How Far Will We Go? May 25, 2008

One thing that is very personal but I feel like I need to talk about is how far I am willing to go to have a biological child.

I know I would feel differently if I hadn’t always wanted to adopt a child, but if my partner and I can’t get pregnant with minimal medical support (Such as the rounds of provera and clomid (oral medications) I just completed) then we plan to begin our process of adoption.

I think it is an incredibly hard lifestyle, to be immersed in infertility treatment, and I know that fact fairly well because my aunt and uncle went through IVF way back in the early 90s. But beyond that, I still plan (even if I do get pregnant) to adopt a child. Even though I am fascinated with pregnancy and willing to give it a go, I don’t feel the desperate need for an infant. I want to enrich our life and our family with a child, and I’m willing to love a special needs or older child unconditionally.

It’s hard for my friends (all childless, hard-drinking rocknrollers) to understand why I even want to have children, much less quit smoking & drinking & eating feta cheese or tuna salad to become a parent. But moreover, why I’ve decided to take a crack at this *before* adoption, considering they’ve always thought I wanted to adopt.

Hence this anonymous blog.

Yet, my defense for giving this a go *now* has a lot to do with timing. As I said in my last post, I can’t explain the desire to have children biologically. But now is not the time to begin the adoption process for us. My brother just moved here into our spare bedroom after getting out of the military, and he hopes to move his partner in with us eventually. Even if I get pregnant, that gives them a year or so before we’d put the child in their own room — so they’d have time to find a place. But I can’t give a potential adopted child a “promised room” in a home study. They want the real thing. There are other reasons.

But for now, we’re on this path, even if it seems nonsensical to others.

But this path is a short one. I have absolutely debilitating periods (due to endometriosis) and PMDD and trying to conceive for a year or two and having lots of pain and depression and all that comes with my cycle for those years is unthinkable. So even though we’ve only been trying since January, this is the end of this process for us. Will this path take us to parenthood or to waiting to adopt? We don’t know yet. But we will soon.

Background Story May 24, 2008

This October my husband, R, and I will celebrate our third wedding anniversary, and at the end of November we’ll celebrate our “four years together” anniversary.  During the past 3 and a half years that we’ve been together, we’ve ridden out lots of storms and disasters, clinging to each other and we’ve sailed on the glassy waters of lazy weekend afternoons spent neglecting our lawn, laying around in bed together and reading books.

Last Christmas, we had a “pregnancy scare”.  I’d been on Lupron for a year for endometriosis treatment, and was officially due to get my period back in December (or so the doctors told me).  When it didn’t come but the pregnancy tests were negative, R and I were surprised that we were almost as sad as we were relieved.  Many long talks later, we decided we were ready to start trying to have a child.

For many years after I quit being what I thought of as “young and adrift”, I was unsure whether I’d like to bear a child, but I’ve always wanted to adopt.  I’m a creative person, and in my years working as a nanny I saw lots of people sidetracked from their personal interests so they could provide well for their children.  I felt if I could adopt then I could wait longer, be more prepared, financially sound, and emotionally ready.  Plus my family has a history of health problems, including quite troubling mental health ones, and I had an unfortunate legacy of abuse I was up against in the parenting column.  I also am a big sassy gal and I don’t want to worry about gestational diabetes or the awful preeclampsic-caused hospital stays which my little sister with both her pregnancies.

But the idea of the feminine capacity for pregnancy has always had a pull for me, whether I bought into it completely for myself.  On occasion I even thought about being an egg donor or a surrogate (during my single years).

So I can’t explain what made us decide to have children.  I can explain the timing, the way we’re going about it, and more, but what made me suddenly willing to risk all the horrible, scary things of pregnancy and parenthood and try to get knocked up?  I don’t know.  But here we are, here I am.  Ready as I’ll ever be.