Adoption: The Big Cosmic
I'm not sentimental or religious enough to say that God is choosing a child for us, and that his timing is perfect, and all that stuff. Many adoptive parents do feel this way, and I'm not saying they're wrong. It may be that I'm thinking the same thoughts but using different language to express it.
See, I've been reading archived posts at The Thin Pink Line, and this one really got me thinking:
I’d love to hear if I’m being ridiculous about this. Cuz… to me… it seemed so fucked up to hear that, “We adopted you , because I couldn’t have my own”.. ok fine… but then sobs after sobs about how angry she is that she couldn’t have her own, how empty she feels, what a failure she is, how angry she is at P. because she could have one but didn’t appreciate it, and how grateful I should be that they rescued me from that.
Wow. I can't imagine treating a child like this...adopted, bio, clone, niece, nephew, bratty neighbor...any child. Not simply because it's, y'know, wrong to abuse children (emotionally or otherwise), but because it's such a cockeyed way to think about this in the first place.
I actually have a pretty simple take on the whole infertility thing. I didn't go very far down the infertility path before deciding to go for adoption. I could still try Lupron, I could have surgery to find out once and for all if I have endometriosis (and then try Lupron! not a lot of options there). Maybe my tubes are blocked. Maybe surgery could correct the uterine abnormality that maybe has nothing to do with the problem but could maybe cause a miscarriage if I maybe could solve whatever the problem is.
What it boils down to is, I don't care what I could do any more. I'm cooked. I'm 38 and I just want to be a mom, and I'm tired of feeling bad about myself after years of TTC. Do you other infertile folks out there ever think maybe you just don't know how to have sex? Like maybe when you snuck a peek at The Joy of Sex when you were 12 you accidentally picked up the TOTALLY BOGUS edition and have been doing it wrong all these years? I keep thinking "you know, we used to think we were pretty good at this, but apparently we totally SUCK at it, because...NO BABY!" So yeah, I'm tired of that. I miss angst-free sex. And I have a low tolerance for invasive gynocological procedures...a very low tolerance. The one transvag ultrasound I had was, um, stressful.
So, how does adoption fit in? For me, as a means for acquiring a baby, adoption is not as easy as just getting laid and subsequently giving birth would be. Except that I don't live in imaginary-land, where that would actually work. As a process to go through, adoption seems easier to me than treating my infertility, because of my particular ooogie-woogies about the medical stuff, and because of the high likelihood that it would also not work, while depriving me of most of my spare money. When it comes to raising an adopted child as opposed to a bio child (jeez, is there a good term for this that doesn't sound stupid? That is, all children are biological life forms, but "genetically-linked" is just ridiculous, and "my own" is crappy...help?), there's a host of issues that we'll need to work through as a family, sure. But, a bio child would potentially inherit any number of bad genetic creepy things that have been wandering the family tree for a while, so it's not like raising a child I birthed myself would be issue-free.
But no matter what - here's the important bit - an adoped child may seem different to me than a bio one, but not less, or "second best." I won't get to say "you have my grandmother's eyes," but big whoop. She'll have her own grandmother's eyes and that's just as cool. Would I rather I could have a baby for $7000, and get to be with her from her first heartbeat, as opposed to spending 2 or 3 times that much and missing out on her whole first year? Yeah, sure. But whatever path leads me to my baby, that's the right path. And I say, screw the (supposedly) easy, simple, organic process of conception; hooray for the hard, expensive, scary path of adoption, because that, as it turns out, is how I roll.
And that's where the spiritual stuff comes in. I do feel like there's a guiding presence in my life; a path that's chosen for me, although I'm fairly vague about who's doing the choosing. I'm sad that I'll never be pregnant, but I really feel that I'm meant to adopt, and I'm excited to finally know what I'm meant to do after years of wondering why I wasn't getting knocked up. I like to think that the big cosmic reason for my infertility is because I'm supposed to adopt, and I'm generally reluctant to take the hard path if the easy one is available. So the easy path is closed to me. Now it's time to sharpen my (figurative) machete and make my way into the (possibly literal) jungle and have a fabulous adventure with the baby that will become mine.What will I tell her about my infertility? Probably something like, "well, we tried to get pregnant, but after a while we realized that wasn't what was supposed to happen -- we were supposed to be YOUR parents, and you're the best thing that could have happened to us." And I'll say it even if I still feel sad about my infertility, because it'll still be true, and because there's no need to tell a child everydamnthing that goes through your head.
