When we got married, we weren’t sure if we would be able to have any children together. My husband had been married previously, had two children, and then had a vasectomy. When we married in 2010, we knew we would at least try to have it reversed, but that there was a good chance it may not work. I remember preparing my heart for the possibility of no children. I always sort of thought I would have two kids, but never spent a ton of time thinking about it… until the possibility of none was in front of me.
After we got married, we started to research and look for a doctor to perform the reversal. Brad came across Dr. Sherman Silber in St. Louis. He had performed the surgery on mice until he perfected it and at the time of our surgery, he had a ninety nine percent success rate. We prayed about it and ultimately Brad felt very comfortable with him performing the surgery even though we had never met him.
We paid somewhere around eleven thousand dollars up front, which was a stretch since we were newlyweds. This was one of those parts of the whole thing where we saw God’s hand working it all out. A month after we were married, our landlord filed bankruptcy. We were renting a small house while we looked for land. Just so happened that Brad shared office space with the lawyer handling the bankruptcy. He told Brad that our landlord couldn’t legally accept our rent money anymore, and that it would take at least six months for the bank to take possession of the property so we were able to take that rent money and set it aside for our surgery. Then- on top of that, when the bank finally did get ready to take over the house, they paid us to be out and have it cleaned by a certain date. So- we finally had all of our money to pay for the surgery, and we could finally schedule it!
We drove to St. Louis (they said it would be difficult to get through airports and on and off planes post surgery) and had our first appointment with Dr. Silber on June 14, 2011- a Tuesday afternoon. We had the surgery the following day, spent the night in the hospital, and were discharged that Thursday. The surgery was way more invasive than the initial vasectomy, which made the recovery way different too. Instead of connecting the tubes of the vas deferens back together -each of these tubes had been cut, tied, and burned during the vasectomy- Dr. Silber would connect the epididymis to the vas deferens. He also would look for viable sperm during surgery that he would take out and freeze just in case the surgery wasn’t successful. I remember calling each of our parents from the hospital room after the surgery to let them know where we were and what we were doing. We really didn’t tell anyone that we were having the surgery- which felt so lonely. Looking back, if I had to do it over I would have shared with others, but a big part of me just didn’t want anyone to know in case we couldn’t have kids. I wanted to grieve that in my own time and my own way.
After the surgery, there were drain tubes in for the first night that were able to come out the day after surgery. There was A LOT of swelling, and I remember Brad wearing a jock strap for a month after surgery. We had to turn in sperm samples every three months following surgery so we would take the sample to our lab here, and they would send the results to Dr. Silber’s office in St. Louis. We were told not to count days or ovulation cycles, but to have sex every other day and that would help get the sperm counts up as well.
We turned in our first sample in October and got a negative result… as well as the one in January and the one in April. I was starting to really feel discouraged. They told us it was normal to take up to a year and a half to see sperm so we still had time, but I was getting antsy. Two weeks after our last negative sperm count, we found out we were pregnant. I was beyond shocked!!! I took somewhere around eight pregnancy tests because I just couldn’t believe it.
When Olivia was nine months old, we decided to start trying for another baby. We opted not to check sperm counts, but to just try for six months and if nothing happened we would check his counts then. I just felt like knowing the counts would stress me out even more. We ended up getting pregnant the month we tried. We went on to get pregnant six times in six years (two were miscarriages).
The whole journey involved a lot of what ifs and unknowns and a whole lot of praying, but we were able to see God’s faithfulness through it all. There isn’t one single thing we would change about any of it. I hope that by me sharing our story, that it would encourage others and let it be known that there is always hope!
xoxo,
Lindsey
