THE DAY GOD WON

(By Winston Sy Tiu and Dr. Godelen Liong Tiu)

After nine years of infertility and numerous failed IVF procedures, we were at the end of our rope. But God was just beginning….“Your wife is experiencing a pre-menopausal syndrome,” the doctor explained to Godelen and me.” Despite the high dose of the fertility drug, not a single egg developed in her reproductive system,” he continued.Not another failed procedure, they thought. The comforting atmosphere of privacy and the state of the art procedures the clinic was capable of, lost its meaning and appeal to me.This was our fifth try with our doctor in Hong Kong who attempted to do in vitro fertilization, a procedure where my wife’s egg cells are fertilized outside her body.We were frustrated. And the same old sinking feeling that accompanied the news of yet another failed attempt came like an old, unwelcome guest. You can imagine the physical, emotion and psychological toll we went through every time. Because of the pressure from others who expect that a baby is on the way, we’ve kept our attempts to conceive a secret within our family.
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NOT MUCH PROMISE
It had been eight years since Godelen and I got married. Not once had we gotten pregnant. Knowing that something was wrong, we decided to consult our ob-gyne in Manila to search for a medical treatment. After an ultrasound and some blood work, our doctor reported that Godelen had severe endometriosis and abnormalities in her reproductive system. My results didn’t help the situation. My semen analysis revealed that I had defective sperm.After evaluating our results, the doctor said, “It would be very difficult for your wife to conceive in a natural way, considering both of you have a problem.” He then recommended an in vitro fertilization (IVF) program.But even IVF couldn’t promise us much, in our case, the doctor gave us only a 10 to 15 percent success rate. Still, we decided to have a go at it. In 2000, we went to America for the procedure. Godelen was 28 and I was 31. Sadly, it didn’t work. Our doctor there suggested getting an egg donor - meaning, if the procedure is successful, the child will be mine but not Godelen’s - or, as a last resort, child adoption.But adoption was a word that we didn’t want to hear. So we sought a second opinion, this time in Singapore in 2002. There, we went through IVF three times but, still, no baby. Despite the highest dosage of fertility drugs, Godelen was unable to produce the desired number of eggs – at least five healthy eggs per IVF cycle – in order to achieve a higher success rate. Our Singaporean doctor shared the same sentiments as our ob-gyne in America: push through with an egg donor program.Still, we kept our hopes up and this time tried our luck in Hong Kong. Maybe this time a miracle would happen and we would be able to extract the eggs out from my wife’s ovary. But the results were similar to all our previous ones. After five attempts at an in tensive IVF program, we remained childless.
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DAMPENED HOPE
Bent on pursuing another method of fertility, we decided to go for the egg donor program. In 2004, our local doctor was able to find someone who was willing to donate her egg to us. During our preparation, my wife had to undergo an endometrial biopsy to determine whether her uterus was fit and ready to receive an embryo. But the biopsy revealed that her uterus would only reject fertilized embryo and there was no way that it would survive.This dampened our hope but still, we didn’t give up. In Januuary 2005. we repeated the procedure but got the same results. Upon our request, our local doctor called up our doctor in Hong Kong who performed our last IVF. The Chinese fertility expert was baffled as to why my wife did not respond to any of the medications. “In my entire practice in dealing with infertility, I’ve never encountered a case like this.” He said,, admitting that he had given up. His hunch was that my wife could be experiencing a pre-menopausal syndrome. Good-naturedly, he surmised that only a miracle and lots of prayer could help us.We desperately prayed to God. While we didn’t lose hope, we couldn’t help but sometimes ask ourselves, “Did we do something wrong that is not in accordance to His will? Has God a purpose for not giving us everything we want in life?” Or maybe we just needed more patience to wait before God answers our prayers in His time. At this point, we looked at IVF as a medical procedure that could help solve our infertility problem and considered it without reference to our faith.

POSITIVE!
Then in early September, 2006. Godelen noticed that her stomach was bigger that its normal size. We thought it was part of a pre-menopausal syndrome or, at worst, a myoma. But later that month she felt some movement in her womb. She got scared and had ambivalent feelings. “Could I be pregnant? Or is it just a myoma?”How could she be with child when our doctors in Singapore and Hong Kong said that there was no way that she would get pregnant naturally? To dispel our doubts, Godelen asked me to buy a pregnancy kit. We did the test on a Sunday morning and we couldn’t believe our eyes. It was positive!Thinking it might be a false alarm and avoiding possible traumatic experience because of the disappointment, we didn’t make any announcement to our families. The next day, September 26, 2005. We did another pregnancy test. The result was still positive. To find out for sure if Godelen was pregnant, we went to an OB sonologist in Ozamiz City. Within a minute, we saw a little round figure appear on the screen, it was an image of a fetus – our first glimpse of our baby.“Congratulations” the doctor said. “He is four months and two weeks old.”Tears streamed down Godelen’s cheeks as she smiled. We were both ecstatic over the miracle we received. Unknown to us, Godelen was already one month pregnant when we had a three-week vacation in China in June. We did a lot of walking including an uphill climb on the Great wall. There was a day when we walked almost ten kilometers and we could hardly move our legs the next day. Considering it was Godelen’s trimester – the most critical period in a pregnancy – it was a marvel that she didn’t get a miscarriage.
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NO EXPLANATION
On June 30, 2005, on our way home from China, we stopped by Hong Kong for five days to visit our doctor. We went for another attempt at the egg donor program. He gave us more instructions on how to prepare for our third attempt but he didn’t bother to check when my wife’s last menstrual period was. So set was he on the egg donor program that he failed to detect she was already pregnant!So as soon as we discovered the good news, we called up our doctors in Hong Kong and Singapore. Both of them were amazed and couldn’t explain how my wife got pregnant in a natural way. ”It’s a miracle and it’s a God-given gift,” said our doctor in Hong Kong who is a Christian. Being one of the best infertility doctors in the former colony, he admitted that he felt so small, that there was somebody out there who is much better than him. Of course there was! The Lord and giver of life had created miracle in our lives.So after an easy pregnancy, the happiest moment of our lives came on February 5, 2006, when my son Godwin was born. His name is not just a combination of our names, Godelen and Winston, but is also reminder to us that God wins all the time in every situation.