I found my new doctor through some friends in my small group, who had consulted her for their own fertility issues. They were very happy with her AND she enabled them to get pregnant, so I figured she could help me too. It was all about what I wanted, remember? It took a couple of months to get in to see the new doctor, and I kept hoping for a miracle pregnancy so that I wouldn't even have to see her. Our health insurance would pay only a fraction of what infertility (ugly word!) treatment could end up costing, especially when you got into the high-tech world of IVF and beyond. Jon and I talked about just how far we would go before giving up, and although "give up" is not really in my vocabulary, even I had to realize that financially there would have to be an end to the trying.
When Jon and I were dating we had discussed how many children we wanted to add to our family and how they would get there, and we had decided one biological and one adopted. Since we were having so much trouble with the bio child, during this period we started working on the adoption angle as well. I had no trouble with the concept of loving a child who didn't come from my body and neither did he. After all, I had a stepfather who loved me dearly and Jon had Dana, who he couldn't love more if she shared his genes, so we felt like we had some experience in that area. We knew we didn't want a domestic adoption in the US. Even though most families who go that route do so with no lingering problems, we personally knew a family who had adopted a baby, had him home with them for a week, then had the birth mother reclaim him. We weren't willing to take ANY chance of that happening. Our other option was international adoption. My first choice was China, and to explain why I'll have to tell you a story from high school.
It was the second half of my senior year and I was in my first period Economics class with Mr. Nelson, who was in his first year of teaching after college. Poor guy - he really wasn't that much older than we were and we gave him a hard time. He was trying to make a point about supply and demand and he used China as an illustration. In China they don't have Social Security - sons are expected to take care of their parents as they age, and in most cases they all move in together. Daughters become part of their husband's family when they get married, so if you have a daughter you are basically raising her only to give her away to her husband's family later on. At that time in China there was a strict one-child policy. Violators could be fined the equivalent of a year's wages if they defied the policy whether accidentally or purposefully. Because they needed a son to take care of them in their old age, it was not uncommon for a couple who gave birth to a daughter to abandon her in order to try again for a son. Mr. Nelson used the term, "leaving a baby girl on the trash heap" (which just goes to show you that he didn't know exactly what he was talking about because most abandoned babies in China are not left to die, they are left in such a way that they will be found and rescued, but I digress). I had never heard of such a thing and I was horrified! People were leaving babies to die just because they were girls? I kept raising my hand to ask questions about this, and my best friend playfully teased me about "saving the Chinese babies" for the rest of the school year (and beyond!).
So China would have been my first choice for international adoption, but at that time the law in China would not allow couples to adopt if they already had a child. We did have one and there's not putting that genie back in the bottle, so we had to look at other programs. There are so many factors to consider when you decide where/how to adopt, and lots of them have to do with your own feelings about adoption. There was a part of me that wanted to adopt a child with similar features to Jon and me, just so it wouldn't be obvious that he or she was not "ours" biologically. I guess I was thinking it would be less complicated for all of us somehow. You have to consider whether or not there is travel to the home country required and for how long - can you take time off work to go? And then there's the cost. There's a laundry list of fees associated with international adoption, and some countries cost more than others. China happened to be one of the less expensive options, but we didn't qualify. We did some research and came up with a Russian program that seemed like it would work for us, and in May 2000 we sent the paperwork in to begin our homestudy.
Meanwhile, back at Infertility Ranch, I saw my new doctor in February and loved her! In our very first meeting she assured me that "we're going to get you pregnant". By this time I was beginning to feel like a colossal failure as a woman. I mean, why couldn't my body do what it was supposed to do? Teenagers could get pregnant by accident in the back seat of a car, and I was a stable (mostly), mature (mostly) woman with a loving husband who could provide a loving home. Why not me? I was taking ovulation tests several days a month and spending lots of money on home pregnancy tests because I couldn't stand to wait and see if my cycle showed up. I even considered ordering the HPTs in bulk to save a little money. I didn't - but I considered it. Jon and I were involved in our church and a loving small group and although they knew we were trying to get pregnant and having issues, I don't think they fully realized the desperation I felt or just how consumed I was with getting pregnant. I wasn't getting any younger, and it seemed like people were getting pregnant all around me, just NOT ME. I was praying like crazy for God to fulfill my wishes and to be honest, I couldn't figure out any reason why He wouldn't. It wasn't like I was asking for something bad, was I? There literally was not a waking hour in the day that I wasn't thinking about/planning for/praying about/imagining that baby I wanted. Jon didn't share my desperation because he would have been happy enough to adopt two children and skip the biological trials, but he went along because he wanted to make me happy and that was what I wanted.
So my new doctor started me on a low-level fertility drug, which I had taken before with Dr. Doody, along with a series of ultrasounds and bloodwork to see how things were progressing. I was actually working at this time, and trying to get in all the appointments AND put in the right amount of time at work required a juggling act that I hope I never have to repeat, but at least I felt like I was doing something.
By the way, if you've never been in the waiting room at an infertility clinic, let me describe the atmosphere for you. First of all, anyone who comes there is there because 1) they want to have a baby; and 2) it's not happening naturally; so 3) they have all kinds of emotional stuff going on, none of it good. So you have people (mostly women) sitting in the waiting room reading magazines (no American Baby or Parents in this waiting room!) and studiously avoiding eye contact. No one speaks to or smiles at anyone else. It's like we all pretend to be somewhere else - we're mentally putting our fingers in our collective ears and singing, "la, la, la". Also, the intensely intimate nature of some of the procedures that go on there (do I need to mention the kind of samples that prospective fathers might need to submit?) add another level of embarrassment beyond the whole "epic body failure" kind. At one of my (zillions? hundreds?) of visits, the unthinkable happened: I actually ran into a woman I knew from a previous job. We both knew we spotted each other, debated the possibility of pretending not to recognize the other person (too late - we'd already made eye contact), acknowledged that we must be going through similar circumstances, and enjoyed (not!) a short and lame, "Hi, how are you?" type conversation. Then we went back to ignoring one another. Crazy, I know - if we were as "fine" as we said we were, we wouldn't be here, now would we?
I've always been musically inclined and there seems to be a song to fit any and every emotion I have, but during this chaos I found a lot of comfort in music. One particular song I grabbed onto was "One Thing I Know" by Selah, who was very new on the scene at that time (yes, this was over 10 years ago). I actually had their cassette tape! The chorus of the song went:
And if there's one thing I know
It's that you were never left alone
'Cause you can always call on Jesus' name
And if there's one thing I pray
It's that Jesus helps you find a way
To make a change and listen to your heart
God will take away your pain if you choose to let it go
if there's one thing I know
And to my surprise, I found myself beginning to want to "let it go". I was so overwhelmed by the pressure I was putting on myself to get pregnant that it was becoming an incredible burden. I had built up walls around my heart to keep the pain at bay, and it was working (somewhat) as long as I felt like I was doing something. Sitting around waiting for God didn't count as "doing" something, in my book. I tried very hard to be upbeat and positive with everyone else, and inside I was a churning mass of anxiety. Those who knew me then may tell me that I wasn't fooling anyone, but I wanted to appear strong and independent, and certainly not as pathetic as I was feeling. I would have settled for something in between tough and pathetic, whatever that is. A turning point was coming.
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