For whatever it’s worth, this is the third time I’ve started this blog in the last 6 months. Every time has really had its best intentions, with the promise of a big update that many have skirted around asking for. And please don’t get me wrong, I’m so, so appreciative that so many care. But frankly, I haven’t known what to say.
So I’ll say this. Please don’t read this with hopes for a big, awesome plan. We don’t have one.
The last 6 months have really had their ups and downs. I’ve finally found a career I really love, Mike is doing great. So many things to be so grateful for. And we are, more than you know.
So here’s the last 6 months of baby making, in a nutshell. The third transfer and subsequent failure changed me. I’m just being honest here. I mean, no one expects the first transfer to work, and the second, well, it stings, but you’re not burnt yet. But man, something happened after that third transfer. We really, really thought that one was it, too. I was sick in a way I had never been, all the numbers looked great. This was finally it. Until it wasn’t.
We were willing to move forward with the 4th. We went for a consult with our doctor, and she spewed all kinds of tests we could do and experiments we could try, with all statements seeming to end with a proverbial question mark. All costing thousands of dollars with no actual promise of any definitive answers. Months and months of meds and endometrial biopsies with no end in sight. And frankly it was all a shot in the dark. But what really got me was this: “we have no idea why it didn’t work. Everything looked perfect. This should have worked.”
Everyone has asked me throughout this whole process how I could work around pregnant women all day, and I very truthfully responded with “their baby isn’t about me. Their path isn’t my path.” And I meant it. And everyone seemed to wait for the final straw that would break the camels back. And break it, it did.
I started turning into what everyone expected me to have been from the start. Bitter, sad, jaded. Jealous and angry. And with no help from the shitloads of artificial hormones still coursing through my body, I’ll be the first to admit I went to a pretty dark place. I lost all sense of hope. Literally, every bit.
Mike and I did a lot of soul searching, and decided that maybe we needed to be done with IVF. We had always welcomed the idea of adoption. And it’s a much larger conversation which I’m happy to get into personally, but we just decided to do IVF first. But adoption was never a consolation prize. Just a different path.
So here we were, super excited about the change in direction, ready to put full steam behind adopting! Here’s what we found out: there are almost zero local agencies that will work with us because we’re not Christian. OK, so we find a large national agency we like. Yay! We meet with a family services organization to start our homestudy. Oh, what’s that? All the debt we went into for IVF will likely get us denied to adopt? Awesome.
Enter total pit of despair.
Alright, maybe I’m being dramatic, but I’m not far off.
So here’s where we stand. We have no idea what we’re going to do, and that’s basically it. There’s a part of me that wants to go on and on all about how I feel defective and guilty, how my body has let us down too many times. About how when you look for help to change that feeling, every article you read about loving and accepting your body seems to boil down to “I look at my beautiful children and realize my body did that“, which only alienates me even more and fosters the hate even deeper. How this whole month of December has been excruciating because had that third transfer worked, this is when we would have met our baby. I wish I could explain the pain I’ve felt when I told Mike (on more than one occasion) that I would totally get it if he left me and found someone else that was just easier, and the pain in his face because he knows I mean it.
But frankly, if you haven’t been there, you won’t understand. I swear, that’s not meant to be condescending. It’s just true.
I want to end this on a positive note, but there kind of isn’t one. I mean, who knows how all this will turn out? But I do know this – for now, I’m lucky enough to get lots of love from littles who I get to hang out with all the time. And I could not have asked for a better partner. I mean, seriously, this shit tears couples apart, and understandably so.
They weren’t kidding about the whole for better or worse thing.
FAQ’s and other notable commentary:
“But what about foster care?”
Every state is different, and TN always has the main goal of reuniting families. Always. Babies do not go into foster care for adoption right off the bat. And bringing a child, baby or otherwise, into our family and then having them taken from us is too much right now. I’ll always be supportive of families being able to work it out, and I’d love to be part of that in the future, but right now, that’s not the right path for us.
“BUT THERE ARE SO MANY BABIES WHO NEED HOMES! SAVE THE BABIES!”
In private adoption, there are approximately 36 waiting hopeful families for every baby born with an adoption plan.
“So are you in a constant state of misery?”
Not constant, per se. I speak for both of us when I say we find a lot of joy being around our friends and their families! Or my little ones in class, whom I LOVE and truly look forward to seeing weekly. But yes, it’s hard. Sometimes, I’ll recuse myself from the environment so I’m not that person bawling in a random place. And that’s ok. It’s always appreciated when you allow me these moments.
“Have hope! My brother/neighbor/cousin/friend did…”
Here’s the thing about hope. Hope is the easiest thing for people to try to pump into you when there’s nothing else to say – which, for the record, I completely get! I’m guilty of it myself, probably many times over. But alongside hope, is reality, and reality is truth, no matter how much hope you’ve got. Infertility is really, really complex. It’s incredibly unlikely that what happened to your loved one won’t happen for us. It’s not a doom thing, it’s that every case is extremely different.
“But did you try…”
Yes.