i thought you couldn't get pregnant...

This is another statement to which I must respond. Definitely more than a handful of people have made this comment upon discovering my pregnancy.

My sense is that this is a curious inquiry. People are wondering what my fertility story is. Of course one would assume that I am infertile upon meeting my son...but now that I'm pregnant that assumption isn't as secure. So they thought they once knew how to categorize my family, but now they're not so sure.

I do know of people who have chosen to start their families through adoption and then add biological children -- this is not a large demographic but it does exist. So perhaps people now wonder if this is my story.

Regardless, my fertility story is my own to share with whom and when I want. And it shouldn't matter to anyone how my family came to be. But for some reason, those around me feel it is necessary to ask questions such as this.

And, like other comments, this sort of invalidates the adoption process in my life. Because if I could in fact get pregnant, then why did I adopt a child instead of having a bio child first. Let's just make all the comments we can that erase the intentional process of how my family started. And then let's find more comments that cause me to explain my bodily functions and justify why my family began with adoption. For pete's sake. It. Does. Not. Matter.

Anyway, I still need to respond to these interesting inquiries. Would love to say something witty and perhaps sarcastic with a touch of humor....but alas, that is not a gift of mine. If you have any thoughts as to a response please message me, I could use some help!

reflecting on my road from infertility to adoption

I've recently been in contact with a woman who has walked the road of infertility and is now gathering information related to adoption. It's been interesting chatting/emailing with her. I can hear the desperation and anguish in her words. How her plan to start a family has become a very dark place.

This made me reflect on my own journey from infertility into the adoption world. I have a different story.

I was very familiar with adoptive families and had walked friends through the process from beginning to end. Due to our exposure of infertility and adoption we never took the idea of starting a family forgranted. And were very aware that our story may also end up on the same path.

We had decided that if biological children weren't in our future then we would direct our energy into adoption. This wasn't a very difficult decision for us. The more difficult piece was deciding if we were ready to become a transracial family.

So after the referral to the fertility clinic, all the tests, the news that the cause of our infertility was "unknown", and that after the last procedure we had a six month window to most likely get pregnant, I was frustrated. I didn't want to "try" for another six months. I didn't want to have to make decisions based on an "unknown" diagnosis. I would have rather heard that there was absolutely no way we would ever, ever become pregnant, and then I would have marched right into the office of the closest adoption agency. I was ready to move on. To be in control again.

In the end, we did follow the doctor's advice and after five months started the adoption process. I felt free. Free to be rid of the past, the testing, the counting, the temperature taking. Free to look forward and plan for the future. I was still desperate to have a child but not in an anguished sort of way.

I feel blessed to have known so many people who formed their families through adoption and to have participated in a few of those journey's. The day we decided to 100% pursue adoption was a good day, and I am thankful for that.

the infertility awareness project

A friend going through infertility recently sent me this excellent video Tears and Hope: the infertility awareness project. 

Please watch and remember.

on children

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

- Kahlil Gibran

happy bday to me...

Today I turn 34. Wait a minute…is that right? Thirty-four! How the heck did that happen?! The early 30’s are slipping away from me! Eek!

I’m really struggling with this birthday. Typically birthdays come and go for me without a ton of fan fare. They are significant but yet not, all at the same time. I generally don’t have a problem with getting older. I loved turning 30 and totally embraced it but this year highlights my continual aging process without children. Another birthday. Another year gone by…all 365 days worth. And still no kids. I must say that D has really worked to make this day extra special, he woke up early to make me Belgium waffles! What a sweet man I have!

I didn’t want to be an older mom. I have an older mom and I didn’t want to be that for my kids. I wanted to be the cool mom that dressed trendy and still understood what it was like to be young. A friend recently assured me that we would be older cool moms to young children together but I’m not feeling it right now. I’m feeling old. Fine lines and saggy parts have settled in. I have limited energy and oomph. I realize that many women enter the adoption world quite a bit older then me but considering I got married all those years ago I would have expected a family by now! On the flip side D and I sure have built a solid foundation to our marriage. And this is definitely important for building a family.

Oh well. Happy Birthday to me. Good food and good company…along with a glass of wine or two are on the agenda tonight!

we were on the 5 year plan

D and I were on the 5 year plan. We got married when we were both quite young and our expectation was that after about 5 years or so we would start a family. Twelve years later we’re still working on that one. It’s like I had my life planned on an Etch-a-Sketch and someone shook it all away, started redrawing the plan but didn’t allow me a glimpse of where we were headed.

I often wonder how we got here…to this place where we’re both quite a bit older then we had ever hoped with no kids. I guess life happened. A string of events starting from D getting laid off, to us moving to the States for 3 years, to me having difficulty finding employment once we were back in Canada delayed our start. The timing just didn’t seem right, there was always something else that took precedence in life. But now that we’re in our current position of childlessness after 12 years of marriage I wonder about the choices we’ve made along the way. Should we have thrown caution to the wind and tried to conceive while living in a different country with D in school and my income barely covering living expenses? We both would have been younger…how much of a difference would that have made to our fertility? Sometimes I could just kick myself and our “responsible” decision making process during that time. We thought we needed to save money, have more stability in our lives, wait for D to finish grad school and get a job, wait for me to find employment once in Canada to accrue hours for a maternity leave. Well…I’ve certainly got the hours!

I can’t go back and redo parts of life. I get that we all make the best decisions and choices we can with the information that is available at the time. And we all have to deal with the consequences of our choices. But…I guess my big lesson in all of this is to not necessarily wait for x,y,z to happen before making important decisions in life. Don’t let finances and ideal situations get in the way of dreams and desires. If you wait for everything to be perfect, you just might find yourself in an imperfect situation. And I’m not just talking about us potentially having a bio kid because we would have started trying earlier. Had we discovered our infertility earlier we would just be that much further in the adoption process.

I want to be clear that I’m quite okay with where we’re at right now and pursuing adoption, I feel that this is right for us…but as I struggle in the waiting I sometimes wonder what might have been if I had listened to my baby urge all those years ago.

An encouragement for me to spend more time following and listening to my heart versus my head.

an open wound

When my father died 7 years ago it felt like someone had stabbed me in the chest. His death was so sudden, we weren’t expecting it, he was way too young, and I wasn’t finished learning from him yet. The wound was deep and penetrating. It came swiftly and required my full and immediate attention. My world completely stopped.

Infertility has resulted in a different kind of grief experience. It has been a slower process…more of a surface wound. The kind of wound that starts small and then over time it slowly gets larger. But it remains open. You’re able to live with the wound for quite some time, fully functioning. And then with every doctor’s appointment, new piece of information, medical test, statistic, and friend that becomes pregnant the wound slowly opens and requires more attention. It requires making decisions that will impact your life forever. It requires ethical and moral thinking about issues that most people will never consider.

After making the decision to pursue adoption there was a sort of superficial healing to the wound. You can envision a future with children. You gain back a bit of control in the process because many things are required of you to get everything in order. But then with each week, day, hour of waiting the wound opens again and this time further. Now the wound requires full attention again but the world doesn’t stop. Instead you have to find ways to carry on and create a sort of normalcy when you hardly feel normal. It’s a sort of survival mode. You try to forget the wound exists but yet you see it everyday. The picture of a future family becomes quite cloudy and you begin to wonder if life will ever change.

This is my open wound.

grief

Sigh.

Mei-Ling at Shadow Between Two Worlds posted this quote about grief recently:

One does not get over grief. You learn to live with it instead. Grief can be accepted, but cannot be erased or reconciled. It does not get better; we learn how to get through it and integrate it into our lives.

I agree. Grief doesn't ever leave, but it changes. You learn how to live in it and continue on. I have worked to face my experiences of loss head on, to sit in it and work my way through it. This has helped me to understand more about myself and continues to form and shape who I am.

I don't for one minute pretend to think that my grief experiences would ever be comparable to that of an adopted child. However, I have to believe that having walked the road filled with intense grief and loss (I'm not just talking about infertility) will help me to be able to relate on a different level to our future child. I will never understand what it means to experience loss of one's first family in the same way. I do understand what it means to deeply lose and what it looks like to come out on the other side. The grief will never disappear, but if allowed and able to work through it, it does change, and you learn how to live with it.

the HSG test

Ever since I referenced the hysterosalpingogram (HSG) test in this post I’ve been thinking about this very odd experience.

The test was performed at a hospital and not in the fertility clinic. The HSG test needs to be performed at a certain time during your cycle but they’re always booked so it took me about 3 months to get an appointment. I had heard about this infamous test from a friend of mine and was quite nervous as it was supposed to be pretty painful.

This is my experience.

I got called from the waiting room to an area in the back where I was sent to a change room which had a gown for me and a locker for my clothes. After donning the gown I was instructed to sit in the chairs lined up against the wall in a semi-private hallway. After changing and taking my seat I realized that I was one of four women in the same predicament.

So there we sat. Four infertile women, shivering (seriously, why must they keep it so cold?!) on green plastic chairs with only a thin hospital gown to keep us warm. We sat against the wall in a row, facing our changing rooms. We were all bonded together in some strange sort of way. But no words were spoken by any of us that afternoon. Although I’m sure we were all thinking similar thoughts, such as: "wonder how long they’ve been trying" "where is she in the process of testing" "how much is this test going to hurt." To top it off this hallway wasn’t private, hospital staff walked past our little group and I wondered if they knew why we were all there. The lack of privacy made it worse.

Then one by one we were called into the testing room. And one by one each of us made our way from the test room to the bathroom and back into the hallway where the rest sat waiting our turn. I wanted to shout to the first victim…"how was it? does it really hurt as bad as they say?!"….but I stayed quiet, not breaking the silence, taking my cues from the other two sitting beside me. And then it was my turn. I won’t get super graphic here but imagine someone injecting dye up your vajayjay to check for any blockages in the fallopian tubes. Not my idea of a pleasant afternoon activity. The neat thing, which totally distracted me from the procedure, was that I got to watch the monitor which showed the dye travelling through my tubes. That was actually pretty cool although I wouldn’t recommend this experience just for kicks! In the end I felt hardly any pain which was a great blessing since I have a negative pain threshold!

And when I moved from the bathroom back into the hallway to my change room there was no one left of my foursome. I’ll never see those women again (I don’t even remember what they looked like since we were sitting side by side and didn’t dare look at one another!) but for a moment we shared an intimate time together. A time of vulnerability. And even though no one voiced this fact on that sunny summer afternoon, I will never forget it.