A new journey begins

Today we had confirmed what I already knew. In fact, exactly what I had been saying was going to happen as soon as we started this last round of treatment. Something that I have known for the last few days, but wasn't sure how to write the blog. In fact, I have been composing blogs in my mind over and over, just trying to figure out how I was going to word it, but never able to come up with the exact wording I was looking for. So instead, I have just decided to write. No graphic organizer, no preplanning involved. (The teachers out there will get that weak attempt at a joke.)

I will start back 2 weeks ago. We went in for the transfer at 12:00 on that Wednesday. They tell you to drink water before hand because they have to do an ultrasound with the transfer and they need you to have a full bladder. You then have to lay flat for an hour and can't use the bathroom. With our first transfer I drink so much water that I was pretty sure I was going to explode. That was the most uncomfortable hour I have ever had to spend. I literally ran to the bathroom afterwards. This time though, I was much smarter. I didn't start drinking the water until they took us back to the room and I didn't drink nearly as much. I really showed them! :) Right before we went back the embryologist came in. She starts off by saying, "all 3 are unfrozen and we are ready to go when the Dr. gets here." I looked at her and said, "All 3?" The originally plan had only been to do 2 of the 3. We were planning on keeping one frozen to use later and also because I didn't want to risk all 3 taking with me being on the heparin shots. the embryologist then said, "Yeah, we just went ahead and did all three. One looked good and 2 looked ehhhh." At the moment I was pretty annoyed. It felt like the one thing that I still had control over, choosing the number of embryos to put back, was just taken away from me. But then it was almost as if this little voice invaded my head and said, "trust me." Well we all know who that little voice is, and it's not normally our split personalities. Looking back, I think God knew that I couldn't have one embryo left behind to move forward with what we were really supposed to be doing. He knew that all three needed to be gone and so he made that happen through the embryologist.

So we put all three eggs in that day. Then we had to wait. I took the requested days off work and sat on the couch. Still knowing in my gut that this wasn't going to work. I had a hard time even trying to be positive. I really didn't see this working. I knew in  my heart that adoption was the road we were going to be taking. I just kept my prayer going though that if we truly weren't meant to be pregnant then please don't let me get pregnant at all. I could not stand the thought of another miscarriage. So we will fast forward and I won't bore you with all the details of the two week wait to confirm what I already knew. I did take a couple of home tests and they all came back as negative as could be. Today we had to take the blood test though for the Dr. It came back as I suspected, negative.

Now please please please don't tell me you are sorry. I don't want anyone to be sorry. I am not sorry or upset. How can I be upset, when I already knew the outcome and I prayed over and over and over and over (he's probably tired of hearing from me) to not let it work if it wasn't supposed to. How can you be mad over answered prayers? So please don't tell me you are sorry. There is nothing to be sorry about. I haven't given up on my dream. My dream is to have a child, not to be pregnant. In all honesty, I don't want to go through labor. I get to still have a child, with none of the physical pain or recovery time :)

So now this blog morphs from infertility to adoption. Travis and I had already decided that if this didn't work we would be adopting. Originally we thought it would be an international adoption. We had decided on Ethiopia. I was starting to research different agencies and find out how all of that works. As I started looking more into the Ethiopian adoptions I started to realize that it could take about 2-2.5 years for us to even be placed with a child and then usually another 3-6 months to bring them home. I don't think I can wait another 2.5 years. So I started to look at other countries.

I should stop here and let everyone know that Travis and I had previously decided that if we ended up adopting, we wanted to do a different race/ethnicity from us. We love the idea of adding diversity to our family. So the countries I was looking at where mostly African countries

Alright, back to my country hunt. So I found an agency that did adoptions in Mali. It sounded fabulous! The wait time was usually only 4-6 months. They were also infants, which was one of my criteria. I started to look up blogs of people who had adopted from Mali. (I found that is the best way to find out true information, from actual people, about their experiences.) The first blog I found sounded great! They were matched with their little girl within a couple months. But then it started to get not-so-good. The writer of the blog started posting a bunch of news articles about the terrorist activity that was really starting to take place in Mali. Apparently there is an Al Quida cell in northern Mali that likes to travel down to the middle and southern sections and kidnap tourists. After reading this, I decided we might not want to go to Mali.

So I kept looking. A lot of countries required you be married for 5 years, which we have not. Many said you had to be 30, which I am not. Morocco was sounding promising, until I learned that you had to convert to Islam. (I tried to convince Travis that we could pull it off for a couple of months and then convert back, but he wasn't really feeling it.)

I did keep noticing though that whenever I would do a Google search for "African Adoptions" there would be a lot of websites that would come up for African American Adoptions. I kept adamantly telling myself that I didn't want to do a domestic adoption but it just kept coming up with in front of my face. So finally I decided to click on a link. I convinced myself that maybe it would give me information about African children who became American through adoption. (Sometimes I even fascinate myself by my reasoning skills.) It didn't. It brought me to exactly what I really figured it would, domestic African American adoptions. I started looking into it anyway because at that point I didn't know what else to do.

The more I read though, the more I started to warm to the idea. There is a huge need for couples to complete transracial adoptions. Most transracial adoptions will be finalized much quicker then a Caucasian adoption. I would still be able to add diversity to my family. Travis wouldn't have to worry about his head getting chopped off while in another country... I was having a hard time finding too many negatives.

So I decided to just make the off hand comment to Travis. It just so happens that at that same time, Travis was researching transracial domestic adoptions. We started talking about it and decided that maybe that was the direction we needed to go. So long story short, we are looking into a transracial domestic adoption. There are three types of domestic adoptions. Closed, semi-open, or open. I'm still not 100% sure how comfortable I would be with an open adoption, but unfortunately that is what A LOT of domestic adoptions are now. I guess that is something we will have to decide as we go through this process.

So again I must say, PLEASE don't say you are sorry. There is nothing to be sorry about. I have known this was the path I was going to be taking in life since I was 11, I just wasn't ready to admit it until this point. I am INCREDIBLY excited about starting on this new journey and can't wait to share with all of you every step of this process. Throughout the infertility journey, I was able to meet some of the most amazing people that were going through the same journey. Women that helped me in ways they will never know and hopefully I was able to give a couple of words of encouragement too as well. Women that I will forever have a bond with. Travis and I went through a crazy year, that I'm pretty sure neither of us would have ever imagined. It started on January 1st with me in the hospital for 3 days and ended up with deciding to adopt a child. We came out of this year much stronger and closer then I could have ever imagined. There is absolutely no one that I would have rather went through this year with then him. I can't wait to see what next year has in store for us and I can't wait to introduce to all of you our child. It won't be in a hospital room with me connected to IVs and slightly drugged with pain medicine... but who really wants to see me like that anyway?

Thank you all so much for joining us the last 2.5 years on our infertility journey and you are all welcome to jump on board as our train departs down a new unknown road of adoption.