Should I feel a sense of loss?

Last weekend, okay since it's Tuesday I guess it was two weekends ago, Jake and I were faced with a tough choice. In every infertile's life there comes this moment, about ever 28 - 35 days. The moment where you come to a fork in the road. You either continue with your treatments or you stop and decide to do something different.

Jake and I have decided to diverge from the well beaten path, much sooner than most people in our position. However, as you may remember from this post, this is not something new to us. Adoption is something that Jake and I have been talking about for as long as I can remember and it is something that I myself have been talking about even longer than that.

When we started out on this TTC (trying to conceive) journey we always said that we would not want to do IVF. We always said that we would adopt and in every case we were faced with people who just didn't understand. Once you try to have your own children (FYI: this is a term VERY often used by those outside of the adoption world, however, if you think about it for a moment you will understand why it is not a correct term. Won't any child we have be our "own" child?) they would tell us, you will feel differently.

Well, we've said it once, and we will say it again our feelings have not changed. We only have about four more months to get pregnant before we will give up and let God decide the rest. We are going to continue with the non-evasive treatments, however we have decided not to go further than that. We will take the Clomid for another 3 months, my doctor says I can only be on it for 6 months total. We will also have Jake tested and have the intrauterine dye test done. More for our own curiosity at this point than anything else. After that, if we chose to continue, the next step would be injectibles and beyond. And that, my friends, is the step we are not willing to take.

With injectibles, comes the risk of multiple births. Then you walk that line of do we carry the pregnancy to term and pray or do we selectively reduce. If we would choose to carry and I lost the pregnancy the emotional toll would be substantial. No less than the guilt I feel I would carry with me if I carried and gave birth to children with severe handicaps. If we choose to reduce than that carries with it a whole other set of worries. First and foremost, how do you choose? How much guilt would I be faced with when my child/children were born knowing that they had siblings that I chose to destroy? This is not a position that we ever want to put ourselves in. For this reason, injectibles are not an option for us.

Another reason would be that our insurance does not cover infertility treatments. So, we see no need to put ourselves through the emotional, physical, and financial woes that come with IVF or other evasive fertility treatments. This is a path which has been walked by many before us and can offer us no guarantees. Neither one of us feels the strong pull for a biological child. We are both very comfortable and confident that we will love our children no matter where they come from.

Today, I contacted the adoption agency that we have chosen to get the ball rolling. Since their fee is non-refundable we have decided to take things slowly. We will have a home study done along with finishing with the path we are on. The home study is our greatest source of concern right now. As most of you know, Jake was not a model young adult. So, before we go paying a large, non-refundable fee to an agency, we want to make sure that we can make it through the home study. The last thing we need is to get more emotionally and financially vested in this option and then have something he did when he was 18 come back and bite us in the ass.

Assuming that we pass the homestudy and sign with an agency we will not turn back from there. Many people have asked us, what happens when you get pregnant in the middle of the adoption process. Our answer, then we have two children. Since we see no difference in biological vs. adopted children we would see no reason to stop the process simply because our family would be larger than expected.

As for some other commonly asked questions:

Don't you feel like you will be missing something by not being pregnant?

No, not really. I do not have that pull like some women do to be pregnant. I want a child, I don't care if I give birth to him/her or not. Anytime I have imagined my life with a family there has always just been a child. I've never really had pregnancy dreams or that huge drive to give birth. To be honest with you that whole idea sort of scares the shit out of me.

Do you feel a sense of loss for not having a biological child?

Should I? I guess that answers that question, huh? The Friday before we made our adoption decision I had a dream. In my dream I was in an orphanage. It was somewhere in a Spanish speaking country and there were adoptive parents and children all around. None of the children came to us, however. Then finally over came a little girl and we just connected.

From the moment I woke up from that dream all I felt was peace. When Jake and I have talked about this adoption, peace. When I started my period on Monday after making this decision, peace. When I think about trying to conceive, anxiety like I have never felt before. I have spent the last eight months in a fog and have only just now emerged.

I suppose when you are in it, you can not see past it. However, looking back I realize that I have been very depressed over these last eight months. Trying to conceive was something we did because it was the route to take. It was what everyone expected of us, but I'm not sure it was ever really in my heart. Who knows, maybe my depression has caused us to be unable to get pregnant. Maybe I'm depressed because I can't get pregnant. We could go a whole round of which came first.

The point is, when I think about adoption none of that anxiety is there. I have been the happiest this last week that I have been in months!! I am a realist, and I know that we need to make it through this home study before we start painting any nurseries, but that doesn't change my level of enthusiasm. I feel about this, like many feel when trying to conceive. If we don't do it I will always feel like what if. I don't feel that way about IVF, I feel that way about adoption.

That said, I think I've rambled enough for one post. Feel free to leave any comments or questions that you have for me. I know that people have a lot of questions about this process and our decision and I am open to fielding any of them. If you want to e-mail them to me because you feel stupid asking or you don't want your name associated with them, feel free. I will post the answers in a later post (without your name of course).