Today, October 15, is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. As many adoptive parents come to their beautiful children after a struggle with infertility of some form, I felt this a fitting topic to discuss this evening.
As I’ve mentioned in past entries, infertility had nothing to do with our decision to adopt Beauty. As my husband and I are both carriers of the Cystic Fibrosis gene, after reviewing our options we felt adoption to be the best fit for our family (rather than take a path of medical intervention). It was the best decision we could’ve made: I am an incredibly proud mother of one of the world’s most amazing little girls.
That said, the road to our decision to adopt again wasn’t nearly as smooth. When we decided to take that plunge and add a third child to our family, we initially wanted to pursue an international adoption. We number crunched, applied for loans, and so forth, and kept falling short. We felt it wasn’t a realistic possibility and quite honestly, we weren’t sure it would ever be as such. We decided to try our hand at getting pregnant with medical intervention. After just a few short months, we were successful.
For awhile, anyway. While in my first trimester, I had a miscarriage just before Christmas. It was, to say the least, a heartbreaking experience. Since it was too early to tell whether or not the baby was a boy or a girl, we dubbed him/her “Bean”. Long story short, we continued our attempts, but quite half-heartedly, plotting and scheming for any way to make adoption work. This past summer, we were so incredibly lucky: we found a way to make it all possible. Since we were able to reconfigure our finances, we went forth with gusto on our original plan: to adopt, again, internationally.
I think it’s important to recognize that by electing to adopt, you’re not choosing to “replace”. Baby 3 is no more a “replacement” for Bean than I am a “replacement” for his birth mother; we are merely beautiful additions to each other’s lives, extending both of our families out of love. I firmly believe I have extended family in Guatemala and will again in Ethiopia–family I love just as I love my own. I feel that sometimes adoption after infertility gets a bad rap; sometimes it is slanted to be seen as a “last resort”. I don’t believe this to be true. I do believe, however, that sometimes the paths we are meant to follow take an unconventional and unexpected route. There’s nothing wrong with an interesting or complex journey. In fact, those can be some of the most beautiful kinds.
(A final note: grieving your loss or losses is normal and healthy, even if it/they did not happen recently. There’s no “time cap” on how long you should feel what or how you feel; the process of grief is unique to each individual. If at any time you feel your depression is so severe you are at risk of self-harm of any sort, please get help immediately: contact your primary care physician or therapist, head to an Emergency Room, or call a helpline. Grief is most certainly normal upon sustaining a loss, but please grieve safely.)
