Infertility & Adoption Blogging
I am facing a new reality, blogging is different for me today than it was six months ago.
I used to focus solely on our recurrent pregnancy loss struggles. This meant I wrote about:
- Emotions behind losing babies and losing dreams.
- Emotions surrounding getting pregnant again after loss.
- Challenges of navigating a medical system that seems to know nothing about recurrent miscarriage.
- Having substantial fears related to experiencing another loss.
- What it means to be a mother to children that no-one else acknowledges.
- How to deal with changing friendships and life priorities.
- How to actually have a miscarriage.
- My experiences with different types of miscarriages.
There are common threads between adoption and infertility, like maintain a marriage through highly stressful times; changing my priorities in life and learning to work to live not live to work; accepting that life is messy and learning to live in the mess; etc. There are things unrelated to either of these paths that I will continue to write about, like my family, the death of my mom and sister, my dog, our newest project or latest travel adventure. These things continue to be part of my story, and so I will continue to share.
But now that my life and therefore my writing includes adoption I feel the need to think through what I’m writing in a new way. I feel the need to censor myself a bit more. We have found this happening in our real lives too. The reason for this is twofold.
Frist, I need to be sure that what I say is respectful of our future children. While this was the case while we were going through RPL, it doesn’t feel the same now that we are talking about adoption. Its one thing for me to be upset with my body for not doing what it’s supposed to, but it’s a whole different thing for me to speak negatively about someone else in my child’s life. So, thinking about this hypothetically, things like birth mother details will always be confidential between Mr. MPB, myself and our child. While we may not like everything, we need to be respectful of our child’s biological family and give them the opportunity to shape their own opinions.
Second, my future child’s personal details are not public. It is one thing for me to share with the world my reproductive issues, but it is not fair for me to share my child’s medical history and life story. It is my child’s right to their own privacy and it should be their decision to tell their personal story when and how they want to. I’m learning not to share everything, and this is new and hard for me. I’m a story teller. I’m a talker and a writer. But, I realize the importance of being more selective in what I reveal as it pertains to our child. For example, I spoke a lot about our struggles to decide what to choose for race and substance exposure, but I never revealed what we chose. This was done purely for our child’s sake, as we want to be able to talk to them about these decisions ourselves when the time is right. We made the decision that we will never tell anyone in our real lives or my blogging life about our exact selections.
So, while I may not share about the outcome of our decisions, I will continue to do my best to be open and transparent about our adoption journey. I plan to continue to share about things like the adoption process; grieving my lost infertility; how we make hard decisions including the different factors we consider; my emotional turmoil though the process including my frustration and my moments of despair and doubt; and, my deep connection and reliance on hope.
If you like this post, please feel free to share and please click the follow button on the side or return to myperfectbreakdown.com to follow my journey.
My Perfect Breakdown 
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the decisions you’ve made. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…you have to do what’s best for you and your family. If anyone can’t understand that, then they don’t deserve to know anything about it in the first place.
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Thanks so much Amy! You are always so awesome. 🙂
I think you speak of such an important universal truth here – we all have to do what is best for us and our family, whatever path we are on.
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This is so important! I applaud you for already thinking about your future child and his/her story. I too, am a generous oversharer and storyteller but it dawned on me that once something is spoken into the world about your child, their history, their birth family, it’s out there. This is a great post!!
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Thanks so much Meredith! I think it is so important to think about our future children, no matter how they come into your life, And of course, I think with adoption things are just a little bit more complicated and different so we need to walk the line carefully as to respect our child’s start in life and future in life.
Thanks so much for getting it!
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Oh my goodness, yes! I’ve thought about how my blogging has changed too. I want to be respectful of what Chick might want or need down the road, but still use this as a platform to be open and honest about my experience.
I think the boundaries you’ve place make perfect sense!
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I guess this is just part of parenting, eh? Even though our children are not able to voice their own desires yet, we have to think about what is best for them and their future.
Thanks so much for understanding and for getting it. 🙂
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Those are wonderful decisions that you have made for yourself and your future family. There is nothing wrong with keeping some details private. Excited for you on this journey. xo
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Thanks so much for understanding and for being excited!! I too am excited, and so full of hope. 🙂
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I think you’re smart to be private about your choices, and really, it’s your right. I struggle with my wanting to share all of me, but also be protective of our privacy. You’ve had to make some hard decisions in this adoption process, and whatever you decide needs to be respected.
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Thanks so much mamaetmaman, for understanding and encouraging me to continue being selective on what I discuss. It’s hard, I’m a very chatty person who often over shares, but somehow now that we are talking about our future child, things are different and need to be different. I hope I learn the right balance. 🙂
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I think you’re doing the absolute best thing for yourself and your child. I’m adopted, so if there’s any insight I can offer, just let me know. *hugs*
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Thanks so much for getting it! Any insight you ever want to offer would be greatly appreciated! It’s interesting because we are meeting more and more adoptive families and birth mothers, but we don’t know any adult adopted children still. And, while I know everyone is different, I tend to think that people like you can offer the most to people like us.
Thanks again!
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YES! Just yes! It is so difficult for me to blog some days because I struggle to focus on a different aspect, or just plain out being positive about the future.
We are in the same boat, friend!
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Thanks so much for understanding where I’m coming from. It’s so nice to know that we are in the same boat!! 🙂
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I love that you are already thinking about your future children in this respect. Because while it is good to be open and transparent, it’s not good all of the time 🙂 You are such a smart woman! I am always praying for you sugars! xo
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Thanks so much Elisha! It is interesting learning what to share and what not to – I’m a talker and so this is hard for me. But i do hope I can find the right balance that respects me, Mr. MPB and our future child(ren) and our entire complicated family. 🙂
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I think you are so wise to consider your child’s feelings about these issues now. I hope it won’t be long!!
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Thanks so much for getting this. I too hope it wont be very long. 🙂
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I think this is smart. We haven’t shared much and never shared anything after our daughter was born. I did flush out recently a few decisions we had to make on our blog but didn’t share much. You are doing your future child very well! And it is really hard to go from sharing everything with IF to not much…
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Thanks so much for understanding and reinforcing our decision on this. It’s nice to know that we are taking a common approach to respecting our child’s history.
And you are so right about it being hard to go from sharing everything to now thinking about what to share and what not to share. It’s such a different mindset.
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I get this. I think that when adopting children or embryos or using donor sperm or eggs certain things are your child’s alone to reveal. Or at least they are things that parents should not disclose randomly until they’ve had an opportunity to share them with the child(ren). I believe this can be challenging but I don’t see how we can shield our children from insensitive or indiscreet comments or questions from others before our kids have had a chance to learn about those things from their parents in a way that gives them time and space to digest and the choice of whether to talk about it with others and if so with which others and when.
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Thanks so much for understanding my friend. Although, I’m not surprised at all that you get this, of course you do!
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Perfect way to handle this. I’ve struggled, too, with this double-edged sword of wanting to share the journey and what I’ve learned/am learning about the adoption process, and compromising my FutureBaby’s privacy. And my FutureBaby’s birthfamily’s privacy. We live in such a public-oriented world now, and I think there’s nothing wrong with keeping some things to yourself and giving that choice to your baby when he/she is ready to share or not. I agree that some things definitely stay the same…surviving all the stress definitely doesn’t change when transitioning from infertility treatment to adoption! Best of luck to you.
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Thanks for this Jess! I remember your post on this topic, and really appreciated your thoughts on it when you wrote about it. It’s just so important that we find the right balance in this very public oriented world.
Wishing you the best as well!
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One thing you will learn quickly after adopting, is that you will get asked ALL THE TIME why your child was placed for adoption. I decided early on that those reasons are my daughter’s alone to share. When she is old enough I will explain everything I know and she can decide who she wants to tell. I stick to “Her birth mom wanted a better life for her” and leave it at that. If people press for more I tell them it is none of their business.
Adoption language is something that I commonly struggle with. People will ask insensitive and personal questions because they are curious and don’t understand adoption. You have to develop a thick skin when it comes to these people.
As for blogging, it does affect certain aspects of it. There are things about our adoptions I won’t write down on my blog because they aren’t just about me, they are about my child and her birth mom as well and I don’t feel that it is my place to share them. However I do share pictures and such because she is my child and I feel okay about that. You’ll find your own comfort level with what you share on your blog.
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Thank you so much for sharing all of this Trisha and for your encouragement! It is so nice to hear things that we can anticipate hearing in the future! Somehow, it makes me feel like we can be a bit more prepared for when we start getting these questions. We have already received questions like “how do you know your child will be healthy” and I responded simply with “we know our best path to a healthy child is via adoption.” I try to remind myself that part of adopting is also educating – I don’t believe people mean to be insensitive, but just don’t think through what they are actually asking to figure out if it’s appropriate or not.
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