Still Sad

When I get sad, I think about abandoning this whole adoption plan and moving away and starting over.

A lovely open adoption blog I read linked to this story. It's the story of one birth mother. It's not a foreign story to me, but as all first parents stories, it moved me deeply. There have been a lot of comments, some reassuring and some not.

Adoption is work. I knew this going into adoption. It's essential to make sure it's done ethically, and maintaining some openness is delicate. It's difficult for all three triad members.

Sometimes I feel like I don't have the emotional energy to cope. Today is one of those days.

I have always known that I wanted to be a parent. I have known this for as long as I can remember. I never remember wanting to be married much. I never dreamed of a big wedding or wanting to be a princess for a day. I don't remember fantasizing about my husband or my wedding or any such thing. But I do remember always thinking about my children. I always thought about what type of parent I would be.

But it has turned out that neither my husband nor I can make a baby. So what are we to do?

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I stopped writing this and T and I went out to a lovely arts show and bought me a few neat things. We also bought a dresser that was on sale that T wanted. The art show was fabulous and inspiring. I think I'm going to sign up for beginners pottery class. I have always wanted to learn and now is a good time for me to start. Classes start at the end of April.

After the show I had beer and clams, and we had a lovely day. I am much less sad than when I wrote the first half of this post.

I still, however, feel I don't know what to do with my life right now. In some ways I want to move to Hawai'i and abandon all hopes of making a family. This journey has been too difficult and it poses too many risks and has too much pain. I sometimes feel I am too empathetic to be an adoptive parent. I see some adoptees who have such pain in their lives, and I've read and spoke to birth/first parents who are also living with extreme pain. I don't want any more pain. I want happiness.

All this said, I can't ever imagine life without parenting. We will not move to Hawai'i and we will wait and find a good match and find some way to have a relationship with our child's birthparents. We will be as good parents as we can, and life will happen.

I am just stuck here waiting and imagining everything going wrong. It's not a nice place to be, but I am trying to do things I enjoy. It's really imperitive that I take that class while I can. And when I think about these classes, I think that maybe I could go away and take classes and be a more involved and active person without children. But then I go out and see a family, and my heart just breaks.

I think this is the problem. I have a heart that has been broken too many times. It hasn't been broken by my family or by my husband, but by hope. I have had so much hope and it has broken me each time -- each pregnancy, each IVF each dIUI, each cycle. I have hoped so many times that I might have a family, and I see what we do not have everywhere around us. I'm not sure I could live this world we live in without having a family. I think it would completely break me.

I so often feel like I don't know what to do. I hate that feeling.

Slow Weekend

It's funny how staying at home makes both T and I sad and depressed a lot of the time. We're not sure what it is about being home that makes us sad, but we both do decidedly better if we're out and about rather than relaxing at home.

T and I were watching the baseball game and while I was doing some laundry the play by play people mentioned that the wife of one of the players on the opposing team had just had a baby the night before. They both went on to talk about fatherhood and how great it was and what a miracle it is and how special it is for people who are lucky enough to be fathers to have that incredible experience.

Poor T. It just put him in a really deep funk and he couldn't pull out of it. I don't blame him. It seems that no matter what we do to try to get away from our situation, there is always something there to remind us.

Hell.Boy kind of sucked. It had some potential, but it didn't go deeply enough into the story and it lacked a lot of nuance. We were disappointed because we loved the first one and we had enjoyed another movie by the director of the second one. And, of course, one of the characters found out she was pregnant. Hurray! We can't even go see some comic book fantasy or watch our local baseball team without having pregnancy and parenthood shoved down our throats.

He dreamed last night that the wife of one of his colleagues had her baby (she is due any day now) and it had a heart defect and it had to have an operation and it died.

This morning I decided we should get out of the house. We decided to go to a coffee house near us and drink coffee and read (and knit). We both love to do this. So, as T got into the shower I hear another piece on the radio about how this guy was a total fuck-up until he had a son and the responsibility of fatherhood was so life changing and profound that he fixed his life up and he got his GED and now is in college and has turned his life around. I was so glad T was in the shower and didn't hear that because it would have sent him back into his funk.

We try to keep ourselves busy. We try to do things like watch sports and go to the movies and listen to the radio to keep ourselves distracted. But because family and having children is such a natural part of life, it is pervasive. We see it everywhere. We can't escape it.

How can we relax, enjoy and just let ourselves try to forget our situation while it is always being brought up everywhere?

I know all people who suffer from IF feel this way on a regular basis. The fertile world is just constantly smacking you across the face.

So next weekend I have to remember that going to the coffee shop and drinking a coffee and reading and knitting is the best thing to do for us. Seeing the children there doesn't feel too bad. Finding distraction elsewhere seems like it can just be too dangerous.

But we must distract ourselves, mustn't we?

Application and gone

T finished his autobiography. He stayed up too late and it was difficult, but he did it. The application is in an envelope and we will send it as we leave.

Here goes an adventure!

September

It is now September. Time, when dealing with infertility, both goes incredibly quickly and incredibly slowly. Lately, things have been going pretty slowly, but it's still kind of crazy to think that it is September. Well, that it's September and I'm still not pregnant. But here it is, September, and I have a new temp job starting tomorrow. We'll see how this month goes.

Our day trip was lovely and was a great idea. We get so caught up in doing errands and taking care of things there is no time to do during the week that we forget to do things to entertain ourselves. We have to remember to do things like that more often. It was very refreshing. We walked around in a familiar town, though all of the changes and the young college students walking around made us feel pretty old. I showed T the old apartment that I used to live in, and we had some sushi in one of the new restaurants. I got a 15 minute chair massage that was just wonderful.

I spent about two hours in the yarn store and really stocked up. It was crazy, but T told me to buy whatever I wanted. He's such an enabler. So, I have yarn for a new vest for me and a new sweater for me. And a new purse for me. I bought a couple of other things to make some small things for others, but mostly I bought yarn to make things for me. I guess I'm selfish, but I like to make things for myself.

We also went to this great place called the Montague Book Mill. It's a book store (and other things) built in an old New England Mill. Its motto is "Books you don't need in a place you can't find." We sat in chairs by the stream while the breeze blew in the windows. It was lovely.

Last night we had a family cookout and I made 2 batches of rice krispie squares -- one covered in chocolate and one just plain. We ate ALL of them. Tonight we are going to our friends S&R's house for another cookout. I have to make the potato salad in a few minutes.

So, it was nice to get away. This week is bound to be a somewhat crazy one, so hopefully the relaxing long weekend will help.