Unresolved

Firstly – thank you so much to those of you who thought of me, and thought of me enough to come leave a comment enquiring about my whereabouts. I’m sorry I disappeared off the face of the earth altogether.

I’m sorry for being a bad blogger, and being a bad reader. Sorry to everyone who needed my support and I wasn’t there to offer it. Really, truly sorry about that. No excuse is good enough for not being a good friend, specially in the IF world.

Congrats to the BFPs, new babies, healthy pregnancies, and everyone who is on their way to beating the IF monster in one way or another.

Me – I’m in the “none of the above” category – yet again. It seems to be the story and motto of my life. And this time I have nobody but myself to blame.

The last time I was here on my blog, we had completed our home study, and were about to get started on the outreach part of our adoption process. That was when I just started a new job, which turned out to be way more stressful than I had ever imagined. So our first thought was to wait a couple of months till I feel more settled in my job before we jump into outreach with adoption, because that was going to entail a lot of work on our part as well. We would have to make our booklet, put aside pictures for it, get letters of recommendations from friends (which we had partly done already).

We would also have to write a letter, make 3000 copies of it (yes, 3000 – and that’s not a typo), and mail it out to medical centers, OB-GYNs, Planned Parenthood clinics etc across the country. That’s part of our agency’s outreach program. 3000 copies, 3000 envelopes, 3000 stamps – undefined time, lots of money – in short, a complete 100% commitment from us.

So we decided to take a couple of months before doing this. And during those couple of months, I decided to continue to read about adoption to be more prepared as an adoptive parent.

Only, I didn’t expect my brain to do a total flip on me. It did. The more I read, the more I was convinced I was not ready to adopt. The books talked about issues with open adoptions – the questions kids ask, the grief and loss they feel, the situations that come up, and how over and over again we, as adoptive parents will have to deal with those situations. It just made me panic more and more, making me feel like I was not ready to proceed at all.

And I know one can never be fully aware of all the situations one is going to deal with in life, and I know that everyone’s story turns out to be different, but I also know that I’m tired, and I don’t want to have to deal anymore.

I feel like such an idiot to have been so sure about everything, to have moved ahead with (and completed!!) the home study, and to now realize and confess that perhaps I am not ready to adopt at all. Suddenly the option of living child-free seems more appealing.

I mean, we know how to deal with this – infertility, and life with infertility and being childless. We know how to respond to inquisitive questions – whether they are sensitive or not. Other than IF, life is pretty decent.

What I don’t know is if I am ready for yet another roller coaster. A lifetime of “age appropriate information” to the child, a lifetime of questions, and inquiries and situations.

Adoption can help fill our need to parent, but it will not fill the void infertility has caused, nor will it heal the wounds and gashes that are so deep. And I don’t know if, for fulfilling our parenting need, we are ready to take on so much more at this time.

DH feels I may be right, specially since our adoption would be transracial (and that in itself will cause several more unique situations). He feels like we should really think this through before we take any further steps, and maybe even wait till we are eligible to adopt from India.

So here we are. In my head, living child-free seems like a tempting option. In DH’s head, not so much. He feels we should parent, but he agrees that we should not jump in when we are not totally ready. Therefore, we have put the brakes on the process for now. I don’t know how this will resolve, and like much of our life for the last 9 years, we shall see.

Bossisms!

So often, what you get out of your job depends on your manager. If you’re lucky to have a good manager, you can concentrate on your work, and life goes on. If you get a moron for a manager, life will chase you down to your workplace and mock at you.

My manager, as we’ve guessed by now, belonged to the latter group. Grade A moron. Right from assuming that I was childless because I chose not to have kids, to assuming that my in-laws probably hate me because I chose not to have kids, to making comments about how it didn’t matter where I live because I don’t have kids, to how he realized the value of a woman only when his wife was in labor during delivery, he demonstrated his clueless-ness over and over again.

I did my bit in keeping him informed about my situation (specially when we were going to Denver for my FET), and then also told him when the cycle didn’t work out (because I was a mess and wanted to leave work after I got the BFN call).

This background will explain why the following incident left me both seething in anger, and shaking my head in disbelief.

This happened maybe 3 weeks after my BFN (so yes, even the timing was absolutely wrong!). He called me to his office and gave me a piece of paper and said “Can you help me write something for this?” I was expecting this to be some sort of a marketing / sales related announcement or something, so I picked up the paper and read it. Before I make any further comments about it – here you go, read it for yourself. The picture is not very clear because I took it from my phone camera and my hands were shaking too badly to get a steady shot!




He wanted me to help him with a letter to his 5 year old daughter’s kindergarten class???

Needless to say my jaw fell to the ground, my hands went cold, and my throat went dry. 10 million thoughts raced through my head at the same time. What kind of idiot does this? This was wrong on so many levels – just so wrong on so many levels!

a) He knew of my situation, and my fresh, recent BFN. How wrong of him to even think of asking me to help with this!
b) Forget the IF, even professionally this was so wrong! I am / was not his secretary! And even if I was his secretary, I am sure it would not be part of my job to write personal notes for him and his kids!


My first thought was to say No. But I was just so stunned that I couldn’t say anything. I stood there and looked at him, and right then, his phone rang. He picked it up, and I walked back to my desk, paper in hand.

I IM’ed my DH and told him what had happened, and what assignment I had been given. He was LIVID! Like, ready to come there and – in DH”s actual words - “kick his a$$” DH told me not to write it, and that starting that day I “should be on sick leave – just imagine you have the flu or something” till I could find another job. It’s sweet to know that my DH totally has my back when in comes to situations like these. Here’s a man who is in touch with the emotions of IF, and is man enough to accept the emotions!

After my heart stopped racing, and my hands stopped shaking, I thought about going back to my manager and explaining why it was inappropriate of him to ask me to write this letter. Then I was like – he’s never going to understand. I mean - he didn’t have enough EQ in the first place, because if he did, he would never have asked! He would never get it. It would just be all the more painful for me to be talking about my IF to such a clueless man.

And the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that it would be easier for me to just write the note, than to try and explain myself to my manager.

So I did it. I wrote the note. I just made believe that I was writing it to my imaginary kindergartener.



PS: And to complete the story – no, I did not go on sick leave after this incident. I went back to work and carried on with my usual work as always. I waited till the time was right for me to leave, and I left on good terms. He will never know that he subjected DH and me to so much turmoil that day.

PPS: To redeem him a little, he did say this when I resigned earlier this month “I hope 2010 is your year. I hope your adoption match comes through because I can’t see you wanting a baby so bad, and I hope your career takes off the way you want it to” (His language is not as smooth as this, but this is what he meant)

Where am I?

First of all, I am very sorry for being a terrible blogger, and a worse commenter! I keep thinking of topics to write on my blog, and I keep thinking how much my blogosphere peeps must be missing me (though I’m sure I’m not missed half as much as I would like to believe I am!)

So where have I been? In a variety of different places actually. This post is just a list of updates on various parts of my life in the last few months.

Where am I in life?
In life, in general, I’ve been in a good place. I’m at peace with myself and with what has been and will be. I give huge credit to my hypnotherapy session and tape for helping me come to this calm place in my life. For the most time, I’m at ease with myself and I’ve been a lot calmer recently than I have been for years.

That is FOR THE MOST PART. And then there are sudden incidents, or parts of conversations, or reminders that come up, and bring everything back to the surface again. A commercial or show on TV will bring a sudden lump to the throat. I’ll go to a blog, and read something that will touch my heart. Lastchance posted a video on her blog, and it made me cry. It was the story of my life, only cuter. She and her DH are so adorable! My DH and I would a) never look so cute, and b) never have thought of documenting our IVF journey so well! No regrets wrote about the “Losses of IF” and reading that made everything come back again. But I realize that’s how life is going to be. I think I’m going to be able to move on, by and large, and once in a while, I will HAVE to revisit everything, acknowledge the deep gashes that IF has left on my soul and on my life, and accept that even with the gashes and the scars and wounds, I still have the strength to walk on. I have to have the strength to move on.

Where am I with TTC?
Nowhere, really. Our frozen embryos will remain frozen for now. I know I don’t have it in me to do an FET just yet. Maybe I will at some point. Or maybe we will try having my cousin be a gestational carrier for us (she had offered last year, but I am not counting my eggs before they are hatched (literally!!) )

Where am I on the adoption process?
We’re doing pretty well on adoption actually. We selected the agency we are going with – and we chose the agency that called us about that potential birthmother back in October. We thought they stood out amongst the other agencies because they reached out to us when they had no obligation to. They were very responsive and supportive through our scurried attempts are putting our booklet together, and have been very proactive throughout. So we chose them and began our home study. And we’ve been happy with our decision so far. No regrets.

As of right now, our home study is almost complete. The social worker came home twice. One visit was for him to see the house, and to talk to both of us at the same time. The second visit was for our individual meetings with him. Our finger printing, medical certificates etc have all been done a while ago. We are now ready to pay up for the outreach part and get started! So very soon, it could be any time that we may get matched!

Where am I with my job?
Some of you may remember the crazy stories about my manager. If not, here you go, and here you go again! There have been more stories, including one that made me seethe in anger. But that makes for another post, and I will post about that incident soon. So I decided to find myself another job, and leave as soon as I could.

I also decided that I was no longer going to put my life and career on back burner because “this could be the month”! 2010 is going to be the year where I take control of SOME of the things in my life.

I interviewed at a couple of places, and got offers that I could choose from. I quit my job last week, am taking 2 weeks off, and starting at my new job on 1/25!

So all in all, 2010 so far has been good to us. It’s only been 12 days, so I hope I don’t speak too soon! But I’m determined to live my life the best I can, while I wait for things to fall in place. Because I believe it will happen. Some day, somehow, it will happen.