Tick, Tick, Tick Becoming A Mother At 47

By Amy Grimes-Potter

Linda Burry always knew she would have children. She just didn't know that it was going to take a lot of time, and especially a lot of faith for the miracle to happen.

At age 37, Linda married her husband, David Burry. Like many women, she assumed they had plenty of time to conceive a child and start a family. After all, Linda was born when her mother was age 39, and David’s mom was 40 when she had him. It just seemed natural that Linda and David would have children in their late child-bearing years, too.

“I was a career woman,” recalls Linda, who has been working in the health and fitness field for more than 20 years, including owning a fitness center in Florida. “I just didn’t feel the urge.”

David and Linda moved to Louisville in 1997 and were married 7 months later on Thanksgiving Day. Two years after that, Linda started to hear the faint tick of her biological clock. They decided to try to conceive a child after Linda had finished graduate school, but after years of heart break through four miscarriages, Linda and David were beginning to wonder if they just weren’t meant to be parents.

They visited several fertility specialists in the Louisville area hoping to uncover any problems hindering them from a healthy pregnancy. In 2000, one of the first doctors they visited was Dr. Robert Homm of Fertility & Endocrine Associates. “If we would have just listened to him the first time,” recalled Linda, who said she and her husband didn’t want to hear the reality of what Dr. Homm had told them. “He said, ’You’re aging and your bodies are not what they used to be. You want to achieve a baby, not just a pregnancy and you need to do the most advanced treatment there is.” He was referring to in vitro fertilization(IVF), but due to their religious beliefs at the time, Linda felt that would be too invasive and not ordained by God. “When we heard that, we took five steps backward and went to another doctor.”

Linda’s next step included several rounds of intrauterine insemination (IUI) by another doctor. In the process, she was successful in getting pregnant, yet each one ended with a miscarriage. Desperate, they were talked into a round of IVF by another doctor, but it also failed. Although insurance covered a lot of the costs, from prescription drugs such as Clomid to the IUI treatments, Linda’s credit card was also taking a pounding. “The day I got my American Express bill for over $2,000 for my IVF drugs, I sat in the foyer and cried. I thought ’$2,000 for drug injections?’ I was very anxious. I was pressuring myself to be pregnant, but I wasn’t believing in my heart it was going to happen. It was all about fitness, career and go, go, go.”

Linda believes that if she had listened to her intuition the minute she began taking the drugs for the IUIs, she would have known it wasn't going to end in a successful pregnancy. “I doubted,” she said. “I said, this is never going to work.”

That’s when Linda and David gave up on doctors and decided to try to adopt a child. They called the lawyer of a neighbor who had experienced two successful adoptions. But they soon experienced another set back when they discovered the down-payment was $30,000. “That guarantees you a baby, but you don’t know when maybe in two years,” said Linda. They were 98 on the list of potential parents and feared what an adoptive child’s past would include. Would it have a drug-addictive mother? Would the baby's mother change her mind and decide to keep the child? They researched and looked into other adoption sources. Nothing seemed to be working in their favor. They were devastated and felt completely alone.

“We thought it was done,” said Linda. “We both said, ’Okay Jesus, this is the end. You’re telling us this is over. But why is this desire [to be parents] still in our hearts? Stop us from this pain and take away our desire get it out of our systems.”

While praying, Linda came across the scripture passage ’Whether you turn to the right or to the left, you will hear a voice behind you saying "This is my way, walk in it",’ Isaiah 30:21._ She was inspired. “I thought, well then, that means we can still make a choice. I was still hearing in my heart, “there’s a baby, there’s a baby, and I didn’t know what to do.”

One day while walking in her neighborhood, Linda passed a woman pushing a double stroller with twins and commented on how beautiful the babies were. Their mother simply replied, “Dr. Homm. If it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t have these children.”

That’s when it hit her. Linda started to think maybe they should revisit their first doctor. A few months later, she and David returned to Dr. Homm's office with a new outlook. "Someone had told me the Lord wouldn't have given man the wisdom to do in vitro techniques had He not intended man to use it for His ultimate purpose and good. That made sense to me, finally," said Linda.

The morning of the embryo transfer, four fertilized eggs were delicately inserted into Linda's primed uterus. Linda meditated and prayed, visualizing her womb as a soft, cushy pillow allowing the embryos to adhere to her uterine lining. She then went home and rested in bed for 3 days. She and David were thrilled when they discovered two eggs had survived. But at the first ultrasound, they only heard one heartbeat. But Linda says what could have been sad, was a joyous event. “The nurse said, ’let’s not even think about that one. This is a very strong heart beat. This one is gonna survive.’”