What Cost Parenthood?

As is my generally everyday habit for the last four or so years, I’ll go to the blogs I have followed for all this time, then go to my new adoption blog friends, and from there (when I have time) I follow some random links to other blogs to see what other people are saying about TTC/adoption/etc. There are a few that made me so grateful that I haven’t gone down the rocky, perilous path of medical intervention to have a baby.

The common link to those who are going through the various types and speeds of reproductive medicine, many times, is this soul-searing anger. And if the poster has gone through multiple procedures without success, it builds into a towering rage.

I get it. I really do.

I get it because it is me, too. I have despaired, I have raged, I have pleaded to the indifferent and strangely mute Invisible Entity of the Vast Universe to change this horrible, ghastly, lonely sentence of infertility. I have deeply mourned the loss of the dream. And only recently—meaning the last few months—have I come back from that dark side of the moon where I was all alone.

And only I could change my mental state.

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Recently I was perusing the blogs of those going through the tortuous reproductive needle dance with the theme of Drugs and Needles and Retrievals, Oh My! And as I read once more of the regimens that these women are going through, and the searing, all-encompassing fury and frustration when it’s yet another negative. And I read about all the money burned, personalities changed, friendships and family ties incurably altered, and finances and mental well-being ruined, because of that fury, that keening wail, the justified railing at fate.

Once more, as I read these entries this last week, I was at peace with the decision to not even go down that road.

At what cost will some people pay to achieve parenthood? It’s a good question, and a necessary one, especially if they honestly don’t have insurance coverage or money to do the procedures. How many marriages have been destroyed? How many homes lost, how many savings accounts stripped, how many defaulted loans? How many lives will never be the same?

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I remember one blog that I had followed in the days after my own devastation: one day, she just quit. Done. Gone. Everything came to a sudden stop. Her marriage was in a shambles, their finances a wreck, and she was so mentally and physically destroyed by that last negative pregnancy test after that last procedure that she deleted her blog suddenly one day, never to return.

I still think about her, and wonder how she’s doing, and if she’s picked up the jagged pieces of her shattered life.

~~

Somewhere there’s a happy medium. But:

Somewhere, there has to be a certain amount of self-honesty—a self-honesty that I am just not seeing in many of these stories.

Somewhere, people have to be brutally honest with themselves and say okay, no, this is just not meant to be. There has to be another way.

“No” statements that need to be said to oneself are:

No, I refuse to be unhappy
No, I won’t sacrifice my marriage/partnership.
No, I won’t destroy my home life.
No, I won’t wreck my social life
No,
I won’t destroy my relationship with my parents and parents-in-law and extended family
No, I will not have this terminally negative outlook.
No, I won’t ruin every occasion by thinking about what should have been, could have been, or
was supposed to have been.
No, I don’t want my relationships with my siblings and friends to change for the worse, permanently.
No, I don’t want to become a bitter, angry, lonely person.
No, I don’t want to ruin my working relationships.
No, I don’t want to shun friends and events because I’m miserable.

...and so forth. Go ahead, add your own. At some point, if you are an infertile (man or woman!) who has turned to adoption to build your family, you probably have said something like this to yourself at some point, even though it might be buried in the subconscious.

Don’t jump my plenteous ass, though – I do realize and understand that there are those who will not, cannot, and shall never consider adoption for whatever personal reason(s). Everyone must do what they are given to do.

This is just my take on it.

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Even when those people who have sacrificed so much to give birth to child of their dreams, at what cost has it been? What cost is too high? What down the road will suffer?

~~

You know, as a fellow infertile, that I had the same thought burning a hole in my brain that these people do: I want to try for our own child first. I want to bear a child that carries our genes. I want that precious moment when I, when DH sees our child for the first time after he/she is born. And so on.

It took time—and a lot of sour, bitter, angry heart’s blood— to realize that it just wasn’t in the cards.

I will say that had I married a lesser man, I wouldn’t have a marriage. It’s been a rough ride. And he is wonderful and positive and confident in the road less taken.

It’s taken me the better part of four years to be comfortable, and yes, happy, with the decision to adopt. Am I really happy about it? I’m happy because of that peace that descends once a decision is made. I’m happy that we will still have a family together, although created differently than what we originally had in mind. I’m happy that I have a placid home life. I’m happy to be able to offer that happy, placid home life to a child or children. I’m happy I have a husband I’m still crazy about, and happy that I haven’t destroyed our relationship. I’m happy our finances are intact. I’m happy we have a house with a yard.

I’ll always mourn the fact that I won’t experience pregnancy and birth. I’ll always mourn that a child we raise won’t have my mother’s hairline, or DH’s big and beautiful brown eyes, or the looks from either side of the family we would be searching so expectantly for. It was a shattering thing to come around to, but I’m there, finally.

It’s okay now. DH was always on board (hell, he suggested it first, remember) with the decision to adopt, and we are going into it holding hands. I’m confident, he’s confident, we’re not at all nervous for the upcoming home study next Friday, and I have no doubt we’ll be certified in due time.

But that acceptance, as so many know so well, has come at a high price. The price is surrendering a part of lifelong dreams... but such is the human spirit that a heartbroken person can overcome crushing sorrows to build a new dream.