Infertility

Open Adoption Interview Project

Adoption, Blogging, Infertility 9 Responses »

Mar 222010

Heather, whose continued commitment to connecting the open adoption blogosphere inspires me, arranged this blog-wide interview project a couple of weeks ago. I was hoping for a blog that would be new to me and happily I was introduced to the beautiful Heart Cries, by Rebekah who is mom to 9-month old Ty. It was a treat to read and get to know Rebekah whoses values and experiences are in some ways very different from mine but whose love for and commitment to her son and his story certainly resonate with me in many, many ways. I left my first visit feeling like we had a lot more in common than you might think at first glance! I hope that you enjoy meeting her as much as I have and that you go and check out her wonderful blog!

1. How did your struggles with infertility impact your relationship with God? I know you’ve written a lot about this (beautifully, I might add) but I’m wondering if you can look back in hindsight and see how it illuminated some aspect of your personal relationship that you carry with you now in your present day?

Infertility rocked my world. When it came to God, everything I thought I believed was stripped down and challenged. Every emotion I thought I had experienced was intensified. Every unasked question I was, previously, too respectful to ask, I screamed. I pounded the door of heaven and shouted why a million times over. I begged God to remove the desire to mother from my heart. I did everything the church had taught me to do. I wept, I prayed, I repented. Yet, God remained silent.

It was the silence that overhauled my heart to unrecognizable.

Now looking back I see what God was doing. He took me through the process of removal. I had filled my life with pretenses and had inaccurate absolutes about how God functioned in the lives of those that called him Lord. My faith was peeled back to naked and re-cloaked with truth. An intimate understanding of who my Father is emerged and one ringing truth birthed from my months of war-worthy, inner turmoil – God is faithful…even when I lack all faith. It’s such a simple, no-nonsense claim, but it resonates deep in my heart.

2. How did being witness to your son’s first mom’s loss change you as a mother and as a Christian? (If it did?)

There aren’t enough words to express the bleeding my heart has felt through this process. I thought I knew what Rebekah would feel the day she handed me her son. I thought I had prepared myself for the pain. I had bathed our relationship in prayer and knew that God had woven our lives together for a unique purpose, but that was not bulwark enough. Rebekah and I were both ill prepared for what we experienced. Those first few days were horrendously difficult. My arms held another woman’s baby; another woman’s son. His eyes searched for hers, not mine. I could not separate my heart from hers and when I looked at Tyrus, I could only see Rebekah’s pain. I was not prepared for the crimes I felt. I was a fake and a thief. Knowing that my dream came at the expense of Rebekah was almost too much to bear. I remember asking her at one point, “Are you sure this is what you want?”

Our wide-open relationship made the transition harder, but I would never change it. Looking back, I know how important it was for me to see, hear, and read Rebekah’s loss. I needed to experience the reality of adoption for me and for Tyrus. In the coming years, I will be able to answer many of his questions with heartfelt conviction.

Those early days of ache have taught me two lasting principles: Rebekah and I equally share the blessing of being Ty’s mother and our children truly do not belong to us, they are the Lord’s.

3. What has surprised you most about mothering?

The ease of it. For me, motherhood has not been forced or fabricated in an unnatural fashion. It came with a gentle confidence I did not know I possessed.

4. What has surprised you most about adoption?

I can’t think of any surprises when it comes to Ty, specifically, but the process of adopting Ty was horribly unpredictable. Just when we thought we were approved or “all set,” another shocker was thrown our way. From agency to insurance issues, we have had many obstacles to tackle. It feels good to have the process behind us.

5. What has surprised you most about open adoption?

We originally embraced open adoption out of duty. We felt we owed it to our baby and his mother. What I have discovered in the process, however, is that Rebekah is not just an extension of Ty…she’s an extension of me…and our family. I didn’t realize how deeply I would fall in love with her, while falling in love with my son. There is something so uniquely incredible about two mothers loving the same boy. Apart from Ben, there is no one else on this planet that would sit through hours of boring video in effort to catch a small smile or faint hiccup. She revels in Ty’s new discoveries and phases of change. I love that we laugh, cry, and dream of Ty’s future, together.

6. How has writing your blog shaped your perception of your experiences? (This is something I’m interested in — how writing our stories helps us make sense of them.)

I’m a writer. Pounding out my thoughts, fears, and frustrations during this process has helped me navigate the highs and lows of adoption. Blogging kept me accountable to the rawness of what I was feeling. If I simply kept a bed-side journal, I wouldn’t have explored the depths of darkness that I walked or questioned the hidden stirrings. Knowing that my inner wrestling was public, made me dig past the surface and really illuminate the fullness of what I was experiencing. Working through the questions and concerns in a methodical manner gave me an inner, real life, confidence. I only wish I had started writing sooner, it would have made my infertility struggle more bearable.

7. How has reading other people’s blogs changed you or inspired you?

I stumbled across my first adoption blog when I did a web search of agencies. I’ll never forget the experience. My heart wept as I read one barren blog after another. For the first time in my life, I felt completely understood. I had found a community of women just like me. It was exhilarating and liberating at the same time. So many of the bloggers here have become my sisters; my friends. They challenge me to look outside my box of understanding and encourage me to love more. I find great value in reading through every facet of adoption. I drink in other perspectives and covet input from adoptees and first moms. My world view has expanded in so many ways. From Kenyan orphanages to faithful foster families, God is using fellow bloggers to stir my heart.

8. Can you share more of your writing goals with us?

Earlier this year, our pastor was talking about vision and he said something that hasn’t left my memory. He said, “If the goals you have laid out for yourself are easily accomplished on your own, your vision isn’t large enough.” That day, I began praying for God to widen my view and set dreams afire in my heart. When I dream, I dream big. More than anything, I want God to use me for his kingdom, in whatever way he deems best. I hope his best includes writing. I am first interested in writing Ty’s story, but would also like to write Rebekah’s. My interests are not exclusive to adoption. One of my lifetime dreams has always been to write children’s books. When I look at interracial families, like my sister’s, I know there’s a place for the stories I want to tell.

All is good, I am busy

Infertility, work work work 1 Response »

Jan 122010

I had a great day yesterday with cake and presents. Madison swore I wasn’t getting a cake and that the wrapped package in the ‘fridge was actually an old, dirty, leather boot for me to eat. I stomped around complaining about it all day while she wriggled with glee. Every once in awhile she’d sidle up to me and say, “So — excited about your old boot?”

I am also neck-deep in work because there’s a lot going on in front of and behind the scenes. Speaking of which, if you felt compelled to weigh in on Hollywood’s infertility secrets, I would dearly love you to here. If you’ve got a blog, feel free to take it back and play at home. We’ll be posting these every Tuesday but getting the buzz up early on is always hard. Nobody wants to be FIRST.

Personally I’m totally annoyed by the zillions of women who won’t just come clean and so make it seem like infertility is a shameful shameful secret. No it isn’t. It just is. Some of us have bodies that don’t work right. All of us (women) have bodies that eventually aren’t fertile anymore. What’s the shame in that? I can see not talking about it when you’re going through it and are raw and miserable but once you’ve resolved it however you’ve resolved it? We should do each other the favor of becoming voices of support.

My $.02. But then I am often shameless. (Ask my mother.)

It's the economy, stupid

Infertility 11 Responses »

Dec 092008

“Whenever the employment rate is down, we get more calls,” says Robin von Halle, president of Alternative Reproductive Resources, an agency in Chicago where inquiries from would-be egg donors are up 30% in recent weeks — to about 60 calls a day. “We’re even getting men offering up their wives. It’s pretty scary.”

from Ova Time: Women Line Up to Donate Eggs for Money

Gamete donation lives in its own ethical morass. Personally I think if people choose to donate eggs or sperm, this is their choice. It gets sticky for me when I think about anonymous donation and the right for kids born from donated eggs or sperm to know about their genetic heritage. Since I have never donated eggs (between you and me, my eggs mostly suck) and my husband has never donated sperm (between you and me, his sperm is kinda lazy) I can’t speak to what sorts of counseling folks get ahead of time although I hear egg donors get more info than sperm donors seeing as how the process is more complicated and gives the clinic more access to the donor. But truthfully I haven’t given the set up all that much thought since pregnancy and genetic connection went by the wayside in my consideration pretty early on.

I am interested in the discussions about kids’ right to know since it in many ways mirrors the discussion in adoption. It sort of distills the open adoption records debate since it’s pretty much the same issue without the controversy of primal wound and other emotional arguments. Basically it comes down to whether or not we have the right to know our own histories. And if we do, how much of that history should belong to us — how many details ought we to have.

There’s a Donor Sibling Registry (this links to a video). Fertility docs think the registry is a good idea but it might cause a shortage of donors like has happened in Britain.

Here’s an interesting essay that talks about some of the unique challenges for donor kids, including the idea that they need access to other donor kids as they grow up so that they don’t feel weird or out-of-place. And another article that talks about the importance of half siblings.

I’ve got to get ready for a meeting so I have to stop here.

Second choice vs. Second best

Adoption, Infertility 9 Responses »

May 302008

Sang-Shil Kim has a moving post explaining why sometimes we adoptive parents don’t do a whole lot of good with our fine platitudes. Still I think our platitudes are the best we can do. I can’t rewrite history and the truth is that first I tried to get pregnant. This may hurt Madison or it may roll off her back — I don’t know. It’s one of the things I can’t control for her.

I’m not abdicating responsibility here but I’m recognizing the limits of my influence. I can’t make things not hurt Madison and it seems developmentally appropriate for an adopted person to process his or her adoption through their parents’ narratives (both by birth and by adoption) and so at some point she likely will need to integrate my infertility story with her birth/adoption story.

As a parent, one of my challenges has been to find the careful balance between taking responsibility appropriately and taking on too much responsibility. For example, my infertility journey wasn’t such a terrific thing for Noah. I was preoccupied and depressed and Noah couldn’t understand why I wanted another kid when he was so happy being an only child. There’s an entry somewhere in my archives where he said to me, “Why am I not enough for you?” I know it’s not the same as an adoptee struggling with hard-core feelings of rejection but I’m saying that every parent has to understand the way their choices impact our kids AND the limits of our ability to address that impact. Ultimately, our kids need to figure out how to live with inconvenient truths. I don’t think it helped when I said, “Oh Noah, you’re just so swell that I need to have another one of you little ankle-biters around the house.” But it’s all I could say. It was true that I wanted another baby and that having “just” Noah didn’t fill this need in me. It was also true this wasn’t about him only how could I expect a 5-year old (I think he was five) to understand that?

Madison — like every adoptee — gets it coming and going. For one, she has to find a narrative that works to explain to herself why she is not with Pennie. She can go to Pennie for answers but she’ll need to find a way to make sense of it herself. For two, she has to find a narrative that works to explain to herself why I tried to get pregnant before turning to adoption. She can read my blog and watch me work through it in virtual time but that doesn’t mean it will answer all of her questions satisfactorily. This is one of those times where I can’t fix it.

I don’t abdicate my responsibility to her to help her process this but I do recognize that it’s her work to do and that even if I do the best job I can, I can’t control her feelings around it.