Treatment AND adoption?
WavyBrains asked,
Aggressive treatment and adoption are probably incompatible, but I think it depends on the individual situation. I’m not sure what others do either–do you go on birth control to completely close a door you’re not really sure was ever open? Do you stop being aware of your cycle once you choose adoption? Is it enough to stop (or never begin) any sort treatment and just keep doing what you have been doing? What do others do?
She asked, I’ll answer and I hope other adoptive and wannabe adoptive parents will answer. But this being a contentious subject let’s agree to be careful with each other.
Ok, so. For me, why keeping the bio baby door open while pursuing adoption could not happen because:
1. I needed to unravel my want to be pregnant again with my want to be a parent again. I had to understand how much one had to do with the other. I needed to say good-bye to that specific fantasy. We did use birth control while we waited and once Madison came home, Brett had a vasectomy.
2. I did not feel capable of dealing with artificial twinning (here is an article by Patricia Irwin Johnston that explains my thinking although her “how it happens” leaves out some less common scenarios that are more complicated) and I didn’t want to make one situation depend on the other (i.e, that our adoption plans depended on a cycle outcome or vice versa).
Did I quit paying attention to my cycle? Yes and no. I will always know when I’m ovulating because of all that time I spent studying TCOYF but I ceased to care. I’d note it dispassionately. And between you and me and the rest of my readers, I was so horrified at the THOUGHT of getting pregnant while we waited to adopt that I was scared of ovulatory sex; I didn’t want to face that conundrum.
And can I tell you? For me, that was actually really freeing. My cycle didn’t own me anymore; it was back to my body being in my service. I’d have a reflexive feeling of “goddammit” when I got my period and then I’d gleefully remember: I don’t care anymore!
We’ve been on super careful bc since we stopped TTC. Once the decision had been taken that we wouldn’t TTC any more I didn’t want to take *any* chances. In fact, we decided to stop halfway through a cycle, a few days before I O’ed eventually - until I got my period I was terrified I might’ve accidentally gotten pg that cycle after all, lol!
Here in Germany, couples have to be long past IF treatments before they get on the road to adoption. Many social services will want to see a year pass before you are allowed to do the home study. Some want you to prove that you’ve processed your grief and accepted childlessness before moving on to adoption. We’re moving to the Netherlands now, where (international) adoption procedures take an average of 5 (!) years and authorities recommend to get on the adoption course waiting list at the same time as starting treatments …
(FWIW, the waiting times don’t concern me personally, I’m lucky to be married to an old geezer who is 42+ which gets us into a speed-up procedure :-))
I notice my cycles in a “Oh hello, there you are” sort of way
I have no idea when I O but I keep track of cycle lengths by marking CD1. Idle curiosity of a PCOSer who assumes that her current cycle length will be an indicator of insulin level health.
At the very end of our infertility journey, one cycle of IVF overlapped the start of the adoption process. I found it hard to juggle the different emotions, and when the IVF failed was finally glad to bid infertility treatment good-bye. I think by then I figured out that there were two things I was hoping for - to experience pregnancy, and to be a parent. I was able by that point to really embrace the latter, and the former stopped controlling my life.
Thanks for the link to the article–I found it interesting. My situation is slightly different because we have already decided not to pursue treatment. In Sept. we will take the first classes towards foster-adopt, then enter the long paper chase, THEN are looking at what the SW’s forsee as an unpredictable (most likely long) wait for a child. We’re talking at least a year. If after classes, we decide to go with IA instead, we are talking about even longer as we save up. My dilemma is, having chosen adoption, do I resume b/c or do I leave the possiblity of a happy accident open? When placement of a child is near, we probably would resume b/c to allow our attention to fully focus on bonding. I respect your decision to use b/c throughout your waiting, and to get a vasectomy after placement, but for us, the plan has always been to pursue adoption first, and if a pregnancy happens sometime in the next 10 years (I’m 27), that’s an added bonus. If we feel like our family is complete before then, or we reach a point where it would no longer be a happy accident, then we’ll talk vasectomy.
Wavybrains, I feel the exact same way as you. In my thinking right now, I don’t feel a desire to go through fertility treatments. However, I’d be happy to have a pregnancy. I’ve seen families though were the adoption and pregnancy coincide and it doesn’t seem like a bad thing. I know people who are against artificial twinning, but what if they both aren’t babies?
Hah — Maybe because our daughter was child number three but my DEEPEST worry and biggest fear was an unexpected pregnancy (thus the vasectomy). OMG I could not have handled a bio baby on top of our newly adopted daughter. I am done done done. I also wanted our daughter to know that she was our choice and the completion of our family. The joke in my extended family is that if I ever call someone in tears it is because the vasectomy broke!!
THat said — every time I ovulate, I get a wee bit whistful.
DS-L