Years have passed

Ok, so i had very good intentions when i started this blog, but sometimes life just gets in the way. I just read through what i had written, and it made me think of a conversation i had with some friends yesterday. They were talking about their many miscarriages and how hard it was. At the time i just murmured sympathetically thinking i had nothing to offer the conversation. Today, however, i was thinking about the feelings i had learning that i would most likely never get to experience pregnancy. The feeling is rather like every child i never will have died at that moment. Is it strange to envy someone who at least got to experience that even if it ended in tragedy?  It is hard not to think of how strange i am for these feelings, but i also don't like to dismiss them altogether.

I find i have a strange fascination for books that have pregnant heroines in them. As if reading about it, even vicariously, will somehow bring it closer to me. And i am now the mother of three wonderful children!!

It is strange how it all happened. Not the way i ever thought it would or could. So we had signed up for adoption through lds family services, attended all of the seminars and anything that was offered to help us in our quest. There was a lot of advice for finding your own birth mother, because apparently that is the hard part as lds doesn't have a lot of b-moms willing to place with random people!  So thus armed with this information, jared and i tentatively told people we knew we were trying to adopt and then   just basically sat on our hands for a long time. I am just not that person who runs around accosting strangers and placing ads at local doctors...an honest suggestion given to us!!  It all seemed rather hopeless.

While thus waiting, however, a miracle was happening with jareds much more gregarious brother. He knew someone who had recently adopted a child and asked him how they did it. The friend was more than happy to share their story, and soon we were given the contact information of a lawyer who lived quite close to us who helped find birthmothers. Jared and i, after having met the lawyer and finding out a little of what he did, felt really good about working with him. He had served an lds mission to the marshall islands and knew quite a lot of people there. He worked with another lady who talked with women over there who were interested in placing their children up for adoption with nice  american families.

Now, you have to understand our ignorance here to get the rest of the story. Our first thoughts were "where in the world is the marshall islands?"  So, of course, being me, the first thing i did was rush to the library to get every book about the marshall islands i could, and trying to find out what i could on the internet. And, to be quite honest, i didn't find much!  So, going in pretty blind, we steamed forward full speed ahead.

A few days after contacting the lawyer, i was teaching at the library, when i got a call. There were 2 b-moms who liked us, and which one did we want to choose. Ok, WHAT?  We had been waiting for over a year without a peep from lds, and then 2 choose us in as many days?!!! It was crazy fast. We said, um i guess the first lady, and bam! Jenny was on her way from the marshalls to arizona.

Now, to anyone who has ever had a meeting with a person who you hope will be giving you their unborn child....um, yea, pretty much the most amazingly stressful hyped up moment ever. Except maybe the feelings of the b-mom meeting the total strangers she is thinking of placing her child with. Imagine all of these incredible emotions....think about it.....ok, now add a language barrier.   Yea, so we met Jenny for the fist time outside a restaurant we were planning on taking her to with the help of the lawyer, aka the translator. We had a brief conversation, enough to learn that she hated the food they served there, and was dying for a hamburger. And that is how we ended up across the street at red robin. Our, now, favorite burger place!

To be continued.....

In the Beginning...

When we first found out we could not have biological children, there was of course all of the usual emotions attendant upon a wish long hoped for and utterly denied.  We went through a lot of pain and anguish there in the beginning.  And then there is the hope that the doctors could be wrong....and that is when people start telling you of all of these miracles that have happened to some mystical "other people"  who were able to get pregnant despite all of the odds.

So many well intentioned people told us these stories about couples who were just like us and then had children anyway!  Every month became harder and harder as the hoped for miracle was looked for and hoped for.  And it never happened.  Looking back on it, I think it would have been far easier just to know that it was never going to happen, then I could have stopped being depressed every month and I could have moved forward with the healing a lot sooner. 

It is amazing to me how incredibly insensitive people can be about infertility.  I remember going out with one of my, then, pregnant friends and she was telling me that she understood exactly how I felt because they had tried for almost 3 whole months to get pregnant!  Wow!  That long!  I tried not to let comments like this bother me. 

And of course just at the time that we found out about our inability to have biological children everyone around us was pregnant.  And when I say everyone, you have to understand that I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon), and we were in a young ward where about 1/3 of the women in the ward were either pregnant or had just had a baby.  Most of my friends were pregnant.  My sister was pregnant.  3 of my sister-in-laws were pregnant.  And our calling right then was in the nursery.  Well, this last one might have actually helped.  There were about 15 children under the age of 3 in there, and some of them were holy terrors! 

At the time life seemed unutterably unfair.  Looking back on it, knowing what I know now about how our family would be created, I wish that I just would have enjoyed those 5 years my husband and I had to enjoy each other and our carefree lifestyle.  I definitely would have spent more time enjoying my husband and maybe forced him to take me on more trips!  Well, would have, should have, could have...  I was too lost in sorrow to enjoy it at the time. 

We actually thought of adoption right off the bat.  I think it was on the way home from the doctors office that we first discussed it.  I believe we touched briefly on sperm donor, but this was quickly brushed off of the table.  It somehow didn't feel *right* to us. 

We were pretty new to adoption.  As a reader of Anne of Green Gables, I think my first thoughts about adoption were of orphanages where you just go and pick up a kid.  Was I that naive?  lol!  It's funny to think about now.  =) 

After going to the library and reading pretty nearly every book there on the subject, I felt a little better prepared.  We didn't really know much about adoption agencies, and so we naturally turned to our church and signed up with LDS Family Services. 

Well, I actually have children to attend to now...