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.
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