We are relieved to inform you that no, The Adoption League did not burst into our home and handcuff us to a baby. So no, we didn’t “have to” adopt.
OH!…….now I get it. You want to know about my uterus and Martin’s sperm! Okay, that’s a different question. You want the nitty gritty.
I am pretty adamant that our adoption story shouldn’t be our infertility story. The child we will have someday is not a Plan B. They are The Plan. That’s a very important fact for us.
That said there is a natural curiosity, and that’s okay. Here’s how we got to where we are now:
Yes, we had difficulties getting pregnant and were on fertility treatments for a few years. The highlights:
- I have run up Bay Street, in heels, in the winter, with a sample jar of Martin’s boys tucked into my bra, to make it to the fertility clinic in time for an IUI procedure.
- I’ve watched my uterus and fallopian tubes be inflated on ultrasound.
- Daily early morning blood tests and ultrasounds (at last count, over 130 times). Not as fun as you might think. Especially since the ultrasounds are of the “up-the-wazoo” variety.
- Injecting hormones into my abdomen which had the following effects:
- A bruised stomach that looked like I’d done a match with Mike Tyson
- A hormonal cyst on my face that had to be surgically removed. It was there for seven months. I called it Uncle Fester and charged rent.
- The moods*.
*For all those reading who were colleagues during this time, I am truly sorry for the number of fits, irrational decision, and ugly cries, you endured. I was a walking estrogen-fueled HR nightmare.
Oh, and I once grabbed a needle from a nervous fertility nurse, pulled off the cap with my teeth, alcohol swabbed the site, and did my own belly injection – all without putting down my handbag.
By this time, our doctor was strongly steering us towards IVF as the next step, should our third IUI fail. She felt I was a good candidate, given my age and excellent health.
So what happened? Martin and I have always been connected in a truly strong and unique way. I could not ask for a more supportive partner. When it came time to start the third IUI, well, we just looked at each other and, it was like, enough.
We choose to adopt.
To be clear, it wasn’t the side effects that changed our decision. Trust me; I would crawl over broken glass to get to our child. Nor do we see adoption as an act of charity, or saving a child. We aren’t the heroes in this and this journey is less about us than it is about our child.
It was a realization that this just wasn’t the way to grow our family. Nothing about it felt right. We needed a U-Turn. Yes, we could’ve continued with more advanced treatments. But that would’ve meant missing out on a chance to do what we felt was the best decision for us and our family.
Adoption can be a minefield, and this is just one post.
Still, I know the why question is always out there, so I wanted to face it head on. The needles, creams, calendars, and chemistry, have been shipped off.
As I like to think of it, we’ve changed gates at the airport.
Dorothy Was Adopted 
ahem_mayispeak
“I would crawl over broken glass to get to our child.” In tears.
ninjadesigns
I don’t know if you’ll read this since your blog has gone silent and you’ve probably moved on to reclaiming your lives, but it breaks my heart how similar our stories are. We did 7 IUI’s. We call clomid “the crazy pill” (which is funniest because my husband still takes it). We’ve been pregnant. We could have kept going. Our adoption workshop ended up being the same weekend that I was scheduled to start another cycle after our miscarriage and we just… didn’t make that phone call – we chose to adopt. It was such a massive relief to stop and just grieve everything that had happened to us over the course of years. And then we did all the paperwork – the fingerprints and forms and homestudy. And we were very hopeful we would get matched with an expectant mother – after all, we’re awesome. No really, we knew the average was two years, but part of us secretly hoped that as soon as that first birth mother saw our book that she would see that we’d make perfect parents. And at the end of the first year we tearfully renewed our homestudy. We asked if there was anything that we could change in our profile to help ourselves out and the social workers said they didn’t think there was. At the end of the second year I started getting excited – 20-22 months had arrived and my elephant-gestation wait was over! Then we renewed our homestudy at the end of the second year and re-did all of our police checks, fingerprints, and other paperwork. We thought it was a shame that we weren’t chosen within the two years, but much like when I met my husband online eleven years ago I believed that when you’re ready to quit is when your wait will finally be over. We struggled through our third year and now we sit here, utterly dismayed and confused – does no one want us? Was there an adoptive parent pageant that we lost and didn’t know about? And we’re tired. We’ve been trying so hard for 8 years now to start a family. I was 27 when we started, which we thought was a fine age… exactly the age that my mom was when she accidentally got pregnant with my little brother. And now we have been faced with the decision of whether to try for a fourth year – it just feels like the whole world is against us. My husband’s view is that we should hang on for a fourth year, but he’s turning 40 this year and is not wanting to put ourselves out there for a fifth year. It’s sort of refreshing to have an end date to the suffering. I don’t know why our lives are working out this way. I’m not nearly as selfless as you – I know that every infant we would be considered for will end up with parents – there are literally hundreds of couple on waiting lists at private adoption agencies in Alberta alone right now, and our agency placed 13 infants last year. Everyone says “it will all be worth it when you have your child” and I don’t doubt that it would be. But that’s what they said when we spent 5 years trying to get pregnant along with “it will happen when it happens”, but when you ask about the possibility that it might never happen the room grows silent – everyone knows that it’s a mysterious burden that no one wants to bear and no one knows why some people have to bear and if it’s contagious don’t come near me. Or maybe it’s just too painful for them to let themselves think about as a remote possibility. I guess it’s just nice to hear that the universe won’t implode if we don’t end up being able to make a family of more than just the two of us, even though that’s exactly what it feels like right now.
Lori
Wow. So many echoes and tremors that I can relate to. I’m not sure I have any words of wisdom, other that I understand. Not to persuade you in any direction, but yes, letting go of the dream, for us, was a complex relief. This does not mean that you did not pour your heart and soul into this completely all-consuming task of trying to start of family. A big pet peeve of mine would be people who could flippantly say, “you are just impatient”. They have NO idea about the process, the pain, and the frustration. I know you have been down that road and are on it right now. The awful part, I found, about it all is when you stop IVF, there was only a hypothetical baby. With adoption, there are real children. We had photos, birth mothers; they existed and vanished. Like you, we wondered why we were not chosen. Mother Nature make have smacked us down, but it’s harder when you wonder if it was a wrong word on your profile, or your photo. I don’t have answers. I can tell you that a family of two is okay. It is a new reality to navigate, should you go down that path. There are very few resources out there to help. I was first paired with an infertility counsellor, which was the last thing I wanted. It was better when I switched therapists. It still comes back, however. The other day a friend in her mid-forties just announced she is expecting. It was so wrong of me, but it was such a sucker punch to the gut. I hated her. I’m not proud of that. Thank you for sharing your story. No matter when you decide, you will do what is best for you both. Reach out again, if you want to. If this is contagious, we both have Ebola so we might as well deal with it.