Love, Faith, and Infertility: A Story of Hope and Special Forces

By Nina Leicht-Crist

Do you want a baby more than anything?
Are you contemplating medical procedures to conceive?
Maybe you are stuck on your infertility journey or even close to giving up?

Love, Faith, and Infertility - A story of hope and special forces is a book for all women, men, families, and friends who are looking for support, encouragement, and hope.

You will learn about different reproductive and endocrinology procedures and get to know a blended military family who learned to trust evidence-based medicine, their gut, and God while navigating their infertile life to reach their ultimate goal in extending their family with a baby.

13 years, two vasectomy reversals, six In-Vitro Fertilizations (IVF) with Intra Cytoplasmic Sperm Injections (ICSI), two frozen embryo transfers (FET), and three miscarriages almost broke their spirit, but what didn't kill them, made them stronger.

If you have one spark of hope left, then Love, Faith, and Infertility - a Story of Hope and Special Forces is for you! Never give up.

• Language: English
• Publisher: tredition
• Release date: Mar 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9783732384266

Book preview

CHAPTER 1 - THE BEGINNING - JULY 1997

Once upon a time in a far away land a young maiden went out to a club with her friends. She was an ordinary girl, dressed in comfortable jeans, a blue plaid button down shirt, and boots. She had blonde curls that hit her collarbone and didn’t wear much make-up. She didn’t dress sexy as many of the other girls her age told her often, but she told herself she didn’t care what other people thought about her. She was not exactly comfortable in her own skin and had lots of self-doubts, but she knew what she wanted out of life and that was a good start for someone who was just a month shy of being 18 years old.

Yes, the girl I am describing is me. I had just finished my first year of vocational college with a major in medical assisting. I had chosen obstetrics and gynecology as my specialty and was in the process of getting a driver license. I didn’t have a lot of money, so I nursed my drink and watched people. I was much better at people watching than dancing and soon noticed a group of young men. All of them were dressed casual and looked different than the usual boys in town. My first guess was they were soldiers and subconsciously I told myself right then and there -- in my Oma’s voice no less -Soldiers have girls in every town! and decided immediately that I would not be one of them.

However, my interest was awakened and through eavesdropping I found out they were U.S. Army soldiers. Exciting! English was one of my favorite subjects in high school (thanks to my 9th and 10th grade teacher) and my friends encouraged me to ask them where they came from.

Small talk in a foreign language is pretty hard when one is a nervous teenager, so I was gesticulating often to get my point across. It was probably comical to watch when eventually I spilled my drink into one of the guys’ lap. Oh what a shame! If only the floor could’ve opened and swallowed me whole… Lucky for me the guy took it like a champ and laughed it off. He even bought me another drink and asked if I wanted to dance. We had a good time, danced and laughed all night and some time during our small talk I noticed a ring on his left ring finger. I pointed to it and simply asked, Girlfriend? but he shook his head and said with a straight face, Nope. Married!

Wait… what?

The guy was just barely older than me… a few weeks shy of his 21st birthday to be exact. If there was one thing that I was sure of, it was that I would not get married until I was at least 30! My mother had me very early in life and always stressed the point how hard it was to go to school, do homework at night, work on the weekends, cook, clean, do laundry, and raise a baby who wouldn’t stop crying; hence I had decided I wouldn’t get knocked up before I was 30 years old or older.

I felt nothing but pity for him. Nice guy though. Really nice guy, I thought, and since I considered myself a realistic person I was sure we would never see each other again.

CHAPTER 2 - PFORZHEIM

Iwas wrong! A few days after our first encounter, the phone rang at my parents’ house. It was a Tuesday afternoon and my afternoon off. When I answered, a young man’s voice asked for me -- in English no less -- and my heart was instantly beating fast as my mind began racing. Who in the world could it be? It was the really nice guy from the other night.

I had no recollection of handing out my phone number to any of them; especially not Gary who was on the phone and really didn’t know what to do, so I asked him to hold and turned to my mom for advice. She looked at me for a second and told me to invite them to our house. Trying to figure out a meeting point was next. Gary explained he was in a phone booth near Leopoldstra-be. There was a pause of confusion… Leopoldstrabe? There was no such place that I knew of, so I asked him to look around and find something else. He answered, Roxy. That was a place I was familiar with, so I told him to stay put until I could get there.

Meeting Gary at Leopoldstrabe became one of my favorite memories. Since I didn’t have a license yet, my mom had to give me a ride. It took about 15 minutes to get to the city center -- actually Leopoldstraße, the letter that looks like a B is actually pronounced like a sharp-s in German.

There he was standing on the corner, sticking out like a sore thumb with his baggy jeans, yellow Lakers jersey, and baseball hat. Back at my parents’ house, Gary and his friends properly introduced themselves to my parents – handshake, sir, ma’am, and all. My dad’s English wasn’t great, but I could tell he was impressed by their politeness. He tried his best to make conversation the way any dad would if a bunch of soldiers show up at his place. He even pulled out a globe, so he could envision where they were from, and asked a lot about America and why they were in Germany. All the while my mom poured Apfelsaftschorle (loosely translated: apple juice spritzer) and served some cookies.

At first I tried to get a hold of my friends, but nobody had time. Of course, not! It was a weekday and everybody was either at work, school or had other obligations… thankfully after a few hours one of my distant cousins called and said she had time to meet us for dinner.

It was a fun evening that ended early. I wasn’t 18 years old yet and had a strict curfew. Further, the next morning was my driver’s test and I needed to rest, so I could pass! Driver’s testing is a lot more rigorous in Germany than it is anywhere in the USA. When we said our final good-byes, I was a little sad that I would not see them again, but thankful for the adventure. Their time in Germany was up, as the aircraft that would take them to their next destination had been repaired. Before getting out of the car I realized I didn’t even know where they were headed, so I asked where they would go? The answer was, Bosnia and before I could think it through I mentioned once I had passed my driver’s test, I could take my little red VW Polo and drive to Bosnia to visit them… Don’t do that, Gary said, It is not safe.

I didn’t understand at all. It was 1997 and I was naïve, young, and completely clueless despite the fact our town was full of refugees from the Balkans. Gary and his friends were part of a NATO-led Implementation Force (IFOR) mission and helped in the aftermath of the war in Yugoslavia.

CHAPTER 3 - INTERNET

Staying in touch wasn’t the plan, but when Gary and his friends sent a letter asking if I had e-mail, so we could write more often, I had to get creative. My dad didn’t believe in staying up-to-date with technology. We didn’t have a computer. Heck, we didn’t even have cable TV for that matter, so I had to beg my Uncle to upgrade his phone service and get Internet. I offered to pay for it, but he never charged me a dime ( thank you for that ). Within a few weeks we were able to e-mail each other. As a matter of fact, logging into your dialup Internet with a 14.4 Kbps connection and waiting for your e-mail account to load was an adventure all by itself… waiting for a page to load required patience!

Over the next three months Gary and his friends stayed in touch regularly. Some of them I got to know very well. I liked to write letters. It was exciting and fun to have American pen pals. Then from one day to the next all communication seized. I tried e-mailing them for a few weeks, but got no reply. Eventually I stopped and archived this time under Life Experience.

A few weeks later, I received a phone call from one of the guys who was stationed in Germany. He invited me to a Volksfest (it’s a similar event like the State fair) in Stuttgart. After that evening, we went out a few times and started dating shortly thereafter. My dad didn’t like him at all. He was seven years my senior and according to my parents, everything was wrong with him. So what does a young girl do when her parents tell her no? You guessed it… I declared I was in love and I would date him no matter what they thought. It ended up being one of those It’s complicated relationships that I eventually would archive under Stupid Teenager.

CHAPTER 4 - APRIL TO AUGUST 1998

The following year, some day in April, I received a phone call. My heart leaped when I recognized the voice and before he could say anything else, I asked, Where the hell have you been?

Soon after our talk, Gary and I met for pizza. Gary learned that in Germany a German-Italian pepperoni pizza is not equal to an American pepperoni pizza and a glass of water isn’t free. More importantly, I learned what seemed to be everything about his rather unhappy life.

He said he married because he got his high school girlfriend pregnant right after graduation. They found out when he was in basic training. Since he came from a patchwork family he thought, doing the right thing was the same as love. He told me about getting orders to Fort Bragg, North Carolina and since he didn’t want to go there, he tried to get out of it. However, he was sent to Korea right after advanced individual training (AIT) instead. It was an unaccompanied tour (that means one cannot bring his or her family) and consequently missed the birth of his firstborn son. I could see that he was still very sad about that and it was the reason he hadn’t wanted to miss the birth of his daughter who had been born in February. He was very detailed about her delivery and since I was finishing up my second year of medical assisting in OB/GYN, I was listening attentively. Gary explained that his wife had requested his return from Bosnia and that’s why he stopped communicating via e-mail. His work was not very happy about that, but attending to his family always came first.

He literally poured his heart out and while I listened and tried to keep a poker face, I thought to myself, Nina, make sure you don’t get married before you’re 30! More so than ever, I pitied Gary thoroughly. How could someone at 21 years old have so many problems?

Further, I learned he was permanently stationed in Germany now and had separated from his wife and kids.