Tuesday Tears - ...and infertility remains

Many, many (though not all) people enter the world of fostering & adoption because of some sort of infertility and therefore orphan care is a 2nd choice - at least it starts out that way.  Now, this is not true of everyone, but I'd be lying if I said that wasn't how we started out.

For a summary, or the detailed thought process, behind our decision to become foster parents with the hopes to adopt, check out our choices and our decision.  Basically, we have been dealt male factor infertility due to a situation that occured before or shortly after birth that we wern't aware of until 2009.  Or at least we weren't aware how it affected fertility.

The folks at RESOLVE.org talk about resolving infertility.  It's not always a cure.  The purpose of resolution is to get through infertility and its affect on your life and getting through to "the other side" - resolution through being childless (and ok with that), through successful fertility treatments, through adoption or fostering.  Resolution - being ok with your situation and moving on with your life.

I don't know if resolution is really a goal.  I mean, it is a nice thought and something to strive for I suppose, I just don't know if that's the end...maybe it's a by-product of the process, hopefully, but well...I just don't know.

I mentioned to some people recently about how this year seems to promise it will be hard.  My son turns 5 later this year, which means everywhere I turn around is the 5th anniversary of something related to his pregnancy and birth.  The 5th anniversary of the day I found out I was pregnant.  The 5th anniversary of the day we found out we were having a boy...For some reason the 5th anniversary is offering a lot of memories and with them reminders of how long it has been without being pregnant and having more of our own children.

Furthermore, (who writes that in a blog), the longer it goes without a pregnancy the closer we get to probably not having any more of our own kiddos.  That's hard to deal with.  I'm still in my 20s, but not for long....I'm not sure (and no one ever is) how long I'll have the chance to get pregnant myself...how long it will be before the chances of IVF-ICSI success are diminished completely...before "can't" actually means physically can't for sure instead of "slim-to-none" chance.  The longer it goes the less time we have to save up and try to afford IVF and since we're not moving toward that savings right now we'd be starting from scratch. 

And then there's the thought about when we'd want to stop having kids.  I always wanted to have kids 15-18 months apart.  By the time my son was 5, I'd imagined we'd have 4 kids, thinking soon about #5 (if I could get my husband to think about that!).  I figured I'd have a whole slew of biological kiddos by now.  But when would I want to stop going through the baby phase?  I mean, I want Logie to have a biological sibling, but if they are 10 years apart do they lose some of the benefits of having a biological sibling?  I mean 5 or 6 years apart is pretty far - I worry they wouldn't be close. 

At this point I'd like to acknowledge that I've never had control over my fertility, obviously, yet crazy as I am I still think somehow that I get a say!

Will I ever be pregnant again?  I don't know.  I'm not ready to give up on that dream yet.  I'm not ready to "resolve" that totally.  Some people talk about how they come to the point of wanting to be parents vs. wanting to be pregnant.  Clearly I want to be a parent and I LOVE being a foster parent, looking forward to the day(s) we get to adopt our forever kids.  But, having experienced it once, I do want to experience it again.  I want to have more biological kids.  I would like to experience childbirth and nursing and having "my own" again. 

I don't think the odds are high.  The more and more we head down this path the more and more I feel like God is moving us away from more biological kids.  I'm ready to be ok with what God has for us.  I'm just not ready to accept that is His plan.  Not yet anyway.  Does that make sense? 

I still think God could do it.  Yes, it's possible that when we adopt we'll finally get pregnant again.  It's possible we'll get to the point one day where God will take away the desire for more biological kiddos.  I don't know.  In the meantime I'll just have to trust that God's plan is the best and He'll do something great in our lives in the meantime. 

But so far our infertility hasn't been totally resolved.