Adoption

New Directions

I had a life plan.

Never mind the fact that I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life (at least in regards to a career), but by the time I was 15 years old I had a gen­eral sense of how I wanted my life to turn out.

I wanted to get mar­ried by the time I was 25 years old and have my first child by the age of 27.

And because I had this notion that thirty years was a ginor­mous age gap between my last child and myself, my goal was to quit “baby-​​making” by the time I was 30 years old. This notion came from the first hand expe­ri­ence of a 15 year old who not only dealt with a big gen­er­a­tional gap but a cul­tural gap as well.

But yeah; I’d have all the kids I could bring into this world before I turned 30 years old.

Obvi­ously, this life plan never panned out. I mean … geez. I even pushed “actively try­ing” for that first child into my mid-30’s. We had already gone through all the infer­til­ity treat­ments we could (finan­cially and emo­tion­ally) put our­selves through. We had even seri­ously con­sid­ered other options to bring a child into our lives; either through domes­tic adop­tion or inter­na­tional adoption.

But in the end, Hubby & I made the deci­sion to move on with our lives with­out children.

*****

There have been many rea­sons why Hubby & I decided to close the door on the quest to have chil­dren. One of which was to regain some san­ity in our lives.

Liv­ing in 28-​​day incre­ments, in which any given moment can pro­duce the tini­est bit of hope, can be exhaust­ing. Espe­cially when the next given moment can quickly turn into a major dis­ap­point­ment. I won’t lie … it has been incred­i­bly nice  to step away from liv­ing in four weeks of con­stantly wor­ry­ing about whether or not I’ll see two pink lines.

Another rea­son was obvi­ously to start mov­ing on with our lives; to start plan­ning a “new future” with­out children.

When that “life plan” I dreamed of at the age of 15 was com­pletely derailed by infer­til­ity, I know I spent a lot of time and energy try­ing get it “back on track” … In other words, I fought tooth and nail not to head down the child-​​free “rail­road track” that my life was already on.

Mak­ing the deci­sion to move on with our lives was not an easy deci­sion. But when we finally decided on the child-​​free path — this “rail­road track” (if you will) — it was as if I could finally allow my life to move for­ward in the direc­tion that my life and our mar­riage was already on. I could finally stop strug­gling to get “back on track” and accept that per­haps we were never meant to be on that par­tic­u­lar “track” at all.

****

A "chance" photo, shot during our trip to Banff, Alberta

A “chance” shot taken from the road in Banff, Alberta

****

Today I turn 38 years old. I’m obvi­ously very far from where I thought I’d be by now; in that “life plan” I con­cocted at the age of fifteen.

If my life turned out as I planned it to be, I would have had at least one child some­where between the ages of 7 to 10 years old. And I prob­a­bly would have begun to think of return­ing to the work force after being a Stay-​​At-​​Home mom once the 7 year old started first grade.

But it’s not … and today I can finally say that I’m actu­ally really okay with it. Maybe it has to do with age, but I’m finally to a point where I no longer have focus on the dream or “life plan” I had always had in my mind.

Instead, I can finally accept that this is where Hubby & I are meant to be at this exact moment in time. And we can forge for­ward in this new uncharted direc­tion in our lives.

2">Infertility Bets On Hold, Part 2

(If you missed Part 1, click here … )

While I’ve pretty much begun to resolve those par­tic­u­lar grief issues, there’s still that lack of strength that I feel I need in order to go through the entire adop­tion process.  Because it takes some­one who really has enough strength to climb over the prover­bial brick wall get­ting in the way of hav­ing a child. And specif­i­cally, I’m talk­ing about all the rules and reg­u­la­tions and inves­ti­ga­tions into your pri­vate lives just to raise a child that is not bio­log­i­cally your own. Quite frankly, I know that I don’t have what it takes to go through that.

Why do I say that? (And Kelly … hope­fully, this will help answer the ques­tion you posed to me at one time … ) Well first of all, I just know what I’m capa­ble of han­dling emo­tion­ally, and I know that I wouldn’t be able to sur­vive any fur­ther dis­ap­point­ment or heartache. Or as my new favorite quote from Pam says:

It got to the point where the poten­tial for more heart­break was more over­whelm­ing than the glim­mer of very small hope.

The sec­ond rea­son I feel as if I have lit­tle strength is because I have lit­tle con­fi­dence that things will come rel­a­tively straight­for­ward and sim­ple to us.

Not that I expect adop­tion to be an easy path. If we did decide to adopt, I have this very strong sus­pi­cion that we’d have so many more walls to climb. Give me a chance to explain … and I’d absolutely love to hear what oth­ers have to say to con­tribute to this discussion.

Let’s start off with Domes­tic Adoption:

  • Hubby & I both Asian Amer­i­can; Fil­ipino Amer­i­can, to be specific.
  • How often do you sup­pose any Poten­tial Birth Moms (PBM) would look at our dossier and — just by looks alone — think that we’d make great par­ents when their child will (most likely) not look at all sim­i­lar to the adop­tive cou­ple that they’d hope to raise their child?
  • Or that the PBM might worry that their child would face more bar­ri­ers hav­ing Asian Amer­i­can parents?
  • How often are Asian Amer­i­can babies given up for adop­tion; espe­cially if the PBM is also Asian or Asian Amer­i­can? Cul­ture dic­tates that fam­ily is impor­tant. If the child is not wanted in the imme­di­ate fam­ily; chances are that there is another fam­ily mem­ber (aunt, cousin, third uncle twice removed) that is will­ing to raise the child. Unfor­tu­nately, that’s a sit­u­a­tion that’s likely never going to hap­pen to us.

Mov­ing onto Inter­na­tional Adoption:

  • There are stricter laws and reg­u­la­tions from var­i­ous coun­tries in effect.
  • Some spe­cific coun­tries, like Rus­sia and Guatemala, have either sus­pended or have placed holds on any adop­tions to the US.
  • Wait time. Even for Fil­ipino adop­tions there are cer­tain stip­u­la­tions on how and when a child can be adopted; when the child can come back to the US with the adopted par­ents. And quite frankly, I don’t think I can afford the three-​​year wait in order to adopt a child from my native country.

And finally other, all-​​encompassing barriers:

  • Age: Let’s face it. Hubby & I are cur­rently push­ing 40. And yes, I know that there are cou­ples out there that are rais­ing babies that are much older than us. But there was a rea­son why Hubby & I started try­ing to con­ceive within a year of mar­riage: I had always seen me as a younger mother; one that wanted to fin­ish hav­ing babies before the age of 30. There was a spe­cific rea­son behind that: my mother and I are exactly 3o years apart in age (sorry Mom!). Grow­ing up (par­tic­u­larly in high school), not only did I deal with a cul­tural bar­rier, but I also dealt with a huge gen­er­a­tional gap. Both my par­ents were pre–baby boomer, while I was most def­i­nitely a Gen-​​Xer. Even though after I turned 30, I knew that this was some­thing beyond my con­trol, adopt­ing now — espe­cially as the rules and regs of adop­tion have got­ten more strict — well, it no longer seems pru­dent for both Hubby & my sake.
  • Energy: Along with age, this is the sec­ond biggest con­cern that I have. And, if I was hon­est with myself, the flim­si­est bar­rier of all. Because, really this has to do with energy and sta­mina. It’s one thing to raise a child with the thought in mind that you’ll be young enough to (some­what) keep up with their needs. It’s quite another thing know­ing that I can no longer wake myself up in the morn­ing with­out hit­ting the snooze but­ton a dozen times. Would I be able to care for another life if I can barely care for my own? Like I said, flimsy … but I’m just being honest.

I don’t bring up these points to be neg­a­tive in any way, shape or form. I’m sim­ply stat­ing facts that appear to be the most obvi­ous bar­ri­ers for our indi­vid­ual case when it comes to adopt­ing a child. And that’s assum­ing that we would ever go down that route. And, as I said above, I’d love to hear your thoughts on what I per­ceive as barriers.

*****

As it is, I feel that we’ve already played our game of Infer­til­ity Roulette. We’ve already placed all the bets we wanted to at this time in our lives. And we lost that bet. With adop­tion (or h*ll, even if we ever decided to go through IVF again), I want some­thing I can be sure of … some­thing I can count on.

I hes­i­tate using the word “guar­an­tee” … since noth­ing in life is ever guar­an­teed, but after more than ten years of fight­ing the odds and now fac­ing even greater odds against us (age, finances, etc), Hubby & I opted to get out of the bet­ting pool.

And this is why, at least in my eyes, it’s never as sim­ple to “just adopt.” It’s never easy to go through another round of IVF.

This is why Hubby & I have decided to “cut our loss” … or in this case, “cut the strings” … and live child-​​free after infertility.

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Related Links:

Cut­ting The Strings

Infer­til­ity Bets On Hold, Part 1

Thoughts on Adoption

Infor­ma­tion on Fil­ipino Adoptions

Wiki Info on the Pre-​​Baby Boom Generation

Wiki Info on Gen­er­a­tion X

1">Infertility Bets On Hold, Part 1

(I guess I need to start off by say­ing, no … things have def­i­nitely not changed in my bar­ren world. And don’t let the title of this post fool you. Appar­ently I may have “freaked” a cou­ple peo­ple out by both the title and the pic­ture below … LOL!)

I’m not a bet­ting per­son. Which, when you think of the many trips Hubby & I have taken to Vegas, is quite humor­ous. All those casi­nos, and the most we played were slots.

I mean, I’ve played poker and black­jack in my col­lege years; but seri­ously, all bets were based on pen­nies. Or cig­a­rettes, depend­ing on who you were play­ing with (<cough> Tim <cough>). But to place actual money that’s more than a dol­lar (okay, maybe $2 max for a slot machine)? Can’t see myself spend­ing that kind of money.

My odds with these tests were never good

Which, given the odds that Hubby & I were given when we did our one cycle of IVF, makes it ironic. We were given a 51% chance that we’d be suc­cess­ful in our pur­suit to become preg­nant. We knew the odds were only 1% more on our favor. We had hoped to win this bet — a bet in which we put a boat­load of money into the pot — and we lost. And I was devastated.

That’s not to say that I regret ever hav­ing done our one cycle of IVF. Because even back then I knew that this was some­thing Hubby & I had to try in order to feel as if we tried every­thing in our quest to repro­duce. I’m just sim­ply say­ing that the results of that bet, that one IVF cycle, was enough for me to know that I could never place another bet on another IVF cycle ever again.

So yes … the next log­i­cal step would be to go for adop­tion, right?

Except adop­tion isn’t a sim­ple thing to just “think about.” First, there’s the process of griev­ing the fact that I can’t have a baby. That alone is noth­ing sim­ple. That process involves never being able to expe­ri­ence preg­nancy. In my case, it involved never being able to see two pink lines in a preg­nancy test.  And it involves feel­ing as if my body’s failed, not only me and my Hubby (espe­cially my hus­band), but our par­ents and our sib­lings. And our sib­lings chil­dren, too.

Then there’s the other part that I needed to grieve; which is out­lined in more detail in this recent post. It’s griev­ing the fact that we will never be able to have our own bio­log­i­cal baby.  A child that we could pass our genes to. A child to pass the Fil­ipino tra­di­tions we were taught grow­ing up; and find­ing a way to blend both our Amer­i­can and Fil­ipino sides together. A child to carry on my Hubby’s last name.

And while I’ve pretty much begun to resolve those grief issues, there’s still that lack of strength that I feel I need in order to go through the entire adop­tion process.  Because it takes some­one who really has enough strength to climb over the prover­bial brick wall get­ting in the way of hav­ing a child. And specif­i­cally, I’m talk­ing about all the rules and reg­u­la­tions and inves­ti­ga­tions into your pri­vate lives just to raise a child that is not bio­log­i­cally your own. Quite frankly, I know that I don’t have what it takes to go through that.

(Part Two con­tin­ues tomor­row … )

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Related Links:

Thoughts on Adoption

Baby Pic­ture

Identity Labels

Any­body remem­ber the old-​​school Dymo label-​​makers? I’m not talk­ing about the fancy elec­tric ones where you can type in what­ever you want before print­ing it up. I’m talk­ing about the ones where you turn the dial to choose the let­ter and squeeze the han­dle (as hard as pos­si­ble) to imprint it on the red or black vinyl tape. And G*d for­bid if you mis­spelled a word and have to start from the beginning.

For some rea­son I was think­ing about that label-​​maker this past week­end. And really, it started last week when I received a won­der­ful email from an old High School Friend (HSF) that I hadn’t heard from in years. She had responded via Face­book in regards to the post in which I admit­tedly found myself ques­tion­ing my pur­pose in life.

HSF talked about how, as women, we are always ques­tion­ing our­selves about what we truly want in life. That we’re always find­ing a way to label our­selves while simul­ta­ne­ously try­ing to achieve more than what we can phys­i­cally and emo­tion­ally han­dle. And that, in the process, we tend to lose per­spec­tive of who we really are in the grand scheme of things.

For HSF, it’s a mat­ter of jug­gling mul­ti­ple iden­ti­ties. She’s a wife, a daugh­ter, a mother of three (beau­ti­ful) chil­dren. She’s also a free-​​lancer, a found­ing pres­i­dent of one of her alma mater’s alumni groups. Yet as beau­ti­ful as her life appears (espe­cially from perus­ing through Face­book), she admits that she’s still com­ing to terms with the “Suc­cess­ful Career Woman” label; espe­cially as she’s cur­rently stay­ing at home to with her three young kids.

The point of HSF’s email was not to point out how much dif­fer­ent her life was to mine; rather it was sim­ply to point out that regard­less of how we view our lives, we only limit our­selves by plac­ing labels on who we are or what we do. And fur­ther­more, why can’t we just enjoy the path that we’re cur­rently on and embrace who we are while trav­el­ing down this path?

I must admit, I’m still strug­gling to deal with the valid points that HSF has brought up. I’m sure it has to do a lot with the many years of believ­ing that “Moth­er­hood” was the end-​​all be-​​all for a woman’s liveli­hood. (I con­tribute this, as always, to the strong Fil­ipino cul­tural influ­ence that I iden­tify with.) And, even though I’ve accepted the fact that I can’t have bio­log­i­cal chil­dren of my own, I still long for some­thing to fill that void that Infer­til­ity has robbed me.

Fur­ther­more, with my recent unem­ploy­ment sit­u­a­tion, I feel as though I’ve been stripped yet another label that I’ve iden­ti­fied myself with. That “suc­cess­ful career woman” iden­tity flew out the win­dow the day I found myself sur­rep­ti­tiously with­out a job.

And really … that’s what this post was try­ing to explain.

While I’d love to “give up” those labels that I’ve placed on myself, I also must admit that it’s these labels that I’ve come to rely on to “ground” myself, so to speak, when I’ve oth­er­wise felt lost. It’s these labels that help remind me of who *I* am in the face of uncertainty:

  • I’m a Wife.
  • I’m an only Daughter.
  • I’m a Sis­ter to my Brother.
  • I’m a friend.
  • I’m Filipino-​​American (1st generation).
  • I’m Catholic.
  • I’m a nurse.
  • I’m a writer.
  • I’m infer­tile.
  • I’m child-​​free after infertility.

When look­ing at who I am; what I believe is the cen­ter of my core … it’s pretty obvi­ous that there are those iden­ti­ties that I have no con­trol over. These are the iden­ti­ties that have been imprinted on my soul; the ones that I can­not change. The ones that I’ve grown to accept as part of who I am in this life.

Then there are the labels I’ve cho­sen for myself (Catholic, nurse, writer, friend). Those are the iden­ti­ties that, despite the years of time and invest­ment I put into them, I can read­ily let go. But do I really want to do that?

The prob­lem, as I see it, is when one of these iden­ti­ties has been lost; espe­cially at a time where I wasn’t ready to a) let go of that iden­tity, or b) accept that iden­tity for what it is.

Take for instance, the part of myself that iden­ti­fies with being infer­tile. This was one label I never expected to own. But the fact of the mat­ter is that after one year of try­ing to con­ceive (waaaay back when, it seems), we were unable to get preg­nant. By def­i­n­i­tion, infer­til­ity is the inabil­ity to con­ceive or carry a preg­nancy to term after 12 months of try­ing to conceive. That’s a fact. There’s no way I can change that pat of me; there’s no way I have con­trol over that situation.

But take the part of me that iden­ti­fies with being child-​​free after infer­til­ity. We tried every­thing that we could pos­si­bly do (within our own capa­bil­i­ties both finan­cially and emo­tion­ally) to give our­selves a bio­log­i­cal child, but that just never hap­pened. And because we thought long and hard about our other options, Hubby & I chose to accept that liv­ing child-​​free was what was best for me. And believe me … it was not an easy choice to make.

And because, she nails it right on the head … here’s how Pam from Silent Soror­ity recently described the rea­son why she and her hus­band chose the child-​​free path:

“It got to the point where the poten­tial heart­break was actu­ally more over­whelm­ing than the glim­mer of very small hope.”

In any case, my point is that with our deci­sion to live child-​​free, I dealt with hav­ing to let go of one cho­sen iden­tity and accept a new cho­sen iden­tity. I had to let go of that iden­tity of moth­er­hood that I held on for so long. and I had to accept that liv­ing with­out chil­dren, despite the incred­i­ble long­ing to have a bio­log­i­cal child of our own, was my new identity.

As I said before, the deci­sion to live child-​​free wasn’t a choice that we wanted to make. It’s not that we didn’t dis­cuss open­ing our hearts to adop­tion. Or open­ing our wal­lets to more infer­til­ity treat­ments. Sim­ply put, iden­ti­fy­ing our­selves as liv­ing child-​​free was a choice that we had to make. Hubby & I needed to weigh our options to decide if that the small glim­mer of hope was worth the insur­mount­able heart­break we’d already been through. Hubby & I needed to make this deci­sion so we (or rather *I*) could main­tain my sanity.

Because if I didn’t put that label on me, I’d still be strug­gling to deter­mine who I was … if I couldn’t be the mother I had always dreamed about.

And of course now … my new iden­tity cri­sis is to deter­mine what to do with my career. But I will take a page out of HSF’s book and learn to enjoy the jour­ney while I dis­cover what’s next.

How about you, Blog World? What parts of your­self keep you grounded? What labels do you place on your­self? How do you iden­tify yourself?

Thoughts on Adoption

Today, an arti­cle appeared on the New York Times regard­ing Russia’s deci­sion to sus­pend adop­tions to the U.S.

More Pics from Kairi’s visit

The rea­son that Rus­sia called for a halt on all adop­tions of Russ­ian chil­dren by Amer­i­cans, in my opin­ion, was jus­ti­fied. I do believe that there needs to be fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion from both sides of the ocean (or Bering Strait, I suppose).

As one half of an infer­tile cou­ple, who at one time seri­ously con­sid­ered adop­tion as a method to start our fam­ily, what this adop­tive mother did was sim­ply out­ra­geous.  And fur­ther­more, her actions have now affected any other poten­tial adop­tive par­ent who have invested much time, money and emo­tions in adopt­ing a Russ­ian child. This woman effec­tively shat­tered many dreams of many people.

Sim­ply put, this breaks my heart.

******

Speak­ing of dreams … Dur­ing our engage­ment, Hubby & I had mul­ti­ple dis­cus­sions about how our future would be. We dreamed of own­ing a house big enough for at least 4 kids with a yard big enough for the dog we would own. We dreamed about how great our careers would be and how we would some­how man­age to bal­ance work life and home life.

And we dreamed about how incred­i­ble it would be to raise our chil­dren; how we would help our chil­dren find that bal­ance between being Amer­i­can and being Fil­ipino. We would make sure that they could be proud about their her­itage and still be able to embrace the envi­ron­ment in which they lived.

Tyler at the Lego Store in Down­town Chicago

After all, Hubby and I were half– and first-​​generation** Filipino-​​Americans. We knew, first hand, the strug­gles of grow­ing up with half our feet steeped in Fil­ipino tra­di­tions and the other half find­ing a way to assim­i­late into the West­ern cul­ture. This was espe­cially evi­dent when we were teenagers grow­ing up in the ’80’s.

I mean seri­ously … Hubby & I have joked around about how we learned about typ­i­cal Amer­i­can Teenager behav­ior from watch­ing John Hughes (RIP … ) movies. In real­ity, that’s  actu­ally not that far from the truth.

But I digress.

Another one of our dreams as an engaged cou­ple look­ing towards our bright future had always been about adop­tion. Yes … adoption.

We had always dreamed about open­ing our hearts and home to other chil­dren who might not have been given the same love and oppor­tu­ni­ties and life that we had. Specif­i­cally we looked into adopt­ing inter­na­tion­ally, because we wanted to help a child with tran­si­tion­ing into the Amer­i­can cul­ture much like we had while grow­ing up. We wanted these chil­dren to embrace their new envi­ron­ment while being proud of where they were born. Much like we were.***  Err … rather are.

How­ever, in that foggy crys­tal ball ver­sion of our future, adop­tion was some­thing that Hubby & I planned to do after we had chil­dren of our own. After we were able to pro­duce off­spring that con­tained both of our DNA.

Kairi loves her Big Brother

Kairi loves her big brother …

Call us self­ish, but we just really wanted to see our genetic traits in a bio­log­i­cal child and then be able to raise a child through adop­tion. This child might not share the same genes as us, but would share the same love and warmth and upbring­ing as our bio­log­i­cal chil­dren. And for me per­son­ally, it was a chance for me to see Nature vs. Nur­ture at its best.

Unfor­tu­nately we never did get to see that nature part. At all. And if I was a strong enough per­son, I might have been able to see the nur­ture part. At least with rais­ing a child.

******

I applaud any­one who has sought to adopt as a means to start or add to their family.

It takes an incred­i­bly strong and capa­ble per­son to be able to put them­selves through all the rules and reg­u­la­tions and inves­ti­ga­tions into your pri­vate lives just to raise a child that is not bio­log­i­cally your own. I know this from read­ing other IFer’s blogs about adop­tion and from talk­ing to adop­tive par­ents about their own expe­ri­ences. From going to adop­tion agen­cies to gather infor­ma­tion on our own.

… And Tyler loves his baby sister

Read­ing about Rus­sia today also reminds me about other coun­tries such as China and Guatemala that have also placed restric­tions on poten­tial adop­tive par­ents from the U.S. And it’s because I know how long most of these indi­vid­u­als have been wait­ing for their chance to raise an inter­na­tion­ally adopted  child. For those who have faced infer­til­ity, it’s the chance to raise any child.

And if I had enough strength, adopt­ing inter­na­tion­ally would have been my chance in pass­ing a lit­tle bit of myself … that bit about being proud of my her­itage while embrac­ing the uncharted ter­ri­to­ries of being a first-​​generation immi­grant … to my adop­tive child.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

** Hubby was born in the Philip­pines and migrated to the U.S. at the age of five; effec­tively mak­ing him a “half-​​generation” immi­grant. Of course, depend­ing on what ver­sion of immi­grant gen­er­a­tions you go with, Hubby & I can be seen as 1.5– and second-​​generation immi­grants. At least that’s what Wiki says … )

*** Well … okay, so I was born in the U.S. … but hope­fully you under­stand what I mean.

Cutting The Strings

Click on the jug for other 2009 submissions

This post has been a long time in com­ing. Truth­fully, this should have been writ­ten a few months ago. How­ever, between prepa­ra­tions for the audit at work and hav­ing just recently had the con­ver­sa­tion with Hubby a week ago, the tim­ing just didn’t seem right.

A year ago ear­lier this month, I was in Chicago inter­view­ing for the posi­tion that I now hold. The very same one that has given me much stress and headaches over the past 11 months. The same one that has made me real­ize exactly how strong I really can be … with­out the hor­monal emo­tions get­ting in the way.

I specif­i­cally men­tion the “hor­monal emo­tions” for a rea­son. That’s because when I look back dur­ing those active “baby-​​trying” years , I can now see how much strength I needed in order to get me through that period.

Except I can hon­estly say that I never feel that I was strong at all dur­ing that time period. I felt as I was liv­ing day-​​to-​​day, hop­ing that some­how I would catch a break from all the “hard work” I was putting into start­ing my family.

Whereas with the “chal­lenges” I faced this past year … well, they didn’t feel like a day-​​to-​​day strug­gle. There was always an end in site for each new chal­lenge I faced. From the very begin­ning of “Oper­a­tion: Move to Chicago,” there was a goal in mind that was achiev­able:

  •  
    • Find an apart­ment; check.
    • Start new job; check.
    • Sur­vive liv­ing alone in new city for three months with see­ing Hubby only on the week­ends; check.
    • Get through six months at new job with­out being fired from “My way or the high­way” boss; check.
    • Live through high pro­file work audit with dig­nity intact; check.

Every­thing I faced since mov­ing here was (rel­a­tively) suc­cess­ful; with that bright light guid­ing me to the end of a dark tunnel.

Unfor­tu­nately that same bright light was never there when fac­ing the dark­ness that is infer­til­ity.  And, in my case, def­i­nitely not suc­cess­ful … at least in the way that I defined success.

********

There’s this mem­ory I have from back in my high school years. It’s back when Dis­ney began to start re-​​releasing clas­sic movies on VHS tapes. The idea was so that a per­son could own these movies before they were put back into the “vault” of clas­sic Dis­ney animation.

My mother totally bought into that smart mar­ket­ing ploy. In fact, she bought many videos includ­ing The Lit­tle Mer­maid, Beauty and the Beast, and … if I can recall, Sleep­ing Beauty. AND she wouldn’t even open them; stor­ing them away in her dresser, in her own per­sonal “vault.”

“Not fair,” I remem­ber telling her. Espe­cially since I loved Ariel and Belle. “Couldn’t we just open them up and watch them once?”

“No,” she had told me. She was sav­ing them for her future grand­chil­dren. So that she can sit down and watch these movies with them, when­ever they came over to visit.

This mem­ory, as incon­se­quen­tial as it may seem to oth­ers, is one that cuts me incred­i­bly deep. It’s a reminder of how I’ve failed to ful­fill my par­ents’ dream of becom­ing grandparents.

Never mind that I already felt hor­ri­bly bad that my body was not able to give my hus­band a child of his own. This spe­cific mem­ory reminds me that I’ve prob­a­bly dis­ap­pointed my par­ents as well. That I haven’t been able to give them the grand­chil­dren that they’ve always wanted.

********

I’ll be hon­est that one of the many rea­sons Hubby & I moved to Chicago was start fresh. There had been way too much emo­tional Infer­til­ity bag­gage that I had been car­ry­ing around for years. And although I had been work­ing very hard at purg­ing that bag­gage, I could never fully put it away … at least into a place within me that could make things manageable.

So putting some phys­i­cal dis­tance between myself and the bag­gage (which held waaay too many mem­o­ries of hurt and dis­ap­point­ment), as well as the phys­i­cal loca­tion where most of these mem­o­ries occurred, was some­thing I felt I needed to do.

And it’s with the bless­ing of my very sup­port­ive hus­band that we found our­selves mov­ing out-​​of-​​state; away from the only “home” I had ever known.  All this is in effort to be exposed to new peo­ple and to be open to new chal­lenges. To have a fresh out­look on where Hubby & I stand in our quest to have a family.

********

Next Octo­ber will be my 20th High School Reunion. Part of me is inter­ested in see­ing where every­one is at in this stage of life; to see how far they’ve come since we were teenagers. Then there’s the rebel in me that thinks, “Pshaw … HS Reunions are so ‘Peggy Sue Got Mar­ried’! We must break this cycle at once!”

And then there’s the Infer­tile (with a cap­i­tal “I”) in me. The one with no chil­dren. The one with noth­ing excit­ing to show for my life over the past 20 years, other than a degree (only under­grad, to boot!) and a good job. I’ve no kids to brag about; I’ve no incred­i­ble 3,000 square foot house to talk about. All I have is a decent walk-​​up apart­ment in the city and fur chil­dren that shed hair all over the place, includ­ing my clothes.

At least I have an incred­i­ble hus­band who I can show off and brag about.

As it is, I’m still debat­ing on whether I want to go or not. How­ever, what I do know is that a bunch of the HS friends that I still keep in touch with, will be plan­ning a more low-​​key get-​​together some time next year. That should, at the very least, be a “mile­stone” some­thing to look for­ward to next year.

********

I’ve had the plea­sure of (finally) see­ing my new fam­ily physi­cian, not once but twice in the past few months. One was the quick one-​​over, “Hi, nice to meet you” –type of visit. The sec­ond was my yearly female parts check-​​up.

Both times my physi­cian asked me if I was inter­ested in pur­su­ing fur­ther treat­ment for my infer­til­ity. And both times, I told my physi­cian I still wasn’t ready to make that deci­sion. I was in the midst of still adjust­ing to my new job in a new city.

And I needed more time to sep­a­rate want vs. need, hope for the future vs. more dis­ap­point­ment, treat­ment vs. acceptance.

Let me say it’s extremely strange to go from liv­ing in one State where In vitro Fer­til­iza­tion (IVF) is not cov­ered, to cur­rently liv­ing in a State where it now is. To now have that option to choose what course of treat­ment that Hubby & I would like to pur­sue in cre­at­ing our family.

For those that don’t know, infer­til­ity treat­ments are some­times not cov­ered by health insur­ance in cer­tain States. There may be some aspects of treat­ments that are cov­ered (such as the work-​​up and, at times, the med­ica­tions), but for the most part infer­til­ity treat­ments — and specif­i­cally IVF is not.

The Infer­tile RN in me thinks it’s utterly cruel to allow cov­er­age for the work-​​up of the infer­til­ity diag­no­sis and then turn around and not cover the treat­ment for it. Even though IVF is not a “guar­an­tee” that one would be suc­cess­ful in start­ing a fam­ily, there’s still that lit­tle bit of chance that it becomes suc­cess­ful in “cur­ing” that person’s infertility.

I relate it to treat­ment for can­cer. Much like chemother­apy and/​or radi­a­tion ther­apy is con­sid­ered stan­dard treat­ment for a per­son with such a con­di­tion … it’s never a “100% guar­an­tee” that the can­cer would be “cured” or go into remission.

It’s that double-​​standard in treat­ment of a health con­di­tion that both­ers me the most about the lack of cov­er­age in IVF treat­ments. Because, quite frankly … the RN Case Man­ager in me (the one who works for a health insur­ance com­pany) strongly believes that peo­ple have the right to choose how they would like to pur­sue treat­ment and have the Health Insur­ance that I pay for assist in cov­er­age for that treatment.

********

This Jan­u­ary, it will be a year since I’ve lived in Chicago. And April will mark the offi­cial date that Hubby & I will have lived together in this bright new city (well, new to us anyway).

Dur­ing this past year, Hubby & I have had a chance to open our hearts and minds to dif­fer­ent pos­si­bil­i­ties. We’ve had the oppor­tu­nity to accept where we’re at when it came to reassess­ing our options in cre­at­ing our family.

We’ve talked about IVF and the impact it may have emo­tion­ally for me … Both if it wasn’t suc­cess­ful and if it actu­ally was. But even though we know the option of IVF is avail­able to us in the fine State of Illi­nois, both of us have decided not to pur­sue that route.

We’ve also had the oppor­tu­nity to dis­cuss adop­tion more in depth. To decide if this was the right path for us to take. And the more we thought about it, the more we decided that this was also some­thing we wouldn’t be a 100% com­fort­able with. (Okay, I admit it. It’s me. I’m the one who fears that I’ll just end up being dis­ap­pointed again. And I fear that I’d get stuck down that rab­bit hole of dark­ness once again.)

So what does this all mean? Well, read­ers. It means that Hubby & I have accepted that hav­ing chil­dren at this moment is not in our best inter­est. It means, that we have accepted the fact that we may never have chil­dren. (Okay, maybe it’s more like *I* accepted this fact, because Hubby was light years ahead of me in this thought.)

This means that we’ve con­sciously and delib­er­ately have made the choice to begin liv­ing life child-​​free.

********

It’s taken me more than 12 years, but I think I’ve finally reached some clo­sure in my infer­til­ity journey.

Yet even as one door has closed in my life, I’m still learn­ing to live with the real­ity of this deci­sion. My infer­til­ity is no longer a daily strug­gle, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have those “moments.”

And those “moments” are the rea­son I choose to con­tinue writ­ing on this blog. Except now, instead of this blog being about the long­ing to have a chil­dren, it will be about try­ing to let go of this long­ing. About learn­ing to look for­ward to my new future with Hubby. The new jour­ney we’ll be tak­ing together.

It’s about try­ing to break free from these Apron Strings.

NIAW 2009, Pt III">NIAW 2009, Pt III

(This is Part Three of a six-​​day series to cel­e­brate NIAW. I’d say it’s because I “planned” it that way … but the truth is, the series started out as one extremely looong post. To start at the begin­ning, click here.)

273Again, not every cou­ple who are unable to cre­ate and sus­tain a life will remain child­less. There are those cou­ples in this cat­e­gory that will end up open­ing their hearts to adop­tion. And to me, those infer­tile cou­ples are sim­ply incredible.

They’re brave enough to pur­sue the long and tedious adop­tion process. A process that includes all the legal mat­ters and inva­sion into the cou­ples’ pri­vate lives as to whether their home and their lifestyle is “safe” enough to care for a child. A con­cept that, quite frankly, can be unnerv­ing as this ques­tions a cou­ple (who has been strug­gling to have a fam­ily) whether or not they are capa­ble of being a parent.

Those pur­su­ing adop­tion are also strong enough to face every emo­tion — all the anx­i­ety — involved in the adop­tion process head on. Place­ment of a child (whether domes­tic or inter­na­tional) and the absolute fear of the unknown would be enough to throw any “nor­mal” per­son into anx­i­ety overdrive:

Will there be issues with the adop­tion country?

Will the birth parent(s) change his/​her mind?

Will the child love me?

Will I be able to love the child as if he/​she is my own?

Am I a good enough in the government’s eyes to be con­sid­ered capa­ble of rais­ing a child?

Will I be deemed unfit as a parent?

Will the child be taken away from me?

Imag­ine fac­ing those thoughts every day. In my opin­ion, going through adop­tion adds a whole new layer of com­plex­ity to infer­til­ity. And I am in absolute awe in which these cou­ples who choose this path show such grace and compassion …

I only wish I had even a por­tion of such brevity, strength, grace and com­pas­sion that these peo­ple do.

(Yep. There will be more of this … tomor­row.)

NIAW 2009, Pt II">NIAW 2009, Pt II

(This is the sec­ond part of a six-​​day series to cel­e­brate NIAW. I’d say it’s because I “planned” it that way … but the truth is, the series started out as one extremely looong post. To start at the begin­ning, click here)

273And then there’s the biggest loss of all. Let me pref­ace this by say­ing that not every­one expe­ri­enc­ing infer­til­ity will end up in this cat­e­gory of loss. Because some will be suc­cess­ful with their pur­suit in cre­at­ing a child from within them­selves. For some, it may be the cre­ation of a bio­log­i­cal child of their own. For oth­ers, it could be a suc­cess­ful preg­nancy cre­ated from either donor egg, donor sperm, donor embryo, and even donor uterus. In any case, these are cou­ples who have spent more than enough months in dis­ap­point­ment … and not to men­tion more than enough money on var­i­ous med­ica­tions and/​or procedures.

In any case … for those oth­ers, like myself, that were not suc­cess­ful in their pur­suit, they must deal with the ulti­mate loss — the inabil­ity to cre­ate a life out of one’s own being. For some cou­ples, it could be the loss of a preg­nancy; a mis­car­riage after hav­ing been able to cre­ate a life but unable to carry their baby to term. For every cou­ple unable to achieve and/​or main­tain a preg­nancy, it’s the loss of the abil­ity to pass on a piece of your­self or your partner’s self onto another liv­ing and breath­ing per­son. To see your facial fea­tures on a child you cre­ated. To see your partner’s man­ner­isms in another liv­ing being. To know that you have con­tin­ued on your lin­eage; con­tributed to the “Cir­cle of Life.” Those things … and much much more are tremen­dously huge losses that will take more than the span of your own life­time to mourn.

Some women feel the loss of the abil­ity to expe­ri­ence a life grow inside of her­self; to carry a child in her womb until that baby is ready to enter the world. For other women, it’s know­ing that they will finally be able to nur­ture this child and bring him/​her up in the man­ner that they’ve always dreamed about. And for oth­ers still (like myself), a com­bi­na­tion of the two …

(More ram­blings … tomor­row.)

Two Dolla’ No Holla’

8bt“Two Dol­lars! I want my two dollars!”

I love that movie. “Bet­ter Off Dead” is one of those clas­sic John Cusa​.ck films from the ‘80’s that remind me of many-​​a-​​slumber par­ties. (You know, back when the other girls were fix­ing their hair and putting on make-​​up while I sat in my sleep­ing bag clearly just watch­ing rental video after rental video …) I loved the Asian guys that pre­tended to be that sports­caster from Wide World O’Sports (hey, it’s St. Paddy’s Day … gotta get my O’ on. :-) ). And I love how Lane’s mom tried to cook her “Fraunch” din­ner for the cute lit­tle exchange stu­dent that Lane should have noticed much sooner. Oh, and I loved the fact that they used a lit­tle Howa.rd Jo.nes on their sound­track as well.

In any case, my mind some­times (oh, who am I kid­ding … always) works in strange “tan­gen­tial think­ing” ways. I started off by think­ing, “Two Years, Wow!” and obvi­ously ended up think­ing of a news­pa­per boy on a bike try­ing to col­lect his money.

G*d … does any­one else remem­ber the days of neigh­bor­hood kids being the news­pa­per deliv­erer and col­lec­tor of pay­ments?! Now it’s always an adult that pulls up in a car … chucks the paper out their car win­dow where one hopes it lands on the doorstep … and then it’s the news­pa­per that actu­ally hounds you by phone for their twenty dol­lars or more.

Oh geez … see what I mean? Tan­gen­tial thinking.

See the whole point of this post was to reflect how it’s been two years today since I started this blog. And what started out as want­ing to express some­thing in a jour­nal entry some­how ended up here in the blogiverse.

2yrI remem­ber clearly sit­ting in a café in A2 while Hubby and his BIL (my SIL’s Hubby of less than a year at the time) went off to do their comic/​gaming thing. I was still strug­gling with the news of my SIL’s preg­nancy and found myself slowly los­ing grip on my san­ity. I knew, after a few months of coun­sel­ing, that I had to find a way to deal with all these repressed emo­tions. Except besides this coun­selor and my hus­band, I didn’t know any­one else I could talk to about these feel­ings of anger and jeal­ousy … and the sub­se­quent guilt that always seemed to fol­low those emotions.

I felt that some­how no one else could under­stand what I was going through. I believed that every­one I had pre­vi­ously talked to about these things thought I was nuts to be “obsess­ing” about how unfair it was that I couldn’t pro­duce a child. And I remem­ber think­ing how it seemed as if every­one was mov­ing for­ward in their lives; start­ing their fam­i­lies, achiev­ing new mile­stones, etc … all while Hubby & I remained left behind, unable to move forward.

It didn’t help that March was an anniver­sary month for Hubby and me. It would be the month that so many years ago, we received the news of our one and only failed IVF attempt. And for the life of me, today I can’t even recall the num­ber of years it’s been since then. (What does that say about where I’m at today?!) But two years ago, those emo­tions … that feel­ing of lost was still as deep and painful as it was when we first received that dev­as­tat­ing news.

In a sin­gle sen­tence … two years ago today, I was a wreck. And writ­ing about how I felt seemed to be the only way to artic­u­late such com­pli­cated emo­tions. And so hence, Apron Strings for Emily was born.

So where am I at today? Well … writ­ing about my jour­ney has cer­tainly had some impact on my life. Both good and bad … and some­times just down­right ugly.

gobaugTHE UGLY: My rela­tion­ship, though bet­ter since mov­ing, is still a bit strained with my SIL. The dis­tance has def­i­nitely proved to be a good thing though. But this, of course, is at the sac­ri­fice of not being able to see my nephew and my 6 month old niece as often as I’d like. Despite all this, my instincts (which tend to be spot on quite often) tell me that all this heart­break will even­tu­ally pass in time. Per­haps one day our lives will once again be back “in sync” with one another like it was so many eons ago. And per­haps it won’t. But either way, only time will help mend all the bro­ken lay­ers of skin that this deep deep wound (as in “Stage IV Decu­bi­tus Ulcer”) has caused.

In any case, we’ll be see­ing them next month for sure though … as they make the trip to visit us in our new digs. And I seri­ously can’t wait!!

THE BAD: Uhm … the obvi­ous one is that Hubby and I are still with­out kids of our own. This also means that I haven’t been able to pro­vide grand­chil­dren to our par­ents, nieces or nephews to our sib­lings, or cousins to our nephew and niece. It still eats at me … at least once a month, dur­ing those incred­i­ble waves of emo­tions I get (Thank you, wacky hor­mones!) …but at least it isn’t every day like it was for years and years (and years and years).

THE GOOD: I’ve found out that, con­trary to my psy­chotic (as opposed to psy­chic) beliefs, I am not nec­es­sar­ily alone in this infer­til­ity jour­ney. I’ve found the incred­i­bly won­der­ful and much needed sup­port I’ve been look­ing for … thanks to all of you read­ers and com­menters.

Also, I’ve finally decided (just recently within the past 6 months) that my life no longer has to revolve around my inabil­ity to have chil­dren of my own and have decided to focus on other parts of my life. This means I can finally move onto decid­ing whether adop­tion should be our next step. OR if accept­ing child-​​free liv­ing is the path to take.

goalBut the best part of this point in my life is this: After years and years of hold­ing all my anger and sad­ness inside, I’ve finally found my voice … and the medium in which to express this voice. For some­one who has been used to (and quite frankly brought up to) sti­fling any bad feel­ings aside, well that’s … Just. Sim­ply. Incredible.

And just like a yearly “work per­for­mance” eval … not only do I have to sum­ma­rize all that has hap­pened in the past year … I should also be think­ing towards the com­ing year. SO … what exactly are my goals for the next year?

  • Work on above rela­tion­ship with SIL. I’m still think­ing time and dis­tance for now is a good thing. Per­haps my thoughts will change over the course of the year.
    .
  • Con­tinue to more for­ward. I need to remem­ber to take steps by putting one foot in front of the other, and make an effort not to take any steps back. I need to build a momen­tum to keep me mov­ing in a pos­i­tive direc­tion … what­ever direc­tion that might be. (Adop­tion? Child-​​free liv­ing? Focus on career and ulti­mate dream of mov­ing out to the west coast?) But I do need to remem­ber to keep mov­ing, oth­er­wise I could find myself stuck in the present (or the past) and in another “rut.”
    .
  • Leave the past in the past. This specif­i­cally means that I need to focus on not look­ing back at the neg­a­tive. And if I do look back, it’s only to real­ize how much stronger I am because of what I’ve been through.
    .
  • In that same sense, I need to not con­cen­trate on any neg­a­tive thoughts. Focus­ing on any neg­a­tiv­ity is going to get me into those “What if?” sit­u­a­tions that will also keep me in that same “rut.”
    .
  • Con­tinue to blog. This … this is my (free) ther­apy. It’s one of the few ways I can openly and hon­estly talk about how I’m feel­ing. And it’s a way for me to work through these com­pli­cated emo­tions of anger and loss. Oth­er­wise, I’d be back to where I started. And as I look back on my very first post and real­ize how much I talked almost all in “rid­dles” and metaphors … and how I couldn’t even write the word “Infer­til­ity” in that first post … It’s then that I real­ize just how far I’ve come.

voiceAnd finally, before I wrap up this extremely long post, I want to thank all of you for allow­ing me to work (and con­tinue to work) through all of my con­cerns. And thank you for faith­fully read­ing all about them.

Because, really? What’s the point of find­ing my voice if I didn’t have you … my read­ers, my friends and my fam­ily … to lis­ten to (or in this case, read about) it?

Oh, and because today is St. Patty’s Day … I also wish all of you the Luck O’ The Irish!!

luckee

Handprint On My Heart

I’ve been spend­ing a lot of time in my manager’s office. Not sur­pris­ing, con­sid­er­ing I spend a lot of my time in shared meet­ings with her over the phone with var­i­ous ven­dors. And because my manager’s the one with a door to her office …

Any­way, I truly respect and like my man­ager. I’ve learned in my past expe­ri­ences that it’s good to have a leader that fits in with your per­son­al­ity. In other words, we don’t want to be so much alike that we can’t see or think out­side of our own respec­tive boxes. But you also don’t want to be so dif­fer­ent in per­son­al­i­ties that we’d clash over any­thing and everything.

29180c2198a7b813ae2da6ecb62aa19bLucky for me; I think I might have struck a nice bal­ance with my cur­rent man­ager. Of course I thought the same thing with my last man­ager, and we all know how that turned out. But in my defense, when I was a super­vi­sor work­ing directly under my ex-​​manager … we did have a lit­tle more of a rap­port with each other. It’s only after I stepped down as super­vi­sor to become a worker bee (all for the sake of “reduc­ing stress” as I headed into the won­der­ful world of IVF, BTW …) that the issues came about. And even then, it was years in the mak­ing (includ­ing major changes in the over­all depart­ment and/​or per­sonal issues for the both of us) before things took a turn for the worse.

New man­ager (NM) pushes me in direc­tions I had never gone before and she’s tested my strength as a leader for my team. But in a totally good way. She’s the go-​​getter; the snap deci­sion maker. I’m also a go-​​getter; but tend to be more delib­er­a­tive and ana­lyt­i­cal. I slow her down enough to think things through; she speeds me up to get me where I need to be. I just hope that this rela­tion­ship con­tin­ues to grow and flour­ish through the years.

heart_handprint_craft_impressionBut this wasn’t the main rea­son I’m writ­ing today. (Although now is a good time, if ever.) Today as I sat in yet another tele­phone meet­ing, I sat there and played with some of the toys she leaves on her desk for us to fid­dle around with when­ever we talk.*

Next to the mini Zen gar­den (that her hus­band gave her to help “relax” … LOL!) is a ceramic piece that her daugh­ter made for her when she was 5 years old. It’s this tiny glazed hand that has lit­tle hearts and but­ter­flies on its fin­gers and her name writ­ten on the palm. And every time I sit in that office, I can’t help but put my hand over the lit­tle glazed hand. Because: 1) It is. Sim­ply. Adorable. And 2) the tex­ture of the glaze just has this sooth­ing qual­ity to it.

I’m not sure what it was about today. But the thought that I might never be able to hold the small hand of my own child hit me square in the chest. And just like that, I was back to long­ing for my imag­i­nary child.

Which is crazy, in my mind. Because I know that right now just isn’t the right tim­ing to “go forth and pro­cre­ate.” Or in my case, move for­ward with adop­tion. H*ll, I’m not even sure if I want to pur­sue the adop­tion path. Because, quite frankly I’ve been so much more com­fort­able with the idea of child-​​free liv­ing lately.

mc_3lgAnd yes, I’m sure it’s because of the major changes I’ve made over the past six months. (Has it been that long since the last low­est** point in my IF jour­ney?!) I sim­ply don’t have the time. And I sim­ply don’t have the energy to want to feel as mis­er­able as I did back then. Nor do I have the energy to strug­gle to break the sur­face if I ever get that low again.

I’m happy where I’m at right now in my life (although, hav­ing Hubby here would make it tons bet­ter). I’m happy with my “sec­ond chance” to make a “life” out of my life.

It might not be the kind of “life” I dreamed of (cre­at­ing a baby’s life, being a mother, for exam­ple) … but still, it’s my life. The life I chose to move for­ward with; the one that I have some con­trol over.

So why do I still have these long­ings? Why does my dream of being a par­ent still cling to me?

This feel­ing … this long­ing, it evokes the same emo­tions I have when­ever I hear this one song from the musi­cal, Wicked:

It well may be that we will never meet again
In this life­time, so let me say before we part
So much of me is made of what I learned from you
You’ll be with me like a hand­print on my heart

 — “For Good“

And although the song is refer­ring to the tragic end­ing of a friend­ship, I can’t help but sub­sti­tute the “friend” for the child I may never have. And what I’ve learned from the heartache of my infer­til­ity is so much of who I am as a per­son today.

But despite all that I’ve learned and all that I’ve become … there is this part of me — will always be this part of me — that will have the hand­print of my child, whether imag­i­nary or real, on my heart.

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~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

* Stud­ies have shown that peo­ple tend to be more cre­ative and think clearer when keep­ing your hands busy. Thus, hav­ing sim­ple toys such as koosh balls or even rub­ber bands in your office (in my case, cubi­cle) is a good thing.

** As always, if you’re curi­ous … com­ment below and I’ll email you the password.

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