Happy Birthday, baby.

My miracle baby is FOUR years old today. I'm still in shock about it - she's so grown-up all of a sudden. It makes me happy to say that she is still nursing on her fourth birthday - it's how we started out the day, actually. Even though she's growing up, she's still my baby.

It's long, but I thought I'd share the story of how our little miracle came to be:

As a teenager, I was diagnosed with an endocrine condition called PCOS, or Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. It causes a disparity in my hormone levels such that my body apparently cannot ovulate on its own. For over a decade my doctors had me take the birth control pill to lower my risk of developing endometrial cancer and try to regulate my hormone levels to mask other nuisance symptoms of PCOS.

In January of 2000, my husband and I decided that it was time to try to have children – to at least see if having them was God’s will. We made the decision with advice from a Reproductive Endocrinologist (RE), to go off the birth control pill and see if the hormonal adjustment “tricked” my body into ovulating just once. I followed my cycle closely by taking my temperature every morning and charting the temperatures. The charting revealed that our trick hadn’t worked and there was still no ovulation occurring. I went to see the RE again. He ran many tests to make sure the only problem was that I wasn’t ovulating. Through all the testing and imaging, we became very familiar with my entire reproductive tract and I was beginning to despair that children were not part of God’s plan for our lives. There was nothing physically wrong besides the fact that my body “has no rules,” as the RE put it, and it just would not release an egg. Not sure where to turn, we asked the priest at the OCA Cathedral in Denver,CO, to pray a molieben for us before a miraculous icon of the Mother of God Joy of All Who Sorrow. Other women have been known to have been granted children after venerating this icon.

At the end of May, 2000, we traveled to St. Tikhon’s Monastery in Pennsylvania to take part in the glorification of St. Raphael of Brooklyn. My spiritual mother reminded me before we left that the veneration of the new saint’s relics offered a grand opportunity to ask him for his prayers for something specific. I struggled with how selfish to be in my prayer request – there were so many needs to pray for involving our friends and family. Still, when the opportunity came to venerate the relics of the newly-glorified St. Raphael I asked him to pray that God would grant us a happy, healthy & holy child. Later, I told my husband about my request to St. Raphael and he told me that he had asked for the same thing when he venerated the relics of the new saint. I was beginning to feel more hopeful with both the Theotokos and St. Raphael interceeding on our behalf.

Soon after our return from Pennsylvania, I went to see the RE yet again and we decided to try a drug called Clomid that is used to stimulate the ovaries to release eggs. It carries risks – including that of causing multiple births (twins, triplets, etc.). I was more than willing to take that risk and went on the Clomid hopefully while continuing to chart my temperatures. But, unfortunately, the Clomid didn’t work. My body is apparently resistant to its effects, something which occurs in many women with PCOS.

We discussed our options with the RE. We prayed about them and discussed them with each other and our spiritual advisors and decided that we needed to “draw a line in the sand” of how far scientifically we were willing to go to have biological children, given moral concerns. We decided to try the pharmaceutical options available to us but to stop trying for a child before reaching the level of in vitro fertilization (IVF). IVF is extremely costly (about $10,000 per procedure) and often involves “reductions” of fertilized embryos, which we were unwilling to allow. If it got to that point we would transfer our energies to the adoption of a child. Since the Clomid hadn’t worked, it looked like our next option was going to be so-called “injectibles” – drugs that women have to inject themselves with for several days each cycle in the hopes of stimulating the ovaries. They are very strong drugs with nasty side effects along with being difficult to use.

But then the many internet forums and websites I frequented to learn about my condition began to discuss a new drug that had actually been developed to treat insulin resistance, a symptom (or side effect, no one really knows) of PCOS. Metformin (a.k.a. Glucophage) was beginning to be used by some women with PCOS – even those without clinical insulin resistance – and they were finding that it alters the body’s response to Clomid to lower resistance to the drug. It has severe effects on the gastro-intestinal system and can cause liver damage, but it also has positive results in raising metabolism levels and evening out the hormonal disparity found in PCOS. I was excited about the possibility and discussed it with my RE. He was skeptical that it would benefit me, but we decided to give it a try. I took Metformin for two months and then added Clomid to the mix in August, 2000. I went in for an ultrasound at the appointed time after taking the Clomid and the RE told me I would be ovulating in the next few days!

We got pregnant for the first time at around the same time my husband was ordained to the holy deaconate at St. George Cathedral in Wichita, KS. While at the Cathedral, I spent some time before the icon of St. Raphael asking for his continued prayers. Amazingly, the pregnancy test two weeks after my ultrasound was positive! We were incredibly excited – we told everyone we knew about the little one we were expecting to arrive in early May. But, on September 12^th, just 3 days before we were due for another ultrasound to see our little baby’s heartbeat I began bleeding. We kept our ultrasound appointment with the RE even though it was very clear by then that I had miscarried. It was a very difficult time, made worse by having to go back and tell everyone about the loss of the pregnancy. I was devastated. The next weekend our Bishop Basil was in Denver and we attended Vespers at the church he was visiting. When leaving, I asked for his blessing and he noticed my profound sadness and counseled me to pray to St. Anna, the mother of the Theotokos. She knew what I was feeling as she had also experienced the extreme sadness of not being able to have a child before she was granted a great gift from God. I venerated her icon on the way out of the church and her prayers brought me much comfort in my grief.

After recovering somewhat from the disappointment following the miscarriage, I resumed asking for St. Raphael’s prayers for a child. I had been on Metformin since October and in December of 2000 we decided to try again. I took the Clomid, went in for another ultrasound and saw two eggs developing – one in each ovary! We found out we were pregnant again on the first day of 2001. Not knowing if only one egg or both eggs had released made it even more exciting. But, two weeks after that positive pregnancy test I began spotting. I went to see my doctor and he ran blood tests that confirmed that the pregnancy was no longer viable. My RE had me collect the fetal tissue and drive what would have been our child to a hospital in Denver for genetic tests. It was hard to release the “sample” to the hospital – what the world considered just an undeveloped clump of cells was our CHILD. It carried with it so many lost dreams. The genetic tests showed that our little girl (they did chromosomal testing which also revealed the gender) had no genetic problems so the miscarriage must have been caused by something else.

For the second time, I had the prayer for a woman who has miscarried read over me by a priest. It is an extremely comforting prayer, but hard to have to hear more than once.

After 4 weeks, I went to see my RE again for a “miscarriage follow-up.” We discussed what could be causing the miscarriages and options for preventing more from occurring. We had finally found a way to make my body ovulate but now I was unable to sustain a pregnancy longer than 6 weeks.

The RE was planning to just talk to me about options during that visit and possibly prescribe a few things like antibiotics for my husband and me in order to treat any underlying infection that could be causing the miscarriages. However, because there had been the possibility of two eggs releasing, I asked him to perform an ultrasound to check that nothing remained in my uterus (a part of me was hoping that I was one of those rare cases you hear about where one twin miscarried but the other stayed put). Nothing was there – my uterus was perfectly clear. But at the same time, we saw something which surprised both of us – an egg was developing in my right ovary. According to its size, it would be releasing within the next 3-4 days. No one expected this at all because I hadn’t taken any drugs to stimulate my non-cooperative body to ovulate!

My husband and I discussed it. We prayed about it. We decided to take the opportunity God had set before us and found ourselves looking at a positive pregnancy test a couple of weeks later. At 6.5 weeks gestation we saw a tiny fluttering heartbeat via ultrasound and knew with feelings of exultation and great thankfulness to God that this one was sticking with us. I had morning sickness for seven months straight and was grateful every day for the reminder that our baby was continuing to grow inside me.

Our miracle baby was born a week before her due date at 8:26 am on Saturday, November 3, 2001. It was the first Saturday in November – the feast day of St. Raphael of Brooklyn.

Glory to God for His incredible mercy and unending thanks to St. Raphael for his prayers on our behalf! And happy birthday to (not so little anymore) Emmelia Raphaela!