Our Family Beginnings

This is National Infertility Awareness Week.  Most of you reading my blog know that already, but maybe there are a handful of you that don’t. Mel & Resolve posted a challenge to us a few weeks back, namely to state our biggest ‘What if…’ regarding infertility.  As I (and we, once Mr. Badger came along) have traveled through family building, that has changed more than a number of times.  At first I was terrified of getting pregnant, you know, all the stuff that your health teacher warned you about in your youth? HA!  Even when we first got married, babymaking wasn’t on our mind. We had limited funds and I knew I needed to get myself in good mental and physical shape before a child entered our family.

Then, of course, infertility came along.  For us, it wasn’t a shock, since at the time I was only getting my period a few times a year. The OBGYN told me to take a pill and that’d work for us.  I was given clomid with no instructions and no monitoring. Enter my foray onto pregnancy message boards.  After the 6 months of that was up, it was on to IUIs and IVF.  As we learned about my clotting disorder and had a miscarriage, we moved from “what if we never get pregnant” to “what if we DO?!”. The grass is always greener, and once you know something, you can’t unknow it.

When we moved to adoption, it just fit. It wasn’t settling, it wasn’t a last resort. We realized it was the right choice.  And while we of course had to deal with the stress and anxiety of waiting, it was far easier than any treatment had ever been.  Our “what ifs” were more along the lines of “what if the baby doesn’t bond with us? what if we don’t bond with the baby?”. When V was born, it all went out the window.  We were disappointed that his mother did not want any relationship with us, but were instantly in love and had a hard time imagining how we had ever had a life without him.  He’s our son, and has been a calm and sweet child, always conducting little experiments and taking in the whole world.  While no person is perfect, and would not want to heap that expectation on him, it sure feels like our family is pretty damned close to perfection right now.

Why, then, do we want to even think about upsetting the apple cart, pursuing another adoption?  Like many biological or adoptive parents, we joke that since V has been so amazing, baby number two would be bound to be a total terror. *Note to future child #2, if you are reading this one day, we don’t mean you specifically, we mean it theoretically.  You’re awesome.

But…what if?

What if we are tempting fate?  After years of physical and emotional turmoil, we couldn’t have asked for a more healthy and happy child. Adoption is not for everyone. It’s demanding in ways we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of. While it is amazing for us, it means that another child will be separated from the people who created him or her, and we certainly do not wish that on anyone.  What if a first family selects us to parent their child and wants an open relationship, and that hurts V because his adoption is closed?  What if…what if…what if?

Because of infertility and adoption, though, we’ve learned that regardless of how a family comes together, there’s so little we can control. Children can pass before their parents and parents can pass away far before their time. Kids can grow up to be generally happy or sad, because of or in spite of their parents. Parents can baby-proof an entire lifetime and still have their little one cry.  It happens, and our journey has taught me that.  While I wouldn’t wish infertility on someone, I would never want us to go back and do things differently.  Differently would mean that I wouldn’t be in the life I have now, and I love this life. I love my husband, I love my son, and I love our child that has not yet come into our lives.

What if where we are is exactly where we are supposed to be?

http://www.resolve.org/infertility101

National Infertility Awareness Week (NIAW): www.resolve.org/takecharge

Read the other members of the blogroll are saying here: http://www.stirrup-queens.com/2010/04/bloggers-unite-project-if-part-two/