Getting a grip

Well, I'm happy to report that I'm slightly less unhinged than I was when I wrote my previous post on Tuesday night. I'm still very sad about the current state of affairs, but I've dragged myself sufficiently far - but not all the way - out of that deep dark hole to be able to string coherent thoughts together again.

My thoughts on adoption over the last few days run along very similar lines to Julie's most recent posts on "A Little Pregnant." (And I've also followed the ensuing flame-fest on Chicagomama's blog incited by Julie's posts...)

I have the same reservations about adoption, at least right now, that were expressed on ALP - to me, right now, it feels like a crappy second choice. It feels like settling for decidedly less than. (I understand that once you actually have an adopted child, you love that child no less, and possibly more, than anyone else loves their biological child. So please don't flame me to a crisp, I'm merely expressing my own personal fucked up FEELINGS here.)

The way I feel at this moment, I can't imagine how to get from here.....to there. Because here is bitterness, and anger, poor-me syndrome, and grief. I can't fathom how I will get through these feelings of loss - grieving the inability to have a house full of children with my hair and my husband's eyes and my grandmother's nose, grieving the missed experiences of carrying a child inside of me and feeling it kick for the first time, etc., grieving the missed experiences of saying yes, I'm due in 3 months! and giving birth, and breast feeding, and listening to friends and family argue over whether the baby looks more like me, or R, or Aunt Polly? How do I get from feeling like this shriveled up, bitter, jaded person......to a place where I'm approaching adoption with a positive, excited, this-is-definitely-the-path-for-us attitude?

R is absolutely amazing, that's at least one thing I know for sure. I've endeavored over the last few days to try to concentrate on how colossally blessed I am to spend the rest of my life with this astounding man. When I called him, hiccupping and sobbing after my appointment on Tuesday, the first thing he said, after, "I'm so sorry baby", was something quite positive. He said maybe this is for the best - maybe now we can put the infertility treatment behind us, put all these little accumulating disapointments to rest, and focus on something that has a 100% chance of having a positive outcome. He said that he has prayed over and over again about a positive outcome for our infertility struggle - BUT, that he has never prayed specifically for me to be pregnant. Rather, he said, he's prayed for us to find the path and the way to our family that is meant for us. So, he said, maybe this is finally a nudge onto OUR path?

He seems much less conflicted than I. He said something yesterday that summed up his feelings, very simply: He wants a family, he wants to be a father. We can't get pregnant. Therefore, we will adopt. Simple as that. He's looking forward to the joys of being parents, of having children running around in our house. Having children in our lives is more important to him than the process by which they will come to us.

I feel like I have to get to that same point, to feel that same way, before I can really commit to the adoption process. Right now I have so many fears and doubts. Now - I have absolutely NO doubt that I, we, posess the capacity to love an adopted child as fiercely and passionately as I , we would love a biological child. But, I worry that adopted children would eventually resent that our desire to adopt them was, in itself, borne from a place of grief and loss?

An anonymous poster on ALP wrote,

"Please. Don't. It made my heart sink to read this post. Let someone else adopt the baby you are feeling so ambivilent about. Only children do not die from onlieness. I just can't imagine how gut wrenchingly awful it would be for you to adopt a child and have this child later in life discover these archives. Please. Don't. Step away from the application now." (italics mine)

I get that - even as I write this post I think - we'll never tell our future adopted children the details of this struggle, and I must destroy all evidence of this blog lest they should find it someday and feel they were our second choice! I guess I just don't know how to reconcile that.

Other than emotional ambivalence and lack of moral fortitude where the theory of adoption is concerned....my other concerns for the immediate time being are that I feel completely emotionally drained and physically exhausted. I've come to the conclusion in the last couple of days that I have to move forward with little shuffling baby steps.

Yesterday I decided that I had to make an appointment for a second opinion with another fertility clinic in this area. If I didn't, I might always look back and wonder, what if? However, I simply couldn't face the visualization of starting over at a new clinic - staring down the months ahead filled with more tests, then more ultrasounds, more shots, more hoping, hoping, hoping, and most of all, more disapointments mounting up and and up and up. So I told myself, all I have to do today is pick up this phone and call to make an appointment. That's all. I don't even have to think about what comes after that point. Just make the appointment, and don't think any further. So, I accomplished that. I have an appointment on May 15 with a well respected doctor at the largest fertility clinic in the metro DC area.

As far as adoption goes, I made phone calls and sent emails yesterday to several former co-workers who have made the journey from failed infertility treatments to the adoption process. I asked them for a quick overview on all things adoption, as well as advice on the emotional component. I asked them if they felt these reservations, and doubts, and like Julie on ALP also asked on her blog - I asked them if those doubts fell away the further they went into the process. I was trying to find out if it's OK to at least start the process feeling this way?

Both of the women I was able to get in touch with yesterday said that they felt exactly the same way. One woman, in particular, said it took a whole year for her to gain the excitement she now feels about her impending adoption of a son from Russia. She now wishes that she hadn't waited so long to begin the copious and time consuming research necessary to even begin the adoption process. She wishes that she hadn't wallowed in self pity and jealously for as long as she allowed herself to do. Like everything else related to infertility, time is never on your side. She warned that if we decide to consider international adoption, many countries have age limits over which they will not allow you to adopt infants. If we want to consider domestic adoption, she cautioned that most agencies will tell you that if you are an older couple, you'll have a lesser chance of having a birth mother pick you, regardless of your financial stability or effervescent personalities.

So, baby steps. I've decided to begin researching the idea. The theory of adopting a child. What information does one need? How does one prepare? What is necessary? In this way, I hope to be able to collect all the information that we'll eventually need in order to consider and commit, but in a sidelong, oblique sort of way that doesn't require commitment up front.

Maybe, as I go along, some of my doubts and reservations will begin to fall away. Maybe one day I'll wake up and feel in my heart that this IS our path.


I'm certainly not naiive enough to believe that I'll be able to work through all the pain of infertility, all the grief, all the loss, all the anger, in some proscribed period of time, and just be a clean, blank slate ready to begin the adoption process. I think like anything else on this protracted journey to parenthood, it will necessarily be a progressive progress. So I think the only way to begin is just to....start. Start learning about it, and see what happens as we go. This approach is very much against my nature, but I think it's the only way I can get through this.


In the meantime, as aforementioned, we've decided to continue the meds at least until the drugs I've already paid for are depleted. At that point, we'll have to decide whether to shell out for more drugs. This worries me, for two reasons: inasmuch as I've told myself over and over again that this is a futile effort, and I should under NO circumstances allow a positive thought to enter my mind.....somewhere deep down I still have a vision in my mind's eye of the impending wanding session on Saturday morning - that Dr. D will break out into a wide grin and say, "Well waddya know about that - some progress at long last!" And I'll call R, crying from the parking lot, but this time crying with relief. I try to banish these thoughts, because it will be soooo much easier on Saturday to hear the familiar refrain of resistant and inactive ovaries, if I've already convinced myself that bad news is the only news I'll get. But, to no avail. Hope continues to creep in, unbidden.

And finally, what about the crack factor? No, no, I'm far too practiced a stirrup jockey to be concerned about the ubiquitous paper sheet and it's inherent coverage-related shortcomings. I'm talking about the impulse that I KNOW I'll have, even after Dr. D looks at me morosely from between the stirrups on Saturday and shakes his head in resignation, to say....OK, how about just one more shipment of drugs? Just one more week? One more week of doses, and then I promise I'll quit these fucking hormone shots. One more hit? Please, Dr. D, can't we go up to 225 IUS a night? That's just a little more than 200ius, but what if that will make the difference? What if my ovaries are holding out for the extra large, super value meal sized dose? Let's just give them one more chance, waddya say? Uuuggghhh... it makes me feel PATHETIC already!!!!!