I Had a Plan

       I went to the doctor for my yearly examine and we were discussing my kids.  My daughter was 7 and my son was 4.  The doctor looked at me and said, "Are you done?  Because if you are done there are some more permanent options for birth control that we can look at."  I just stared at him with that question echoing around in my head.  "Are you done?"  I looked at him and responded, "I don't know."  He laughed and said that when I figured it out to let him know.
      That evening I told my husband about the appointment and the question.  He didn't have any better answer than I did.  It kind of surprised me that for someone who likes to have everything planned out I hadn't considered whether or not we would have more children.  In my heart, I had always wanted for but life gets complicated and we had two.  After much deliberation we decided to try for one more,  I just couldn't find any contentment in saying we were done.
     We had another daughter in January 2011, our son was 5 and our oldest daughter was 9.  Since there is a big age gap between the youngest and the older two, I thought that we might have a fourth.  However we moved to Oregon instead.  Now that she is 4 years old, I have become resigned to the idea that our family is done, at least from a biological stand point.  Having another baby at this point would just be starting over, the ages would be too far for them to really play together and my body is not what it used to be.
     After talking to my doctor, I scheduled an appointment for the essure procedure.  It is a simple procedure performed in the doctor's office, where springs are inserted into the fallopian tubes.  This causes the tubes to become permanently blocked resulting in sterilization.  It is by far the least complicated and easiest form of human sterilization.
     Yesterday my husband took off work so he could be with me (and drive) for the procedure.  We got to the office at 12:15 and had to pick up a Lorazapan and Hydrocodone from the pharmacy.  At the doctor's office they did a quick pregnancy test to ensure the doctor wouldn't run into any extremely unexpected during the procedure.  They gave me a shot of pain killer and I took the pills from the pharmacy.  Once those had kicked in they use Lidocaine to numb everything on the inside.  After 20 minutes of letting everything kick in, they took me back to the procedure room for the estimated 10 minute procedure.  My uterus was inflated with saline, which wasn't nearly as bad as it sounds probably because of all the drugs.  The scope was inserted and they quickly found both my tubes, clear and open.  The cool part was that we had a monitor and could watch the whole thing.  The doctor threaded the Essure devise in along side the scope and straight into the tube.  Well that was the plan.  As soon as the tip of the devise went into the tube, it clamped down.  I didn't realize how muscular these little tubes were.  They tried the other side, same result.  They pulled everything out and waited ten minutes and tried again.  Same result.  The second the little tip of the device entered the tube it clamped down.  Even with all the drugs I was on I could feel a strong cramp on whatever side they were working on.  They held the tip in the tube for several minutes hoping it would realize it was reacting to nothing, but apparently my tubes are smarter than that.  After 45 minutes of trying to coax these little tubes to cooperate, the procedure was stopped.
      The doctor would like for me to reschedule another attempt to see if my tubes would be more cooperative on another day.  I have my doubts.  However there is no other procedure that can be done in the doctors office and only has a one day recovery.  So the question is do we continue to pursue sterilization or just use contraceptives until nature takes care of the sterilization?  Maybe this is a sign from God that we are not done having children...  Although I really doubt that for a multitude of reasons: my age, my kids ages, finances, living arrangement, employment possibilities, ministry options.....
       In all of this I think the hardest thing for me was that I had a plan.  I spent years considering and months planning this appointment.  It was supposed to work.  I hadn't considered the possibility that it might not (there was a less than 5% chance of this happening).  I HAD A PLAN