I was inspired by Leatrice's blog the other day where she wrote how she wants to be open and honest about parenting. I have read many blogs of women who are/were pregnant, have kids, or are struggling with infertility, but I have not read anyone who is writing about adoption as they are going through it. I haven't looked, so now that I think of it I will probably search after I am finished writing and find someone else who is doing it. In the meantime, I decided I have an opportunity to give others an insight into what the whole process is really like.
I started to write EVERYTHING in this blog but then realized it was too much to read at one time, so I'm going to start with infertility.
The first time we tried to get pregnant was in 2005. After only six months of trying we decided I'd just go back on birth control and we'd wait a while longer--at least until after I was out of nursing school. We were both wishy-washy after I graduated in May 2007 about when we wanted to try again, but finally in January 08 we decided it was time. By July, nothing was happening, and when I mean nothing that includes nothing happening in my body. I wasn't ovulating, and having no montly visitor. So I went to the GYN and told her we were trying to get pregnant. Even though we'd only been trying for 7 months she referred me to a reproductive endocrinologist. Most healthy women don't get referred until after they've been trying to get pregnant for a year. In my case, there was no point in waiting the extra 5 months if my body wasn't doing anything.
The reproductive endocrinologist at that time decided to give me some hormones to try to start my cycle, which worked and then he prescribed the fertility drug, clomid. Clomid is a fertility pill that helps with ovulation, which I wasn't doing on my own. We tried clomid for about 5 cycles, with one round of intra-uterine insemination. Nothing. I also had a laparoscopy and hysteroscopy done in Feb 09which showed I had PCOS--polycystic ovarian syndrome. That means I have a bunch of cysts on my ovaries that keep me from ovulating. The doctor removed the cysts during the surgery, but they can come back in time.
I was hoping I might find out I was pregnant a few days ago. Turns out, I wasn't. This was my last month I was going to mentally try, if that makes sense. Even though I am excited about adoption I have also been hoping I could still get pregnant and we could have one "homemade" child and one or two adopted children. This was the last month I wanted to keep track of anything. So I was super-duper sad on Wednesday and had a really hard time getting through the workday. Thursday was about the same, and on Friday I went from being sad to grumpy. These emotions are the reason I don't want to keep track of things anymore. I imagine I will still have some disappointment each month but I'm going to work on it.
That's the infertility side of it. We talked about adoption early on in the marriage as something of an option that we thought would be "nice". I don't remember when I first thought about adoption, but it was sometime growing up. I just always thought it would be a great thing to do. Funny how adoption was always something I thought I'd want to do in addition to having my own children, but now it will become our primary means of having children!
Just as David and I were reaching a year of trying to get pregnant, we started talking about adoption. I wasn't interested in continuing to go to the doctor appointments every week or every other week. I also wasn't interested in spending a large chunk of money on in vitro, even though the nurse practitioner said my chances were really good that I'd be able to get pregnant that route. We felt strongly that God was calling us to adopt. Our reasons were not just because we couldn't get pregnant but because we wanted to take in a baby whose mother wasn't able to care for him/her as well as she wanted to. For us, I'd say adoption is 50% wanting to start our family and 50% wanting to take in a child and give him/her the opportunities in life he/she might not otherwise have.
In later posts I will write about the adoption process...stay tuned for more!
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