It's Been Awhile

 

 

I continue this blog for one reason, to continue telling my story. To hopefully let people know that they can make it through the dark days of infertility and infant loss. The posts have become farther apart as I am obviously at a very different place in life then when I first started the blog, but things still come up that I feel the need to talk about. There have been two recent things that have struck me lately so I thought I would combine them in one dainty little post.

 

I have been asked quite a few times lately if things are "easier" now. Now that Keegan is here have I just been able to move on and forward with my life and not think a second about the past. Do I still feel the sadness? These are such multi-faceted questions. Infertility is such a layered pain that it is very hard to answer. Do I still want to run up to the pregnant lady that I see shopping at the store and ask her, "How in the world do you do 'that'?!?!?!?"  No, mostly because I know how she did "that". I've known how that happens since my mom sat me down many years ago to have The Talk. I got a refresher course each year when I had to take the students to the Ruth Lilly Health Center. (You can reread that wonderful blog about this experience HERE if you so wish.) But honestly no, it doesn't upset me to the point that it used to when I would see pregnant women everywhere I went. Notice I said, "to the point it used to" though. There is still a small gut punch knowing that I will never be that women. I know I've said before that I don't even want to be That Women, but it's just knowing that I can't be that hurts. It was like when we were kids and everyone had those awful jelly sandal shoes. You had to have those jelly shoes, just because everyone else did. No one really WANTED the shoes. They made your feet sweat and squeaked when you walked, but just because everyone else had them, then you wanted to have them to. You wanted to be part of that "jelly sandal wearer's" club. I will never get to be a part of the pregnant women's club. And that stings a bit.

I can go to baby showers without driving home crying. I can walk past the baby department at the store and not want to run out of the store blubbering like a fool. I can hang out with my friends and feel part of the crowd when they all start talking about their kids. But I can't join in the conversations about planning for our next child because I have no clue when we will be able to afford a second child. It's not just added daycare expenses, but it's also lawyers fees, birth mom fees, counseling fees, agency fees, and court fees. It's the mental anguish of going through a process that very few people truly understand. It's the two week wait on crack. It's not the simplicity of sitting down with my husband, saying, "Hey what do you think about maybe trying for numero dos?" and then well... you know. (Refer back to that previous blog mentioned if you need some information about how the process works.) That whole thing still hurts.

And of course there will always still be the hurt of our lost child. That is a pain that I have learned to cover well, but it didn't disappear with the birth of Keegan. It was still the lose of a child and you don't just forget one child because you had another. That's a pain that I never expect to go away no matter what.

So to the question of, "Do you just move on and the pain goes away once you welcome your child home?" I have to answer with a simple, "No, at least not yet." While I've only been at this for four years, I still don't think the pain will ever fully go away. I think it is a part of who I am and I think we all have pain that we carry with us for the rest of our lives and that isn't a bad thing. It is a part of us for a reason. Hopefully we have learned from the pain and hopefully we have seen all of the good that God has brought from the pain, (because I truly believe that God doesn't cause the pain, but creates good from the bad...but that's a whole different blog.) I don't want to lose my pain because I don't want to forget. It does get easier though and that's something to look forward to!

 

 

The second part of this post comes from a conversation I had with a nurse. Most of you know that I've had a pretty crappy week of sickness and during one of my many doctor visits this week I was asked if I have ever had any surgeries. I'm never sure what to answer on this because technically I was told the egg retrieval was a surgery, but it's not really what I would call SURGERY you know. There was no man yelling, "Scalpel!" So I just said that we had done IVF but I wasn't sure if that counted. She then asked me if the egg retrieval was painful because she had heard it was. This eventually lead to the conversation about adopting Keegan. The nurse then looks at me and says, "Well, it just takes a very special person to adopt." This took me aback some but my chest was at the moment hurting to much for me to really process her sentence. Once I got home though I started thinking, would you walk up to someone, holding their very obvious biological child and say, "Well it just takes a very special person to have a child."? No, you wouldn't. The more I thought about what she said that more it felt like the implication was that it took a special person to love a child that isn't "their own". This is one of the biggest misconceptions that I HATE about adoption. Keegan is my own. I have known that he was my own since the very first time we met A. Of course he is her son also, but he is also mine. That is the beauty of adoption. Keegan gets to have so many people that love him. He gets to be the son to so many different people. There is nothing special about me loving Keegan, just as there is nothing special about people loving the children they birth. Love is love no mater if he came from my uterus or someone else's. (Sorry for the graphic imagery there...) I know that nurse meant nothing by the statement and she probably meant more that adoption isn't for everyone (because it's not) and probably thinking to herself that she didn't think she could ever adopt. If anything I don't feel special to have adopted Keegan, I feel honored. I feel honored that we were chosen to be parents to such an amazing little guy. I feel bad for all of you that you don't get to be his parents. But I'm sure you feel the same about your own children if you have been blessed enough to have children. Because no matter where they came from, they are all our "own children" and we all love them just the same.