Meant To Be

To be honest, I haven’t really thought about infertility for a while.  Tonight, our brother in law interviewed Spencer and me about adoption and infertility and it brought a lot of those thoughts that had been sitting on the back shelf to the forefront of my mind.  It’s not that I’ve forgotten.  Infertility still stings sometimes.  However, as I’ve been reflecting on the past few years, I am amazed at how far I have come.  The pain that used to be all consuming is now the occasional pinprick.

Of course there is an obvious answer as to why:

I’m grateful.  Oh so grateful. 

One of the things our caseworker told us when we first met with him was that adoption does not cure infertility.  It cures childlessness.  Which is true.  But though I am still infertile, I do not feel empty anymore.  The desire to be able to carry children will probably always be there.  But as long as I have my family by my side, it matters little to me how they got there. 

Spencer and I were talking about this and he said something that I really agree with.  When you set out to start a family, there are three kinds of hopes or desires ranked in (our) order of importance: 

1. There’s the desire to have a child.
2. There’s the desire to carry that child.
3. There’s the desire to have a child that looks like you. 

For most people these desires are met all at once and at the same time when pregnancy is achieved.  But those who struggle with infertility may need to grapple with loss of one or all of these desires.  For some the thought of losing one of these hopes is insurmountable.  But for us, the overriding dream of having a child be a part of our family completely eclipsed the desire that we had to experience creating that child or the desire that he or she look like us.  I know those hopes are hard for some couples to let go of.  I feel blessed that we were able to lay those old dreams to rest in favor of the vision we had of what our family could be like.  A family that didn’t necessarily look alike or come straight from us, but that was designed by God just the same. 

I don’t know if I’ve ever shared how I personally came to the decision to pursue adoption.  It was certainly a process.  And there were many instances of revelation that led us where we are today.  But there was one moment in particular that was a defining step in my journey. 

I was at work mourning the loss of yet one more failed fertility treatment.  Shuffling through my stack of to-dos, yearning for the day to be over so I could go home and cry.  I started thinking about WHY this was happening to us.  Not in a “woe is me” kind of way.  More of a reflection on what I should be learning through this process. 

My first thought was that hopefully I was becoming a more empathetic and sensitive person.  If I were to go through this much heartache and come out the other side an unchanged person, well, that would be the true tragedy. 

My second thought was that maybe our family was struggling with infertility because we were meant to pursue adoption, a path that we might not have considered had we gotten pregnant immediately. The moment I had that thought, I knew.  I just knew what we were supposed to do.  I asked Spencer to think and pray about adoption.  A few weeks after that we started planning to find our baby through adoption and never looked back.

I will be forever grateful that we did.               

I know that M was meant to be ours.  I know it just as strongly if not MORE strongly than if I had been the one to give birth to him.  There is no way that M could be here, could be ours if weren’t for countless miracles.  So many pieces had to be in place, the stars had to align, the timing had to be PERFECT.  There were so many obstacles that it shouldn't have happened. 

And yet, M is sleeping peacefully in his crib in the other room after we spent a lovely day together.  I go check on him every so often.  I put my hand on his chest to feel the gentle rise and fall.  To assure myself that he is still breathing, but also that he’s still there.  I just want to see him.  To be near him.  Six months later, and I can still hardly believe that little angel is part of our forever family.  Being his mom truly is a dream come true.