I still recall as clear as day when we terminated our third pregnancy to potentially save my life. I still remember how going into that abortion clinic, not once, but twice, basically changed my life. At the time, I know that was my turning point. Looking back, I still know that was my turning point. My husband’s turning point came after our fourth loss which dragged out for nearly a month with almost daily monitoring as my body simply would not expel the products of conception on it’s own and a third D&C procedure was not medically recommended. Yet, we tried a fifth time, after I quit my job to reduce stress in hopes that would make the difference. Thankfully, that fifth loss was a simple chemical pregnancy which did not last long (I realize to many it’s sad that I’d call that a simple loss, but it is what it is).
We wanted children, since we could get pregnant so easily and our Reproductive Endocrinologist (RE) recommended it, we just kept trying. Hoping, eventually it would work. Eventually we started to realize this “keep trying” approach wasn’t working for us. And eventually, after lots of thought, research and even expensive out of country medical advice, we turned to open-adoption to grow our family.
Standing here today, I can honestly say one of the things I am most proud of in my life is knowing when to say enough is enough when it came to trying the “old fashioned” way to have a child. We have been a bit slow in both admitting we were done, but we did get there in our own way. Knowing when to walk away from fertility treatments is never easy, and I am beyond thankful we reach our end of the line and we accepted that fact with our marriage intact. I’ve heard people who after surviving some sort of infertility and then having a living child state that others should never give-up because the reward is worth it when it does work. Truthfully, it’s a statement when taken at face value that I just do not agree with. I just don’t believe that we should all keep trying until one day we are successful because for some of us, that successful day may never come and/or that route might simply be too emotionally costly, too financially costly and too time consuming to continue to pursue at.
We didn’t stop when I knew I was done, and we didn’t stop when my husband knew he was done. We kept trying, because trying was all we could do at the time.
Knowing when to stop takes courage. And, I’m glad we reached that point together.
For us, “giving up” was the best thing we could have ever done. From a mental health perspective, continuing to experience miscarriages was not leading us down a good road. But also from a basic building our family perspective, experiencing loss was rather counter productive to the end goal of having a living healthy child. And so for us, stopping our attempts to get pregnant was the smartest thing we’ve ever done because here we are today with the most amazing little boy and hearts full of love. I am definitely not trying to imply that this is the same for everyone, I know it’s not. But, what I am saying is that for us, stopping was a pinnacle moment of our lives thus far. And something I am proud to be able to say we did because it’s never easy to take the path less travelled. And even more, having the courage to stop and pursue growing our family through other means was one of the best things we could have ever done for ourselves and for our marriage.
And, I have to admit as two very risk adverse people, I am also very proud of ourselves for pursuing open adoption given the amount of unknowns that we faced.
I guess, what I’m saying, is that I’m proud that we were able to make a hard decision to stop and then we were able to make another hard decision to choose a non-traditional route to our family.
While our road to our family has been far from perfect, I truly am proud of myself for knowing myself and my marriage well enough to be able to make these challenging decisions. And, I’m truly proud of anyone else who has also faced and made these types of tough decisions.
And, honestly, more then anything, I count myself among the most fortunate in the world to be able to know the true love of a child. And, I have to say I’m just so thankful we made the decisions we made, because for us, they resulted in our little family coming together.
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And no, this post has nothing to do with Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and/or the United States of America.
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As most people know, we chose open adoption to build our family.
When we first explored open adoption it scared the heck out of us. We were nervous about too much input from the birth parents, we were nervous about too many visits, we were nervous about judgement over the parenting decisions we make. (Now, we laugh at our original worries. Too much input – not a problem in our circumstance. Too many visits – even though we chose international in part to limit this, now we wish there could be more. Judgement over our parenting decisions – everyone seems to judge parenting decisions regardless of adoption. But I digress…).
When were doing our adoption research we met with an amazing couple who shared their adoption journey with us. They said something along the lines of
We just take the approach that only good things can come from so many people loving one child.
Somehow, this was a lightbulb kind of moment. As long as everyone is putting this child first, nothing else really matters. In a way, this has turned into our motto.
To this day, people are shocked that we are in touch with his birthmother and that we want to be, and so we always explain it with our motto – only good things can come from so many people loving one child.
Needless to say this way of thinking also helped us realize that all of our fears were based mainly in the fear that too much contact would complicate our roles as parents. Yes, that’s right, our fears were about us as parents, not about the child. And so we realized one of the critical flaws in our fear based thinking – as parents our primary concern must be our child, not ourselves.
So, when we fully committed to open adoption we decided to hell with all our parenting fears. When we chose open adoption and we were waiting to be matched we began hoping that the birth mother who would one day chose us would also want a long term open relationship so that she and our child would be able to know each other. Really we just bought into the idea that love needs to come first. And, so even before we knew Baby MPB we began to put our parenting fears aside and simply put our future Baby MPB first. That said we do realize it is our role as parents to look our for his best interests.
All of thid is to say that we are firm believers in the power of putting love first. Because seriously, how can love for a child be a bad thing?
Now if only the whole world could get on-board with the greatness that can come from putting love first…
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My Perfect Breakdown 