend Marlo Schalesky and a woman named Sarah, in training to become an infertility specialist, share the microphone at Focus on the Family today and tomorrow. Marlo, now a mom after infertility like me, and Sarah, still in the midst of the heartache of empty arms, share from their hearts and will touch you right where you are hurting.
I will be writing more about that most painful Mother's Day that I mention in the radio clip this Wednesday, both here on the Hannah's Hope book blog, and over at Held, sharing two different sides to the same story. I hope you will join me back here then.
In the meantime, feel free to jump on over to Held today and hear what Julie Donahue has to share about the first Mother's Day when she began to "feel infertile." Julie and I share a long history together through the launching of Hannah's Prayer Ministries and it's always a joy for me to read what God puts on her heart.

The God Who Sees

I tried to smile and find genuine joy, but grief stole in uninvited as the tears silently streamed down my face. I struggled to breath evenly so as not to make obnoxious sniffling noises that would further shine the spotlight on this barren woman intruding on a Mother's Day service...

Please come join me over at Held to read the rest. :)

Is This God's Punishment?

I think it's a question we are all prone to ask when pain stretches out and relief remains far from sight. Thank you Traci, for your beautiful take on this question as your tacked another myth of infertility!

Maybe God doesn’t want you to have kids. Maybe the babies you’ve lost had something “wrong” with them {they didn’t} and that’s why God took them. Maybe God is trying to teach you something. Maybe there is sin in your life that needs to be resolved before you’ll get pregnant. Maybe you’re not good enough to be parents... Actually, I don’t recall anyone ever saying those particular words, but I think all of the above makes you feel like you’re hearing that last one...

If you have heard any accusations like these, you will be blessed by Traci's refutes of these lies!

Nine Days of Dread?

Are you already stressing over Sunday the 8th of May? Or will you simply be glad to get past that date and all the commercials and propaganda? Yes, I'm talking about another Mother's Day.

Today over on Held, Holley Gerth is sharing a fresh perspective I pray will encourage your heart:

Mother's Day comes soon. One baby in heaven and still walking the road of infertility...

A few years ago a coworker came running up to my desk with a smile on her face and excitement in her voice. "A greeting card you wrote has been nominated for an award!"

I asked what kind of card it was. Baby Congratulations.

As she walked away, I leaned back in my chair and pondered the irony. Then it seemed God's voice whispered right in the middle of my wondering…

Please visit Holley's post, Eve's Daughters, to read the rest. She even offers a bonus link to a free download for Mother's Day encouragement.

Adoption & Pregnancy

Another great "Bust a Myth" post this week is Adopt and You Probably Still Won't Get Pregnant

Only 5-10% of parents who adopt due to infertility go on to conceive and bear children...

If we had conceived when we desperately wanted to, we would not have BB as our son. If we had conceived when we desperately tried to, BB would not have us as his parents. God knew the plans He had for us and for our firstborn son.

God also planned for LB, born one year and four days after our first, to be his little brother. He needed our DNA to make LB. He needed another man and woman's DNA to make BB. BB was not means to an end to get LB - they were both meant for us.

Life As Two

It's National Infertility Awareness Week. Have you been exploring any of the amazing blog posts going live out there in the big wide world of cyberspace to mark this event? Here's a great one on hanging onto hope when God calls your family to contentment in a life as two.

Turns out the 'we're-living-a-child-free-life' announcement is not one that most know how to deal with. I should have anticipated that, of course. What I hadn't anticipated, however, was the assumption that we were giving up. Many assumed that hope was lost... the we were beaten past our resistance point and were waving the white flag of surrender and defeat...

Hold On!

Held, the new blogging community of Hannah's Prayer Ministries is officially launching today. If you are facing infertility, pregnancy loss, infant death, adoption challenges, or are longing to support anyone in any of these circumstances, Held is written with you in mind. Please come subscribe to posts, follow us on Facebook or Twitter, submit your story, or simply read and be blessed.



What kind of articles would you like to see posted to a blog like this? What's your story? To what experiences and emotions can you best relate? Please share your hopes for Held and give us feedback so we can work toward making this place a blessing for you!