It isn’t really.
This journey started years ago. When you sit in a doctors office at the age of 16 and a doctor tells you that you may never be able to conceive. At the time I didn’t understand the full scope of what that doctor was telling me. My husband and had just started dating a month ago. We were 16 and 17 and even though we knew we wanted to get married-babies and kids-they could wait. I wanted to go to college-he wanted to be a rock star. Kids had no place in our plans.
Fast forward to 5 years later. Freshly married and hopes of having babies in the next few years, college and career completely forgotten-I wanted nothing more than have this amazing mans child. And then Aunt Flo didn’t show up-for three months. So I call my doctor and come in for a pregnancy test and ultrasound. Nothing. No baby just confirmation that inside of making eggs I was making cyst. My PCOS was getting worse. When we were ready to conceive I would require medication and also to lose at least 10% of my body weight.
So for years I told myself-next year we would try. It took 5 years before we were ready as a couple. 6 months of medication and nothing. No reason the doctor could tell. Life got in the way and it would be another 5 years before we could try again. At this point we are over thirty, two dogs and ready to buckle down and have this baby! Doctor checks me out from top to bottom at this point I have dropped 70 pounds more than the 10% I was told to lose. My physical came back normal and all of my hormones and tubes were normal and ready to go. Then crisis comes back-hubby’s sperm count came back as 0-nothing zilch. Its OK though just a change in medication and lets get you back in for another exam. Came back low but bad motility (in layman terms they don’t swim where they need to). Only option is IVF.
Now back when we were first told that fertility treatments were inevitable we made a decision. We would try anything up until IVF. IVF was a hard stop for us. We had researched the cost and the odds of it working for a woman with my condition and it was not worth the risk. At that point we would look into adoption from foster care.
Now we are a normal middle class couple. We did not want to break our bank in any way shape or form trying to start our family. So private adoption was out from the get go. We like to think we are a fun loving couple our normal dates are where we can laugh and have a good time. Arcades, theme parks, you name it. Two big kids wanting to bring joy into another kids life.
6 months after the news that biological children was out of the questions we made the decision to go to orientation in our county to adopt. It has been the most nerve wracking month of our lives to say the least.
Today is day one. Today we start our 8 weeks of parenting classes. There is a feeling of dread and excitement in our home. So much that could go wrong and so much that can go right.
Fingers crossed.
My Family Journey 